Ground Zero Mosque Bizarro: We Do Get Fooled Again

Investigative Report / September 10, 2010

By Mark Ames

The full version of this article is published on the New York Observer Online.

So far, the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has unfolded along predictable lines, with the man at the center of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, drawing attacks from the right painting him as a terrorist sympathizer with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But meanwhile, links between the group behind the controversial mosque, the CIA and U.S. military establishment have gone unacknowledged.

For instance, one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group, the Cordoba Initiative, that is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque, is a 52-year-old Scarsdale, New York, native named R. Leslie Deak. In addition to serving on the group’s board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization’s total operating budget—though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period.

Deak describes himself as a “Practicing Muslim with background in Christianity and Judaism, [with] in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East, living and working six months per year in Egypt.” Born into a Christian home, Deak became an Orthodox Jew and married a Jewish woman before converting to Islam when he married his current wife, Moshira Soliman, with whom he now lives in Rye.

Leslie Deak’s resume also notes his role as “business consultant” for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tuscon. The only names listed on the firm’s website are those of its three “strategic advisers.” These include retired four-star General Bryan “Doug” Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed “all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism,” and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he “managed the CIA’s globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget” and “served as head of America’s Clandestine Service, the CIA’s operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.”… (click here to continue reading this article.)

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21 Comments

Add your own

1. platitudes | September 10th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
FINALLY, motherfucker!
2. l'nomsematiq | September 10th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
NOTE FROM THE EXILED CENSORSHIP DEPARTMENT: WE DECIDED TO POST THIS COMMENT WITHOUT CHANGING A WORD SO THAT OUR READERS COULD OBSERVE A REAL-LIFE TROLL IN ACTION…
I must preface this response by stating that I’m responding more to the Observer article than I am to the abridgement supplied here.
The article is interesting, outlining the connections between the proposed Park51 development and some of the more shadowy parts of the American establishment, but I would question some of the inferences that are drawn from it. I am willing to take it as written that there is some type of silly-buggers (as we call it here in australia) going on with Deak’s funding of the Cordoba Initiative, playing both sides of the fence. However, the association of Imam Rauf with these shadow games is perhaps a bit more tenuous. To be a bit more specific, it is clear from your article that Deak has links with some organisations from the dark side of the American psyche, but Imam Rauf, in associating with only the FBI and Karen Hughes, is hardly in the same league. Furthermore, to make the aspersion that A is working with C, and B is working with C, ergo it follows A and B are working in league with each other in pursuit of the agenda of C is not a wholly conclusive logical argument. Rather, it is only a cue for further investigation.
Let me put forward an alternate spin on it all: the establishment seeks to entrap a patsy imam into an offer too good to be true, thinking that if they can entrap him with their money in a difficult situation, then it will set up a situation that may be exploited. But the imam, he ain’t such a patsy, he takes their money, pursues his vision, and when they try to pull strings, try to say that they’re the money behind this whole show, the imam says “well, actually, I’m Muslim, I come from an extensive community, a community with the capacity for supporting itself, with or without your support”.
The main thing I’d like to allude to in this is that Imam Rauf seems fully genuine in his intentions, and putting aside personalities, Islam itself has a significant, I would argue a predominant bias towards religious harmony, an emphasis upon Muslims looking more towards their own behaviour and accountability rather than setting themselves up as elitist adjudicators-at-large. The Area51 development has some interesting possibilities for developing a discourse of harmony alternate to the discourse of discord and rancour, the discourse of the clash of civilisations which has predominated since 9/11.
