From National Review Online today -

Congress needs to hold hearings on this rapidly metastasizing scandal of Islamist penetration of national security offices throughout the government.

Read the entire article for Claudia Rosett’s masterful analysis on the scandal of the firing of national security expert Steve Coughlin, and Gordon England’s great shame - the infiltration throughout the Bush administration by the Muslim Brotherhood’s front organization.

(As an aside, I had been told by a fellow attendee about 6 months ago at Tawfik Hamid’s presentation at EPP, that in the U.S., few interagency meetings on Homeland Security policy or operations occur without a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups in attendance. We hoped that might just be someone’s selective experience, but realized it might be the trend at least. Yesterday, I heard an identical statement about meetings with ministry officials in the UK, again specific to meetings on issues of terrorism, Islamisation and national security - that representatives of Islamist organizations are usually in attendance. )

This is what being colonized feels like, for both the UK and the US.

Congressional hearings are now mandatory, given Rosett’s research: the Hesham Islam scandal, like so many of the apparent infiltration scandals besetting this administration, shows how “political correctness” towards Islamists has eliminated any confidence in background investigations for sensitive jobs. The question isn’t whether this Hashem Islam security risk is England’s responsibility, but rather how far this scandal really spreads. We know similar problems are throughout the government, but given England’s close ties to General Dynamics and other primary military weapons system suppliers, should the possibility of contractor infiltration also be addressed?

This isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue - the problem occurred when both parties were in power. On enabling infiltration, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference that I can tell.

And now, Rosett’s research:

[...]

Who’s right? A request to the Defense Department press office to interview Coughlin runs straight into a brick wall. A press officer says that under terms of his not-quite-expired contract, Coughlin is “prohibited from speaking to the media.”

Hesham Islam appears to be under no such constraints. He gave an interview last year to ABC News, in which he talked about the hardships of being a Muslim in the military, saying that “Since 9/11, I no longer have a land line. I only work with my cell phone, because I got a lot of hate messages on the phone.”

For this article, however, Islam - according to a spokesman - was “not interested in an interview.” Nor would England’s office provide anyone willing to answer any detailed questions about Hesham Islam for direct attribution. Instead, after some discussion, an arrangement was finally offered in which a “Pentagon spokesman” would field questions, forward them to Islam, and relay any replies.

For more information, the spokesman recommended a profile of Islam, released October 15, 2007 by the Armed Forces Press Service under the headline: “Senior Advisor to Deputy Secretary Focuses on Relationship Building.” Still available on the Defense web site, the article includes an interview with Islam, some of the praise from England quoted above, and a photo of Islam, flashing a tight smile, seated in his shirtsleeves at his Pentagon desk, next to a bulletin board decked with diplomatic invitations.

But this Pentagon-endorsed profile raises more questions than it answers. It begins: “If Hesham Islam’s life story was translated into a screenplay - and it’s got all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster - the director would be hard-pressed to come up with a more compelling chain of events landing him as a top adviser to the deputy defense secretary.”

As told by Islam to the reporter, “The movie would open with Islam as a young boy growing up in Cairo, Egypt, huddling in terror as Israeli bombs came raining down, demolishing much of the building around him and his family.”

There’s one problem with this scene. As far as I have been able to discover, Israel during Hesham Islam’s entire lifetime has never bombed Cairo. Asked to explain this, the Pentagon spokesman duly conferred with Islam, and relayed to me by phone that Islam says this building-wrecking bombing raid took place during the 1967 Six-Day War. But as for details that might substantiate the when and where in Cairo of this graphic scene, Islam “Doesn’t remember. He was seven years old.”

It is of course possible that Islam was privy to a piece of history with which expert historians on the region are not acquainted. But if this tale is based solely on the unsubstantiated impressions of Islam as a seven-year-old, then what is it doing on the U.S. Defense Department website? Queries I have made to a number of experts in Tel Aviv, the U.S., and Cairo itself all get the same reply: It didn’t happen. According to Michael Oren, author of the extensively researched Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Israel during the Six-Day War struck the Cairo airport, but “Israel did not bomb any residential areas of Cairo.”

The profile continues: “Next would be the scene of the teenager who moves to Iraq when his Egyptian naval officer father is transferred to help establish the Arabian Gulf naval academy Islam would later attend.”

