Heritage Hosts Birthers, Islamophobes For Benghazi “Accountability” Panel

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Benghazi HeritageA coalition of Islamophobes, birthers, and conspiracy theorists led by a prominent supporter of impeaching President Obama will assemble at the Heritage Foundation this afternoon to discuss the September 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

The event, titled “Benghazi: The Difference It Makes Is Accountability!” will be co-hosted by the Benghazi Accountability Coalition. In a post at National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy, a conservative commentator and former federal prosecutor, identifies himself as the chairman of that new “volunteer organization.”

McCarthy is the author of a new book that seeks to build “the political case” for President Obama's impeachment. The book includes a draft Articles of Impeachment detailing “The Benghazi Fraud.” According to McCarthy, the talking points used by former Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to discuss the terrorist attacks on Sunday morning political talk shows constituted a deliberate effort “to defraud the American people in connection with matters of great public importance, in violation of [President Obama's] duty to execute the laws faithfully and his fiduciary duty to be truthful in his statements to the American people.”

At National Review Online, McCarthy promises that today's forum will “feature some speakers with tremendous insights into the relevant issues about the Benghazi Massacre.” James Jay Carafano, Heritage's vice present of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, will participate, lending the organization's imprimatur to the proceedings. Here are some of those notables who will appear alongside him:

  • Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, who is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the anti-Muslim movement's most paranoid propagandist.” Gaffney was banned from participating at the Conservative Political Action Conference after accusing prominent conservative activist Grover Norquist and former Bush aide Suhail Khan of being Muslim Brotherhood operatives. In October 2008 he claimed that Obama's eligibility to be president was “unresolved,” citing “evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.”
  • Lt. General Thomas G. McInerney, USAF (Ret.), a Fox News military analyst who submitted court documents challenging Obama's eligibility to be president based on the conspiracy theory that he was not born in the United States.
  • Lt. General W.G. “Jerry” Boykin, USA (Ret.), who was criticized by President Bush and the Defense Department for portraying the fight against Islamic extremists as a religious war between a “Christian nation” and the “idol” of Islam. He has also termed Islam “evil” and a “totalitarian way of life.”
  • Clare Lopez, who is a prominent member of Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and the similarly anti-Muslim Clarion Project. Lopez has claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood has “infiltrated and suborned the U.S. government to actively assist... the mission of its grand jihad.” Earlier this month, Fox News contributor Allen West reported that Lopez had emailed him a “very poignant analysis” of Bob Bergdahl's use of Arabic during a White House event with President Obama to announce the return of his son, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl: according to Lopez, “by uttering these words on the grounds of the WH, Bergdahl (the father) sanctified the WH and claimed it for Islam.”
  • Brigitte Gabriel, the founder and CEO of the anti-Islam group ACT! for America, was described by The New York Times as “one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders” who “presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion.”
  • Chris Plante, who is a right-wing talk radio host on Washington, DC's WMAL. Last year he generated the false accusation that President Obama omitted the words “under God” from his recitation of the Gettysburg Address and suggested that the president would not have cut the words “under Allah” if they had appeared in the speech.
  • Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, married Republican activist law partners who have spent decades pushing smears of Democrats in the press. They played a key role in pushing debunked claims that the Obama administration was threatening Benghazi “whistleblowers.”