Terror Camp Funders Donate to the GOP!

Whoa...

And not surprisingly, this fact is not getting much airtime on the TV news:

First the "regular" stuff:

Terrorism charges brought Friday against the administrator of a loan investment program claimed that he secretly tried to send $152,000 to the Middle East to buy equipment such as night vision goggles for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, 53, of Ardsley, N.Y., pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to an indictment accusing him of terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and other charges. The charges carried a potential penalty of 95 years in prison.

Now the whammy:

CBS News has confirmed that Alishtari is a donor to the Republican Party, as he claims on his curriculum vitae. Alishtari gave $15,500 to the National Republican Campaign Committee between 2002 and 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. That amount includes $13,000 in 2003, a year when he claims to have been named NRCC New York State Businessman of the Year. Alishtari also claims to be a lifetime member of the National Republican Senate Committee's Inner Circle, which the NRCC describes as "an impressive cross-section of American society – community leaders, business executives, entrepreneurs, retirees, and sports and entertainment celebrities – all of whom hold a deep interest in our nation's prosperity and security."

Daaaaaaamn....wow...I'm, well...shocked I guess.

And this isn't the extent of the intrigue here. This NY businessman has ties to government and military contracts for "web filtering" technology being considered by the Dept of Defense.

From The Cunning Realist:

Update: Ah, what a tangled web. A reader notes in the comments section that "GlobalProtector.Net", one of the companies listed on this CV, claimed to have "provided a product demonstration for the United States SouthCom in Miami, Florida." Here's the news release. A few months later, according to another news release here, "Chief Executive Officer Mr. AT Alishtari authorized a new Boca Raton, Florida Office sales team of under a new Federal Sales EVP with web technical support from GlobalProtector.Net’s Chief Technical Group Director, Mr. Romel Roberts, to meet with the US Department of Defense covering web filter technology for various uses internally and those meetings were met favorably in general for the agenda set forth by the Department of Defense for those items."

Both of those news releases are from 2003 -- the same year this person says he was appointed to the "White House Business Advisory Committee" and became a "US National Republican Senate Inner Circle Member for Life."Oh, and be sure to check out this news release, noting particularly the references to "anthrax patents" and "Homeland Security."

White House press corps, over to you....

Daaaaamn...I really have nothing better to say but that. I'm flabbergasted at the grave security breach that the Republican Party is providing for the United States.

If he indeed is funding terrorist groups, than the software and products he is supplying to the DoD...He could provide insider knowledge about such systems and countermeasures to those systems, or key ways to hack those systems in event of cyber attack.

And this company's involvement with anthrax patents and US Homeland Security could possibly mean that he could have passed sensitive information about our domestic defensive capabilities and weakness, and passing sensitive biological weapons secrets to groups more than willing to use them on us. Why is this aspect of the story not mentioned widely on TV. WTH!!

However it appears that this is not the only incident where a person charged or indicted of funding terrorist organizations have been donating heavily in the Republican Party.

TPMuckracker has the scoop:

Oops! Building on my last post on the NRCC's bogus Business Advisory Council and "Businessman of the Year" program, it turns out that Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari isn't the first member of the council to be indicted on charges of supporting terrorism.

Yasith Chhun, the head of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, a group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization, was indicted in May of 2005 for charges of plotting to overthrow the Cambodian government. He was also, The Los Angeles Times reported, a member of the NRCC's Business Advisory Council:

Before his federal indictment this week [Chuun] had raised $6,550 for the National Republican Congressional Committee and was invited to sit on the group's Business Advisory Council, which has tens of thousands of members nationwide, said Carl Forti, a spokesman for the committee....
Chhun attended the annual meeting of the National Republican Congressional Committee's business advisory council in Washington, D.C., last year. [NRCC Spokesman Carl] Forti said the committee did not know Chhun's group had been designated a terrorist organization, saying it was impossible to do background checks on all its members.

"At this point, the gentleman hasn't been convicted of anything," Forti said. If he is a terrorist, "it's something we need to look at. Clearly, we wouldn't want any leader of a terrorist organization being members of our business advisory council."

Again, why is this not being reported on widely? This raised issues about infiltration of our political parties, infiltration of our defense bureaucracy, and infiltration of the means our Homeland Security by those seeking to breach that security.

Call your Congressman, email local reporters, tell your friends and family...whatever. This story needs to be told and it needs much more stringent investigation.