I mean, let us take it as written that this Deak geezer is playing a shadow game, trying to play Imam Rauf into a corner. But what if the result is that Imam Rauf takes the money, and then, manages to turn the intended purpose of a black op on its head.
One could call such a scenario a blowback. But does a blowback always have to mean that we, the common people, are left with the question of “hey, did we just get totally arse-raped – again?”
Perhaps Imam Rauf deserves a little more credit and a little more benefit of the doubt than your article would allow.
3. zhubajie | September 10th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Sounds rather too good to be true. American born-agains not really the fanatics they seem? Just tempted by the devil/CIA? Too good to be true.
4. Lavrentij Lemko @ Anarchy 99 | September 10th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Funny, I just had a fight with my Republican mommy. She said that the TARP bailout funds went straight to union pensions.
Divide the peons and conquer ’em!
5. David | September 10th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Kickass work, Ames!
6. jimmy james | September 10th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Ya still got it, Ames.
7. rick | September 10th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Marketing-major Ayn-Rand-fan Republican propaganda architects are the vilest creatures. They should be cornered like vermin and mocked without mercy.
Not manipulating the media, for anybody with “Joe the Plumber” money, would be like letting a retard run around your carnival carrying $1,000 in dollar bills, unmolested. You just have to make the caramel corn smell travel a bit. You’d have to be stupid not to do it.
Mark Ames is insinuating a lot here, but I think it’s respectable, under the circumstances. Quasi-competent propaganda planners could hide imbecile machinations on this level, easy. Are they machinations? Pile up the circumstantial evidence, it’s worthy of an article, sure. Whooping up moral terrors and threats are what any competently loathsome politician does, anyway.
8. KMansfield | September 11th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Muslims don’t like them either, compare them to house arabs.
http://pmunadebate.blogspot.com/
http://ikhras.com/
I read the angry arab(asad abukhalil) and he doesn’t give a crap about the mosque. He would rather we stop killing muslims.
It’s really offensive broadcasting that we only care about the Qurans being burnt because it would endanger the troops. I am worried about violence and discrimination against arabs/muslims here in the US.
The troops vandalize mosques, shit on prayer rugs, draw crosses, the star of david, and penises on the walls, when they are done, they build a bonfire out of all the holy books they can find.
9. jack kane | September 11th, 2010 at 8:51 am
I’m inclined to agree with Ames’s suspicions that the 9/11 Mosque issue is a manufactured controversy. The recent Koran burner farce was an even more obvious example of opinion molding through faux news.
We have enough proof to be reasonably certain of foul play. The guy behind this Cordoba house has serious links to the establishment, and his funding comes from an obvious CIA front, and the various rockefeller/ carnegie/ etc foundations. We can connect the dots.
Sadly, few alternative new sources caught on to the intelligence services connection (one other one being globalresearch.ca ). Most leftie news-sites bit the bait like good fish, and now post countless moralizing opinion pieces – we must build the mosque! We must respect religious diversity! Blah blah blah.
What good does that do? I’ve debated Islamophones. You can’t convince them. They don’t listen to reason. Why preach to the choir?
It’s all bullshit, and it’s boring to boot.
Good work, Ames. Keep it up.
10. Lavrentij Lemko @ Anarchy 99 | September 11th, 2010 at 9:17 am
My watch says that it is time to rewatch Bride of Chucky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eymoUFoduTE
Or will it be Leprechaun 2?
Who will want to buy American weapons when we can’t even win a war against neolithic barbarians armed with cargo cult IEDs?
11. mydick | September 11th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Please, please right more.
I’ll pay, I really will this time.
12. rapier | September 11th, 2010 at 10:01 am
