On the September 13 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, host Sean Hannity claimed that financier and philanthropist George Soros “gives money to stop the war on terror.” Later in the show, Hannity followed in the footsteps of his fellow FOX News Channel host Brit Hume by providing false cover for House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) recent smear of Soros.
In a teaser for his interview with Bush administration “Drug Czar” John P. Walters, Hannity said, “Coming up next, billionaire George Soros gives money to stop the war on terror. Is he also trying to stop the war on drugs?”
Hannity did not say to whom Soros was giving money to “stop the war on terror”; Hannity may have been referring to accusations made in a July 22 column by Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha in the right-wing online magazine FrontPage. Pipes and Chadha scurrilously accused Soros of helping “impede the war on terror” by funding a new initiative titled Promising Practices Guide: Developing Partnerships Between Law Enforcement and American Muslim, Arab, and Sikh Communities. According to its website, the initiative seeks to build relationships between U.S. law enforcement and the named minority groups in order to “enhance counterterrorism initiatives, protect communities from hate crimes and hate incidents, and help preserve American civil liberties.”
And while Soros has said he opposes President George W. Bush's conduct of the war on terror, he also believes that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was justified. In a June 3 speech, Soros said: "[T]he way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators." However, in a May 17 speech, Soros defended military action in Afghanistan as legitimate, unlike in Iraq: “The invasion of Afghanistan could be justified on the grounds that the Taliban provided bin Laden and Al Qaeda with a home and a training ground.”
Later, during Hannity's interview with Walters, Hannity sought to defend Hastert's smear of Soros:
HANNITY: [H]e [Hastert] sent a letter to Mr. Soros. I don't know. Have you had a chance to read that?
WALTERS: I saw the exchange in the press.
HANNITY: And all that -- and in that letter he said that you [Soros] have funded organizations like the Drug Policy Foundation, the Open Society, and a bunch of other places to decriminalize illegal drug use. That's what he was talking about, right? Referring to?
WALTERS: Yes, and that's true.
Contrary to Hannity and Walter's claims, that's not what Hastert was talking about. As Media Matters for America has documented, while being interviewed by host Chris Wallace on the August 29 edition of FOX Broadcasting Company's FOX News Sunday, Hastert made the comment: “I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where -- if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. ... George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there.”
When Wallace asked if Hastert thought Soros “may be getting money from the drug cartel,” Hastert responded, “I'm saying I don't know where groups -- could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know.” In a letter responding to Soros's complaints, Hastert claimed that by “drug groups,” he meant groups seeking to decriminalize drugs; however, that's not what Hastert said in response to Wallace's specific question about “the drug cartel.” And as journalist and Talking Points Memo blogger Joshua Micah Marshall noted: “Hastert goes on Fox raising questions about the source of Soros's money; and when he's called to account he responds by pointing to groups to which Soros gives his money.”