Civil Rights: Discrimination

Frank Gaffney Jr. and the Center for Security Policy

Frank Gaffney Jr.

Frank Gaffney is the founder of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a neo-conservative think tank that publishes books and pamphlets that promote the conspiracy that America is under threat from Islamization and the implementation of Islamic law. Gaffney has promulgated a number of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories over the years. Chief among them is the allegation that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and that a number of political figures have actual ties to the group.

While there are a number of right-wing figures who claim that Muslims are trying undermine the United States, Gaffney has undue influence. His anti-Muslim allegations and studies have been cited by numerous politicians talking about Muslim influence in this country. He also has wide reach through his think tank as well as other conferences he has been invited to attend.

Gaffney has also opposed the building of mosques in America. He was critical of the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City and of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  He accused the imam and people involved on the board of the Tennessee mosque of being proponents of Shariah. In an interview with CNN about the Murfreesboro mosque in 2010, Gaffney said, “They are promoting a program that is at odds with our freedoms, our form of government, our Constitution…. He added, “You have stealth jihadists at work, trying to advance the situation.”

Allegations about Muslim Brotherhood ties to government figures

Gaffney has articulated a vision of an Islamic Fifth Column in the United States. He has published numerous articles and reports alleging that Muslims in the U.S. are trying to undermine the country by infiltrating our institutions and gaining direct access to the White House and political operatives.

In 2003, Gaffney wrote an article on alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration for FrontPageMagazine, the media arm of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a right-wing ultra-conservative organization that claims to combat the efforts of the “radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country.” The article claimed that Grover Norquist, an influential anti-tax activist, and Suhail Kahn, who worked with the Bush administration on Muslim outreach efforts, have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The article went on to list various Muslim leaders as having penetrated the White House during the George W. Bush administration.

The allegations continued after Bush left the White House. Gaffney then turned his attention to Barack Obama even before he became president.  In a 2008 Washington Times article, Gaffney claimed that the Obama hoped “to win the White House by relying, in part, on the Jihadist vote.” In the same column, Gaffney drummed up birther  conspiracy theories by questioning  whether Obama “is a natural born citizen of the United States.”

In a 2009 Washington Times article, reacting to President Obama's trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Gaffney claimed that "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."

Gaffney’s allegations went beyond President Obama to people in the Obama administration, Gaffney has claimed that Huma Abedin, who worked as an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2011, Gaffney wrote on the CSP website that the country needed a committee modeled after the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee “to investigate in particular the extent to which the Obama administration’s anti-American activities reflect the success of the toxic Muslim Brotherhood…in penetrating and subverting both U.S. government agencies and civil institutions.”

Gaffney also accused Representative Andre Carson (D-IN), who is a Muslim, of having ties to a number of Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

Gaffney’s activity

Gaffney is still welcome in conservative circles even though his controversial and bigoted statements about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the government have led to some reprimands. In 2011, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) barred Gaffney from participating after he pushed his theories that Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan, two fellow conservatives, were tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2013, the conservative news outlet Breitbart News held a conference at the same time as CPAC called “The Uninvited”: A Session of Controversial Speakers and Topics.” The title was in reference to people like Gaffney who had not been invited to participate in CPAC. The group included a number of anti-Muslim bigots, including Gaffney as well as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who run Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). Like Gaffney’s CSP, SIOA warns of the encroachment of Shariah in the U.S.

In 2015, Gaffney was invited back to CPAC. He moderated two panels on “Countering the Global Jihad.”  Before the first panel began, Gaffney set the tone by mentioning that in 1991, a Muslim Brotherhood operative produced the “explanatory memorandum on the general strategic goal of the group in North America.”  According to Gaffney, the memo explicitly addresses the progress the Muslim Brotherhood has made in building an infrastructure in the United States with the goal of destroying Western civilization from within so that Islam is victorious over other religions.

Not only does Gaffney go to conferences, he is a prolific writer. In 2010, Gaffney published the book, Shari'ah: The Threat To America, An Exercise in Competitive Analysis, Report of Team 'B' II. In the book, Gaffney details and propagates the conspiracy theory that Shariah law poses a vast and serious threat to the U.S. and Americans. It was co-authored by David Yerushalmi, another anti-Muslim bigot and an attorney who is one of the driving forces behind efforts to ban the use of Shariah law in American courts.  Yerushalmi is also the general counsel for CSP.

Gaffney’s influence

Gaffney has been part of conservative circles since his days in the government when he worked for the Reagan administration as assistant secretary of defense. He founded CSP in 1988 after leaving the government.

In 2012, Gaffney’s influence was apparent when a group of politicians, including Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland, sent letters to inspector generals of five different government agencies dealing with national security to demand that they investigate infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood into the federal government. The letters cited Frank Gaffney as the source of the information about alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration.

In 2015, Gaffney was behind a survey that presidential candidate Donald Trump used to declare that “25 percent of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad, and 51 percent of those polled agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.” Numerous media sources questioned the validity of the survey. A few months later, when Trump said that “Islam hates us,” Gaffney defended that statement in a CSP column saying, “There is no getting around the fact that the practice of Islam as defined by the faith’s authorities …is hateful towards those like us, who believe that our government should be defined by a man-made Constitution, not by the dictates of a deity like Allah codified in a doctrine like sharia.”

A few months later, Senator Ted Cruz, another presidential candidate, selected Gaffney to be an advisor for him on foreign policy.

Gaffney has also appealed to extremists. Norwegian terrorist Anders Brehring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Oslo and Utoya Island, published a 1,500-page manifesto citing the writings of Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy seven times.