TROLL ALERT! ONCE AGAIN FOLKS, WE OFFER UNCENSORED TROLLING FOR YOUR EDIFICATION. NOTE THE OL’ “THE CIA HAS BETTER THINGS TO DO” ARGUMENT, WHICH BEARS NO CONNECTION TO REALITY BUT SOUNDS VERY COMFORTING IN A QUASI-KNOW-IT-ALL WAY, PLUS THE OL’ “YOU CAN CONNECT ANY DOT TO ANYTHING” WHICH IS THE EQUIVALENT OF THE “IT’S ALL BEEN DONE BEFORE” ZINGER POPULAR WITH FASHION FAGS:
Well technically the mosque was a non-event in any case till the media started jumping on the bandwagon.
No offense Ames but if you play connect the dots,you can usually connect any group/company to anything if you’re willing to make the connections.
The CIA has other things to do then raise a mosque in New York.
13. Lavrentij Lemko @ Anarchy 99 | September 11th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Rogue banking CIA flacks, manchurian candidates and assassins (Cheney, Obama) control with populace with violence (US, Afghanistan, elsewhere) and up-by-the-bootstraps blame-the-victim billionaire booty bumping latent homo Ayn Rand-spouting collapsitarian tea baggers run the media.
I LIKE US and A.
14. Allen | September 11th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Yeah, with an official budget ranging towards tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and an unofficial budget of even more billions, America’s intelligence community — I’m reasonably sure — has lots of “things” to do.
Why someone would give an organization like the CIA with its lack of transparency, accountability, and considering its charming history, anything approaching the benefit of the doubt is just one of those every day fascinating things.
15. George Herbert's collar | September 12th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
wish you’d get out of America, Ames
you were brilliant in Russia. you sounded alive. you’re drowning in this american morass, the hideously depressing politics, the tiresome squabbles, the sheer shittiness of it all
get out, man. run. don’t look back.
16. Rockstar | September 13th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
So the hypothesis is that this is a republican conspiracy to whip up a certain demographic and gain votes? That’s pretty boring as far as conspiracies go. I mean, why bother? What difference does it even make whether we get screwed over by republicraps or democunts? They’re all too busy, looking out for their own interests or those of their corporate sponsors, to do anything that is helpful to the rest of us. And that is when they aren’t actively working against us.
Perhaps this lame excuse for a conspiracy is merely a horse and pony show, part of the larger conspiracy toward convincing people that the D’s and the R’s are the only two choices and that everything would be solved if only their side had all the control and if the other side would stop messing things up.
17. Bester | September 20th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YOX4AnLcA
18. Robert Louis Tegenkamp, Th.D | November 30th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
You folks all need a diversion, you’re not even in the real world… get a life…
I have written two books on Islam, the real story… none of this shock stuff… they have a plan and they will carry it out unless we do our part… this is a two way street… right now we have the right-of-way and talk is worthless, action is priceless… Find it in my books CONFESSIONS OF A BUTT-MAGGOT, and Father Forgive Thine Butt-Maggots under my boyfriend’s names…
19. Robert Tegenkamp | June 10th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Very clever how the comments I gave were improved. The world I inhabit with other right-wing PR shills is shameful and full of idiots. I wish I could be more like the person that improved my comments… do not trust anything the PR trolls say against the TSA, we’re as crooked as a dog’s hind leg…
20. Robert Tegenkamp | June 10th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Two great books to read, COLLISION, AND FATHER FORGIVE THEM… THEY WILL HELP YOU TO BECOME BRAINWASHED INTO THINKING YOU UNDERSTAND WHY IDIOTS LIKE ME ARE OBSESSED WITH “ISLAMISTS” … MOST OF MY FRIENDS DON’T HAVE A CLUE AS TO WHO OR WHAT ISLAM IS BUT THAT NEVER STOPPED US…
21. Robert Tegenkamp | June 10th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
I DO NOT APPROVE OF THE DECEPTION THAT OTHER TROLLS HIRED BY THE RIGHT-WING CRAZIES ATTEMPT TO INVOKE ON YOUR COMMENTS SECTION, IS ANY OF THEIR ANTI-TSA PROPAGANDA HONEST OR HAS ALL OF IT BEEN PAID FOR TO FIT THE KOCHS’ AGENDA… I THANK YOU FOR IMPROVING MY COMMENTS ON #18 – ALL MY LIFE I HAVE JUST BEEN ANOTHER CROOKED DEAD BEAT I WRITE ABOUT IN MY NEW BOOK [name of book deleted by editors to save this poor man from the humiliation–Ed]…