Clare M. Lopez | |
|---|---|
 Lopez in 2017 | |
| Born | 1953 (age 71–72) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Notre Dame College (BA) Maxwell School of Syracuse University (MA) |
| Occupation | National security analyst |
Clare M. Lopez (born 1953) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who has served as Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy. [1] [2] She has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist by HuffPost and other media outlets. [3] [4] [5]
Lopez received a Bachelor of Arts in communications and French from Notre Dame College, and a Master of Arts 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, and has gained 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), [3] where she became 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] According to Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative, 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 appeared in the documentaries The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America in 2008, [7] and Iranium in 2011. [12] She was a co-author of the CSP's Team B II report Shariah: The Threat To America in 2010, [13] [14] and has written for the news websites Breitbart News and WorldNetDaily . [3] In 2015, she was profiled as one of the twelve most "hardline anti-Muslim women activists" in America by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [1] She was an advisor to the Ted Cruz presidential campaign for national security in 2016, [5] [15] [16] 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." [17] Trump also cited her work to support his proposed Muslim immigration ban. [3] [4]
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Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is an American defense policy analyst and founder of the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He founded the CSP in 1988, serving as its president until 2023, and thereafter as executive chairman. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the federal government in multiple posts, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy from 1983 to 1987, and seven months as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan administration. He was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1987. In later years, he has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist.
Dinesh Joseph D'Souza is an American right-wing political commentator, conspiracy theorist, author and filmmaker. He has made several financially successful films, and written over a dozen books, several of them New York Times best-sellers.
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.
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 since January 1, 2023, 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 political advisor, 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. 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.
Michael Thomas Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 24th U.S. national security advisor for the first 22 days of the first Trump administration. He resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's military career included a key role in shaping U.S. counterterrorism strategy and dismantling insurgent networks in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and he was given numerous combat arms, conventional, and special operations senior intelligence assignments. He became the 18th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in July 2012 until his forced retirement from the military in August 2014. During his tenure he gave a lecture on leadership at the Moscow headquarters of the Russian military intelligence directorate GRU, the first American official to be admitted entry to the headquarters.
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, also referred to as 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. The group has been characterized by some media outlets as anti-Muslim.
Iranium is a 2011 documentary film by director Alex Traiman, Written and Distributed by Clarion Fund.
Robert James Woolsey Jr. is an American political appointee who has served in various senior positions. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency as Director of Central Intelligence from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995. He held a variety of government positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including as United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, and was involved in treaty negotiations with the Soviet Union for five years in the 1980s. His career also included time as a professional lawyer, venture capitalist and investor in the private sector.
Avril Danica Haines is an American lawyer currently serving as the director of national intelligence in the Biden administration. She is the first woman to serve in this role. Haines previously was 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 was Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs in the Office of White House Counsel.
Frank Edward Wuco is a United States government official and former conservative talk radio host. He served in multiple positions in the first 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent and counterterrorism activist who has provided training seminars for law enforcement and local elected officials across the United States. Having been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, his seminars have been controversial and protested against by advocacy groups. He ran the seminars with the organization Understanding the Threat until the group closed down in 2023.
Shariah: The Threat To America: An Exercise In Competitive Analysis is a 2010 book published by the Center for Security Policy (CSP).
Ann Corcoran is an American conservative 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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