image, below: left is "Keith Davies", on CBS. right is "Walid Shoebat", from a video on his webite
As the New York Times has reported yesterday, three men who spoke Wednesday at a US Air Force Academy conference on terrorism, who have been publicly billing themselves "ex-terrorists", made public speaking appearances vilifying Islam into a professional career and claim they know the real, secret and dark inner nature of Islam because they were once terrorists until they were redeemed by evangelical Christianity, may well have fabricated those "terrorist" backgrounds.
When he's not hanging around, as an ideological prop, being interviewed by John "Apocalypse Now" Hagee about the allegedly satanic nature of Islam, speaking at Hagee's Christians United For Israel conferences, showing up at symposiums organized by people associated with the "Swift Boat" crew or giving spellbinding talks to Christian Zionists about the immanent end of days, Walid Shoebat squeezes in some time, somehow, to show up at US military conferences as a paid expert on terrorism...
Walid Shoebat gets on TV - Fox and CNN mainly, with surprising frequency. He can tell a very, very scary story about the supposed threat of Islam but he and two other associates may have conned major TV networks, print media, many politicians and also the US Air Force about their purported expertise as "terrorism experts"...
Evangelical Christians passing themselves off to the US Air Force as "former terrorists", smearing Islam and managing to get their fraudulent opinions into a report on terrorism written up to present to the Pentagon and members of Congress... and getting paid over $4,000 each in the process ?
[UPDATE: I was gripped by this story once I realized the extent of the possible fraud - "Walid Shoebat" has appeared numerous times over the past several years on Fox and CNN and, along with a woman named Brigette Gabriel, has been a regular fixture as a speaker at numerous conferences with the theme that Islam poses a trascendent threat to America. Shoebat claims to have been a PLO terrorist but in his numerous video appearances he's offered contradictory details about his alleged terrorist past.
I've be posting more momentarily, but I'll say this to start ; "Walid Shoebat" appears to have what appears to be an identical twin living in Newtown, PA and, strangely, that apparent twin of Shoebat's, "Keith Davies", seem to have dropped off the map in late 2005, as a physical entity, just as "Walid Shoebat" was ramping up his anti-Islam public speaking career. Davies maintains a busy Internet life, though, involving website comments that closely track Shoebats opinions about Israel, the Middle East and terrorism.
Credit card donations to the "Walid Shoebat Foundation" show up on customer bills as having gone to "Top Executive Media", an entity that is listed as the printer of a small flood of anti-Islamic propaganda books to have come out in the last several years, and the entity appears to be connected to Keith Davies [though that's far from certain], whose corporate greeting card company name seems to have been "Top Executive Greetings", and Walid Shoebat's website, http://www.shoebat.com is registered to Mr. Davies as well. But, biographical details on either man don't seem to go back any farther than 2001 and traces of Walid Shoebat's existence don't seem to go back further than 2004.
The only visual evidence for Keith Davies' existence is a video clip of a 4 minute appearance of Davies on CBS, sometime between 2002 and 2004, in an interview about Davies' greeting card business. As he appears in the the CBS clip Davies bears an astonishing resemblance to Walid Shoebat.
[pictures coming up momentarily]
Further, the relationship between Shoebat and Davies extends to the point that Davies hosted a video clip of Shoebat on Davies greeting card site.
Over the past few days, critical scrutiny of their professed past histories has been building. As the NYT article notes, the notion that "former terrorists" who claim to in their former lives as "terrorists" to have have killed hundreds of people [mostly with daggers!] and carried out terrorist bombings might be able to fly around the United States freely and hobnob at highly public speaking events seems to strain the bounds of credibility slightly.
The political neutrality of the men in question simply on the basis of their associations - Walid Shoebat, Zachariah Anani and Kamal Saleem are Christian Zionists and could be found together at last year's 2007 pro-apocalypse Christians United For Israel conference. Walid Shoebat is listed as a speaker for Hasbarah and also was a featured speaker at the 2007 "Strategic Perspectives Conference", in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, along with Dr. Chuck Missler, Tim LaHaye, Joseph Farrah and the "Swift Boat Veterans" associated Jerome Corsi. Shoebat also has recently appeared at an April 29th, 2006 Arlington Virginia symposium organized by the "Swift Boat" associated Jeff Epsteinm entitled America's Truth Forum", along with such luminaries as David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes, to discuss such topics as:
The mindset of Islamic terrorism from a reformed PLO terrorist
al Qaeda's plans for future attacks against Americans on US soil including an "American Hiroshima"
"Dhimmitude"� and the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad
Last January 20th, 2007, the Windsor Star featured the reaction of Tom Quiggen to self--described "terrorism expert" Zachariah Anani, who had made some speaking appearances in Canada. Tom Quiggen is "Canada's only court-qualified expert on global jihadism and a former RCMP intelligence and national security expert" and Quiggen stated that in his studied, polite but unequivocal opinion self-proclaimed "former terrrorist" Zachariah Anani's story, about his alleged terrorist background, just isn't credible. In short, Quiggen pegged his professional reputation on the likelihood that Zachariah Anani has been lying about his background. As Quiggen said in the Windsor Star article,
"It appears to be that Mr. Anani is nothing more than an extremist who is trying to create an imaginative history from a contemporary set of fears and stories," said Quiggin. "Mr. Anani's myths that he has built up around himself lack validity on a number of key points...
"His story of having made kills shortly after he joined and having made 223 kills overall is preposterous, given the lack of fighting during most of the time period he claims to have been a fighter," Quiggin said. "He also states he left Lebanon to go to Al-Azhar University at the age of 18, which would mean he went to Egypt in 1976. In other words, according to himself, he left Lebanon within a year of when the fighting actually started."
He also pointed to a story on WorldNetDaily in which Walid Shoebat, another ex-terrorist and friend of Anani, also claims to have killed 223 people, two-thirds of them with daggers.
"What a coincidence," Quiggin said.
Quiggin said Anani's description of himself as a Muslim terrorist also "defies logic" based on the time frame.
"Most the groups involved in the fighting in Lebanon were secular and tended to be extreme leftists or Marxists," he said.
Quiggin said religious-based terrorism as part of the warring in Lebanon didn't begin until after 1979, following the revolution in Iran, the Soviet attack on Afghanistan and the attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni Muslim extremists.
Anani's claim to have survived a beheading attempt is also questionable, said Quiggin.
"This was not a common practice in Lebanon at any time and again it appears as though he is attempting to build up his past mythology by playing on current Iraqi-based fears," Quiggin said.
The affair is quite serious given the apparent weight Air Force Officials involved with appearance of Zachariah Anani, Walid Shoebat and Saleem seemed to place on the supposed authority of the three men. According to the New York Times:
The three men were invited as part of a weeklong conference on terrorism organized by cadets at the academy’s Colorado Springs campus under the auspices of the political science department.
The three will be paid a total of $13,000 for their appearance, some of it from private donors, said Maj. Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for the academy.
The three were invited because "they offered a unique perspective from inside terrorism," Major Ashworth said. The conference is to result in a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials, he added.