Clare M. Lopez (born 1953) [1] is an American former CIA officer and Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy. [2] She has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist. [3] [4] [5]
Clare M. Lopez (born 1953) [1] is an American former CIA officer and Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy. [2] She has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist. [3] [4] [5]
Lopez received a BA in communications and French from Notre Dame College, and a MA in international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, before completing Marine Corps Officer Candidates School. [6] She then declined a military commission to instead join the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a career operations officer, gaining deep experience in the Middle East. [6]
During her service she acquired "extensive expertise in counterintelligence, counternarcotics, and counterproliferation issues with a career regional focus on the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans," and "has served in or visited over two dozen nations worldwide, [and] speaks several languages, including Spanish, Bulgarian, French, German, and Russian." [7] Lopez worked for the CIA for two decades before later joining Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy (CSP) [4] as Vice President for Research and Analysis from 2014 to 2020. [8] In the CSP she described her work as "project manager" in the "counterjihad movement". [9]
Lopez has also been vice president of the Intelligence Summit, a senior fellow at the Clarion Project, co-founder of the Iran Policy Committee, [1] professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Senior Scientific Researcher at the Battelle Memorial Institute, a Senior Intelligence Analyst, Subject Matter Expert, and previously produced Technical Threat Assessments for U.S. Embassies at the Department of State. [7]
Lopez has published papers for the Gatestone Institute and the CSP, [10] and given interviews and presentations claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood, which she considers to be a terrorist organization, has "infiltrated the United States government, and that Sharia law is taking hold in American courts." [2] She "believes President Obama and his administration have a 'pattern' of 'enabling' or directly supporting Muslim terrorist groups," and "claims that Obama and Huma Abedin, an aide of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood." [2] She has said that because Obama's father was Muslim, that "de facto makes him [Obama] a Muslim," [1] and that the "Obama administration very clearly has switched sides in the war on terror." [11] Furthermore, she asserts that the Muslim Brotherhood has an "unholy alliance" with the Black Lives Matter movement, that 80% of American mosques promote extremism, and that there are Muslim no-go zones in Minnesota. [2]
Lopez was featured in the documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America in 2008, [7] was a co-author of the CSP "Team B II" report Shariah: The Threat To America in 2010, and she has written for news websites Breitbart News and WorldNetDaily . [4] In 2016 she was an advisor to the Ted Cruz presidential campaign for national security, [5] [12] [13] and was later reportedly being considered for deputy national security advisor to President-elect Donald Trump. [3] [4] [10] According to a Trump adviser, Lopez was considered "one of the intellectual thought leaders about why we have to fight back against radical Islam." [14] Trump also cited her work to support his proposed Muslim immigration ban. [3] [4]
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is an American anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the federal government in multiple posts, including seven months as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan administration.
Michael F. Scheuer, is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. One assignment during his 22-year career was serving as Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999. He also served as Special Advisor to the Chief of Alec Station from September 2001 to November 2004.
Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American writer, founder of Arabs for Israel movement, and is Director of Former Muslims United. Darwish is an outspoken critic of Islam. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described her as an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim activist.
The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is a US far-right, anti-Muslim, Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The founder and former president of the organization was Frank J. Gaffney Jr.. The current president is Tommy Waller, a former US Marine. CSP sometimes operates under its DBA name Secure Freedom. The organization also operates a public counter-jihad campaign and the website counterjihad.com.
Walid Phares is a Lebanese-American politician, scholar, and conservative pundit.
Frederick H. Fleitz, Jr. is a former U.S. government official, serving since January 2022 as Vice Chairman of the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security. He previously served as the Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary of the National Security Council from May through October 2018, during the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Fleitz is a former CIA analyst, and news commentator.
Paul E. Vallely is a retired United States Army major general and former senior military analyst for Fox News.
The post-9/11 period is the time after the September 11 attacks, characterized by heightened suspicion of non-Americans in the United States, increased government efforts to address terrorism, and a more aggressive American foreign policy.
John Owen Brennan is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from March 2013 to January 2017. He served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama, with the title Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President. Previously, he advised Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 election campaign and presidential transition.
Andrew C. McCarthy III is an American lawyer and columnist for National Review. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning a series of attacks against New York City landmarks. He also contributed to the prosecutions of terrorists who bombed United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He resigned from the Justice Department in 2003.
James Aloysius "Ace" Lyons Jr. was an admiral in the United States Navy who served as Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet from 1985 to 1987. He later served as chairman of the Center for Security Policy's Military Committee.
ACT for America, founded in 2007, is a US based advocacy group that stands against what it perceives as "the threat of radical Islam" to Americans. While some media outlets have characterized it as anti-Muslim, the organization disputes this claim.
Iranium is a 2011 documentary film by director Alex Traiman, Written and Distributed by Clarion Fund.
Counter-jihad is a self-titled political current loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and so on linked by beliefs that view Islam not as a religion but as an ideology that constitutes an existential threat to Western civilization. Consequently, counter-jihadists consider all Muslims as a potential threat, especially when they are already living within Western boundaries. Western Muslims accordingly are portrayed as a "fifth column", collectively seeking to destabilize Western nations' identity and values for the benefit of an international Islamic movement intent on the establishment of a caliphate in Western countries. The counter-jihad movement has been variously described as anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, inciting hatred against Muslims, and far-right. Influential figures in the movement include the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the US, and Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson in Europe.
Avril Danica Haines is an American lawyer and senior government official who serves as the director of national intelligence in the Biden administration. She is the first woman to serve in this role. Haines previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Obama administration. Prior to her appointment to the CIA, she served as Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs in the Office of White House Counsel.
Katharine Cornell Gorka is an American national security analyst who served as a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the Trump administration from 2017, and press secretary of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 2019. She is married to Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to the president.
Frank Edward Wuco is a United States government official and former conservative talk radio host. He has served in multiple positions in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Wuco has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories, including through a fictional character who supposedly is a former jihadist who now exposes aspects of Islam-inspired terrorism.
John D. Guandolo is an American former FBI Special Agent and anti-Islam counterterrorism activist who has provided training seminars for law enforcement and local elected officials, and who has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist.
Shariah: The Threat To America: An Exercise In Competitive Analysis is a 2010 book published by the Center for Security Policy. The report, written by "Team B II", is co-authored by William G. Boykin, Harry Edward Soyster, Henry Cooper, Stephen C. Coughlin, Michael Del Rosso, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., John Guandolo, Clare M. Lopez, Andrew C. McCarthy, Patrick Poole, Joseph E. Schmitz, Tom Trento, J. Michael Waller, R. James Woolsey, Brian Kennedy, James "Ace" Lyons, Christine Brim, David Yerushalmi and Diana West.
Ann Corcoran is an American blogger and political activist known for the anti-refugee and anti-Muslim blogs Refugee Resettlement Watch and Fraud, Crooks, and Criminals. She has worked with several far-right organizations and publications.
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