WHITE HOUSE STANDS BY ISLAMIC ENVOY

I'd say this is the most outrageously under-reported story of the year but there have been so many, it's easy to lose track. Rashad Hussain was quoted at a 2004 Muslim Student's Association (MSA) event saying things sympathetic to Sami al-Arian, convicted terrorist fundraiser for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). However, the quotes attributed to him mysteriously disappeared from the report.

When the editor was asked about why, she said someone told her the quotes were not uttered by Hussain but by al-Arian's daughter, Laila. Delinda Hanley couldn't remember who told her, nor did she have an answer for why the quotes were removed instead of being re-attributed to al-Arian.

Then on Friday, February 19th, Hussain had to admit that he did, in fact, say those kind words about Sami in 2004 because Politico presented a recording of the event to the White House. Now that you're up to speed, here's the latest news. Surely, Hussain is going to be fired, right? Not quite.

Politico reports that on the contrary, the White House is standing by him:

The White House is expressing its confidence in a White House counsel’s office attorney President Barack Obama recently named as U.S. envoy to the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, despite his concession last week that he made ill-considered statements in 2004 about Bush-era terrorism prosecutions.

“Were you misled? Do you maintain confidence in this man the president wants to be his delegate to the Islamic Conference?” Fox News’s Wendell Goler asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at the daily briefing Monday afternoon.

“We continue to have confidence,” Gibbs said. “This is an individual that has written extensively on why some have used religious devices like the Qur'an to justify this [terrorism] and why that is absolutely wrong. And has garnered support from both the left and the right so we obviously have confidence.”

Notice Gibbs never answered the question about whether the White House was misled. If they were misled, it would seem to me that they would have NO CONFIDENCE in Hussain. If the White House knew about this or was in any way involved in having the quotes removed from the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs (WRMEA) publication, it would rise to the level of a conspiracy.

I am struck personally by the fact that this man was not only caught in a lie but has admitted to approaching WRMEA about the quotes and asked them to be removed. If the White House had no knowledge of that and was presented with an audio recording from Politico that clearly showed Hussain said those words, wouldn't one think there would be absolutely NO CONFIDENCE in Hussain from the Obama administration?

Of the incident, Hussain said:

“I made statements on that panel that I now recognize were ill-conceived or not well-formulated,” Hussain said.

There are so many problems with this that I'm losing count. He only admitted to making "ill-conceived" comments after he was caught via the recording. Prior to that, he went to WRMEA of his own volition and got them to remove quotes that were accurately and correctly attributed to him, instead saying that they were said by al-Arian's daughter.

Not only does the editor of WRMEA, Delinda Hanley, come off as looking bad but worse yet, how about the woman who actually wrote the article and was accused by her own editor - incorrectly - of dereliction of duty by misquoting someone? Here is what Politico reported about that on February 16th:

....the author of the article, Shereen Kandil, said Tuesday that she stood by her original report.

"When I worked as a reporter, I understood how important it was to quote the right person, and accurately," Kandil wrote in response to an e-mailed query from POLITICO asking about the possibility of a misquotation.

"I have never mixed my sources and wouldn't have quoted Rashad Hussain if it came from Laila Al-Arian. If the editors from WRMEA felt they wanted to remove Rashad Hussain from the article, my assumption is that they did it for reasons other than what you're saying," said Kandil, who also works in the Obama administration as a program analyst for the Middle East in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of International Affairs.

So far, I have not seen or heard of any apology to Kandil from either the White House, Hussain, or her own former editor, Hanley.

Speaking of Hanley, here is the text of a note she sent to Politico after they first reported on this story:

Our Web master thinks the change was made on Feb. 5, 2009, but that change could have been when our Web site began an ongoing redesign. We cannot find an e-mail paper trail and we have spent a long time checking on this. I probably asked for the change but I honestly can't recall who asked me to make it. As I mentioned, I had assumed it was the author. You have taught me a lesson: make a paper trail. The other lesson is that our magazine often has the only reporter at an event and we'd better get our article absolutely right!

Take note of the date of February 5th, 2009. That is somewhat relevant because Hussain was named Deputy Associate Counsel to the President only days earlier on January 28th. If Hanley is correct, that means that from 2004 - Early 2009, Hussain's quotes remained in the WRMEA piece and were not removed until he was tied directly to the president in the form of a position at the DOJ.

What are the odds the White House knew NOTHING about Hussain's comments in 2004? Again, if they didn't know about them or Hussain's attempt to cover them up, he should have been fired by now. This is disturbing on so many levels.

h/t to GMBDR