That family move to Iraq came as Saddam Hussein was consolidating his Baathist rule, though neither the Pentagon profile nor Hesham Islam’s Pentagon biography any makes mention of that context. In answer to questions, the Pentagon spokesman says Islam’s father was invited to Iraq by Saddam Hussein, but the spokesman doesn’t know when: “It was in time frame.” Surely with Pentagon background checks, more exact information would be easily available? “It’s available,” says the spokesman, but “I don’t have his C.V. kind of thing.”

The profile goes on to describe young Hesham Islam as a “merchant mariner adrift for three days in the Arabian Sea after an Iranian torpedo sunk his 16,000-ton cargo ship, drowning all but Islam and four of his crewmates.”

That sounds memorable. But after more than a week of my repeated requests made by phone and e-mail, the Pentagon spokesman - despite being presumably in touch with Islam himself - was either unable or unwilling to provide such basic information as the name of the ship, or the date of its sinking. He just kept saying he was “looking into it.” But no answers.

Before I began the marathon requests for specific information, the spokesman had speculated earlier, based on conversations with Islam, that the ship might have been called the Ibn Khaldoon, which might have been registered to the Iraqi merchant marine, and might have sunk sometime in 1979. A check with the U.K.-based Lloyd’s Register turns up two cargo ships registered in Iraq during that time and under that name, but no record that either was ever sunk, either in the 1970s, the 1980s, or beyond. One is still in service; the other was broken up - and not by a torpedo - only a few years ago.

As for records of any incident fitting the generic description of a 16,000-ton cargo ship, under any flag, torpedoed by the Iranians and sunk in the Arabian Sea before Islam immigrated to the U.S. sometime in 1980 (the Pentagon spokesman can’t or won’t say exactly when in 1980), after searching news archives, shipping records, and consulting a number of naval historians, I have yet to come across anything that corroborates Islam’s Iranian-torpedo-in-the-Arabian-Sea story. There were ships sunk by the Iranians in 1980, as the Iran-Iraq war broke out - but that was happening in the Gulf, around the Shatt-al-Arab, on the other side of the Straits of Hormuz, hundreds of miles from the Arabian Sea.

It is of course possible that this torpedoing, ship sinking, and rescue took place exactly as described in the Defense profile. But having showcased the scene for public consumption, why won’t Gordon England’s office provide basic factual information that could confirm this story? Does Hesham Islam not remember that, either? Does no one at Defense have it on file?

In 1980, according to the profile, Islam immigrated to the U.S. to get married, being suddenly love-smitten after receiving a photo of an American pen pal with whom he had been corresponding sight-unseen for more than three years. For the next five years he worked in what the spokesman describes as the “food services” industry. In 1985 he joined the Navy as an electronics technician in the submarine service. According to his Pentagon biography, he went on to serve on a number of ships, in largely technical and operational posts, before hooking up with Gordon England and finally arriving at his current job in the Pentagon.

So, what qualifies Islam to serve as an adviser to whom Gordon England listens all the time, and whose advice England takes? According to Kevin Wensing, England’s pubic-affairs aide: “Mr. Islam brings 20 years of experience in the U.S. Navy and international relations to his current assignment.”

This includes an M.A. in national-security affairs, awarded in 1992 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. For this degree, Islam wrote a 139-page thesis about the Middle East, entitled “Roots of Regional Ambition.” In it, he devoted dozens of pages to lambasting Israel, and the influence of American Jews on U.S. politics. He deplored “Israeli activities which have detrimentally affected U.S. objectives but which have continued with impunity.” He argued that U.S. support for Israel “has negatively affected the attainment of U.S. objectives in the Middle East.” He blamed the influence of American Jews on U.S. policy for a host of ills, ranging from Arab “retaliation” against Americans, to jobs lost overseas, to hampering sales of “defensive arms to friendly Arab states.”

Whether Gordon England (or Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for that matter) considers such views a relevant qualification for Islam’s current duties is unclear. But what’s emerging at the Pentagon is a landscape in which Stephen Coughlin’s insistence on crafting doctrine based not on politically correct assumptions, but on facts, is apparently deemed a bridge too far. Meanwhile, from the office of Deputy Secretary England, Hesham Islam continues his bridge building. The question isn’t just whom to believe, but who’s running this show?