According to a calendar listing at the Your QFM website, disgraced FBI agent turned anti-Muslim activist John Guandolo will speak about “Understanding the Threat”at the Bagley High School on October 18, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
QFM is "a Christian radio station licensed to Fosston, Minnesota with its main studio in Grand Forks, North Dakota and additional studios in Bemidji, Minnesota," according to Wikipedia. It's owned by Pine to Prairie Broadcasting (FCC ownership data here, here, and here).
While this event does not appear to be hosted by the station, it has hosted other anti-Islam speakers in the past, such as Islamophobic holy huckster Usama Dakdok's swings through Grand Fork and Northern Minnesota in 2015.
The calendar posting lists Tammy Godwin as the contact person (Godwin was responsible for asking Usama Dakdok to Bagley for speaking engagements in 2013 and 2014).
Here's the description of the event from the Your QFM calendar:
Suggested donation of $5 at the door.
John Guandolo’s website is www.understandingthethreat.com
I suggest you go to his website and click on “About John Guandolo” to access a pdf with 2 pages of information about John and his organization, an organization dedicated to providing strategic and operational threat-focused consultation, education, and training for federal, state and local leadership and agencies, and designing strategies at all levels of the community to defeat the enemy: Islam and the Jihadi Movement in the U.S.UTT is the only organization in America which is briefing leadership at the national, state and local levels on the severity and dangers of the jihadi network here, providing training to law enforcement detailing the strategies and modus operandi of the jihadis (“terrorists”) while providing specific investigative guidance showing them how to locate and prosecute terrorists, (organizations and individuals) and working at the state level to create strategies to dismantle these networks.
John’s presentation will review the threat and the jihadi network in the U.S. and Minnesota, but will focus on the cooperation between the hard-left/Marxist Movement and the Jihadi Movement in the U.S. and practical actions citizens can take to defend their communities and take back ground.
County seat of Clearwater County, Minnesota, Bagley was home to 1,392 people at the time of the 2010 U.S. Census. Residents are represented by state representative Steve Green, R-Fosston, and state senator Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook, in the Minnesota legislature--and by MN07 Congressman Collin Peterson in the U.S. House of Representatives.
About John Guandolo
In January, we reported about an earlier Guandolo visit to Minnesota in Guandolo talk persuades some guys Black Lives Matter movement ruled by Muslim Brotherhood. Some useful background:
A former FBI agent, Guandolo shares his version of his bio on his website's About page. Elsewhere, Guandolo's critics paint a different picture. Reporting in Salon in 2014, Josh Glasstetter of the Southern Poverty Law wrote:
[Guandolo] regularly attacks the U.S. government, claims that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is a secret Muslim agent for the Saudi government and says that American Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”
Guandolo joined the bureau’s Counterterrorism Division in the wake of 9/11, but by 2005 he was posing as a driver for a “star witness” in the corruption case of former Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA). He made “inappropriate sexual advances” to that witness and soon was having an “intimate relationship…that he thought could damage an investigation.” He also unsuccessfully solicited the witness for a $75,000 donation to an organization he supported and carried on extramarital affairs with female FBI agents.
Guandolo’s actions risked tanking the government’s prosecution of Jefferson, and he faced an investigation by the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Though he later expressed “deep remorse” for his actions, he resigned from the bureau in December, 2008, ahead of an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility. Later that month, he became a full-time anti-Muslim activist and conspiracy theorist –– all under the guise of being a counterterrorism expert.
According to his resume, Guandolo became Vice President of the Strategic Engagement Group in December, 2008. He describes the tiny consultancy as the “only company in the United States aimed at identifying potential threats to homeland security.” This would come as a shock to the many U.S.-based consultancies and contractors who actually do this work, often for many millions of dollars – e.g.Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Stratfor, Ashcroft Group. But that’s the thing about Guandolo, he actually believes that only he and a small cadre of allies – including the anti-Muslim ACT! For America, whose Thin Blue Line project he helped launch – understand geopolitics, terrorism and Islam.
In Guandolo’s mind, the U.S. government has already been infiltrated by the enemy –– Muslims. He raised eyebrows –– and was widely mocked –– a year ago with wild claimsabout John Brennan, who was later confirmed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Speaking on a far-right online radio show, heclaimed that Brennan had “interwoven his life professionally and personally with individuals that we know are terrorist” and given them access to top government officials. What’s more, he claimed Brennan “brought known Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders into the government and into advisory positions.”
Why would Brennan do such things? Guandolo knows. It’s because Brennan was the target of a successful “counterintelligence operation against him” in Saudi Arabia and converted to “Islam when he served in an official capacity” there. And the conspiracy doesn’t stop there. Guandolo claimed a couple weeks later that President Obama had “made a significant effort to protect known members of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood inside this government.” . . .
The SPLC also looks at Guandolo here and here, while Right Wing Watch has a John Guandolo category on its webpage. The Washington Post reports that author David Shipler has debunked the central tenet of Guandolo's conspiracy theory in hisbook "Freedom of Speech: Mightier in Than the Sword":
A compelling chapter depicts the community of self-appointed guardians who make a business of issuing impassioned, McCarthy-like warnings about Islamist conspiracies to take over the United States. Shipler introduces us to Frank Gaffney Jr. of the Center for Security Policy; John Guandolo, a former FBI agent; and Steven Emerson, who runs the Investigative Project on Terrorism Web site. All maintain that the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in an international conspiracy, through a variety of front organizations, to insinuate itself into American life and achieve Islamist world domination. Shipler attends an all-day training session run by Guandolo on how to advance these anti-Muslim views in the media, and he tracks down the sources these so-called experts rely upon to back up their overheated claims.
He finds that the central document underlying most of the claims is a 15-page “explanatory memo” found in an FBI search of an Annandale, Va., home in 2004. Signed by Mohamed Akram, a member of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood, it describes the Brotherhood’s goal as “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within” and includes a list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” naming some of the most well-established, mainstream Muslim groups in the United States. Gaffney calls it “the Rosetta stone for the Muslim Brotherhood.” Shipler shows that in fact the document is nothing more than a thought piece drafted by a single individual in the early 1990s, and that there is no evidence it was ever considered, much less adopted, by the Muslim Brotherhood or anyone else. Shipler’s research shows that other supposed evidence of the grand Islamist conspiracy is similarly speculative.
This chapter, much like the book as a whole, illustrates the freedom of speech at work. Gaffney, Guandolo and Emerson are, of course, exercising their First Amendment rights, but in doing so they pose a real threat to the political freedoms of others, as they tar with unjustified suspicion Muslim civic organizations that are engaged in the promotion of civil liberties, religious freedom and Muslim identity, not terrorism. Shipler’s response is not to call for the suppression of the conspiracy theorists’ speech, but simply to demonstrate that their claims are vastly exaggerated and unsubstantiated. In short, he answers their speech with his speech. An objective reader cannot help but come away with a better understanding of the truth. This is the freedom of speech at its best.
A 2015 Guandolo talk in Little Falls
The seminar at Cragun's isn't the first time Guandolo has spoken in Greater Minnesota. Columnist Tom West of the Morrison County Record wrote:
. . . about a month ago, another speaker showed up in Morrison County. His appearance was by invitation only (meaning only those on the approved list were told the location), but about 70 people showed up at a senior center to hear what he had to say.
I was told that the reason for the secrecy was because the organizers were afraid that CAIR would attempt to disrupt the meeting.
The speaker was John Guandolo. If one runs a Google search on him, what one finds is interesting. Guandolo is a former FBI agent, and he is well connected to a group that includes a retired lieutenant general, a retired admiral, a former U.S. ambassador and a number of former CIA analysts.
Guandolo believes that the Muslim Brotherhood through various front organizations is working to overthrow the U.S. government from within and replace it with an Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law.
That’s quite a bold statement, but Guandolo says don’t believe what he says, just listen to what U.S. Islamic leaders are saying. He has written a book, “Raising a Jihadi Generation,” which contains numerous excerpts from the documents of U.S. Islamic leaders to confirm his position. Many of the documents were seized during FBI investigations. . . .
Little Falls resident Will Hecht responded to West's column with Column on Islamic extremism was contemptuous. Hecht concluded his commentary by noting:
. . . The writer’s information source, John Guandolo? He’s a “former” FBI agent because he resigned from the FBI after it became known that, while married, he had inappropriate sexual relationships with female agents and with a confidential source witness during a federal government corruption investigation. He now cruises the anti-terrorism speaker network looking for secret meetings and gullible Islamophobic folks.
The writer owns a bully pulpit from which is displayed editorial sloppiness that is cause for concern in this community. Even where it is legal to speak contemptuously about a religion, is it wise? Does it encourage intolerance? Is it compassionate? Should society encourage or oppose it? If we are going to move forward as a society, we must do all that we can to avoid denigrating the dignity of another human being.
We found no evidence that Guandolo's most recent [the one in January] visit was promoted to the general public--and so we'll have reserve judgement as to whether he actually linked Black Lives Matter to terrorism.
Critical thinking, hearsay, and policy
We believe Americans can say pretty much anything that we want--but shouldn't expect that our freedom from censorship includes freedom from criticism, ie, others' freedom to speak their minds. . . .
Photo: John Guandolo.
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Thank you for this great reporting.
Posted by: Cynthia White | Oct 13, 2016 at 04:03 PM