On March 6, 2007 the St. Petersburg Times published a thoroughly erroneous and extremely biased front page story concerning the Intelligence Summit. This is an annual conference run by my charity, the Intelligence and Homeland Security Educational Center (IHEC). The Times reporting about IHEC contains so many errors, omissions and ethical breaches that I suspect people will be using it as a teaching tool in journalism schools in years to come.
In the first place, our new IHEC organization has NEVER called itself "Holocaust" anything, as the Times charges. The "About" tab at www.intelligencesummit.org, informs the public that IHEC is a 501c3 entity FORMERLY called The International Holocaust Education Center now known as the Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center to reflect our change of focus: "Originally incorporated as the International Holocaust Education Center, after 9/11 IHEC rapidly expanded its educational mission from fighting racism to fighting terrorism, and is now known as the Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center."
Since the change of the board in 2005, we have always published this formal legal disclaimer so that the public should no longer consider IHEC as a Holocaust related charity. There is no way any member of the public could be confused or misled. Our computer records show that the Times reporter in fact read this on-line disclaimer page twice on our website. It was a serious breach of journalism ethics not to mention it even once in her story. We have never used the old Holocaust name in any of our publications, even in our tax returns, or trademark applications. The St. Petersburg Times never bothered to return the phone calls from our legal counsel, and shaded facts to fit their story line.
For example, the Times reporter falsely represented to several of the old IHEC board members that they were still on the new IHEC board (which meant they would have continued legal exposure.) All the signed documents in Tallahassee, which she claimed to have reviewed, show that the board changes were made effective back in 2005. We suspect she cherry picked an unsigned computer generated form to mislead her interview subjects and provoke angry reactions.
The Times severely attacked our reputation as a respected intelligence forum. Our website recently surpassed Jane's as the most widely read source of intelligence news in the world. The Times failed to disclose that their principal source of criticism, Ms. Victoria Toensing, had recently been humiliated in the Washington press by Brent Budowsky, one of our IHEC advisory board members. Mr. Budowsky, acting as a private individual, publicly accused Toensing of trying to taint the jury pool in the Plame spy case by seriously misstating the Agent Identity Act. Since Mr. Budowsky co-authored that legislation, his authoritative statements seriously undercut Ms. Toensing's credibility. The Times should have disclosed Ms. Toensing's personal conflict of interest with one of our advisory board members in their story.
Ms. Toensig claims that this is "not a mainstream conference with recognized names in the field." It is a matter of public record that our advisory board has included two former heads of CIA, the head of British Joint Intelligence, senior officials of the Mossad, the former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, the former director of the Indian Counter Intelligence Service, generals of the US Army and Air Force intelligence services, not to mention our academic experts. They are, we submit, reasonably qualified to speak about the intelligence community.
The Times has nearly every fact in this story wrong. They said that our Intelligence Summit falsely claimed the Konica Minolta company as one of our sponsors. In fact, we would like to thank the Konica-Minolta company for graciously loaning us the large printing, copying and collating machine which we are using to produce the program and other documents for the Intelligence Summit. If the Times ever bothered to show up at the conference before running their smear story, we would have let them take a picture of it.
The Times did not bother with thorough fact checking and rushed this brutally defamatory story into print because of a special deadline. Their reporter knew (because I told her) that on Wedsnday March 7, the Intelligence Summit was going to make public a major expose on Sami Al Arian. For many years while the St. Petersburg Times defended Al Arian, he and his friends were operating a stolen car ring, smuggling vehicles from Tampa Bay to Iraq for car bombs to kill American soldiers or to be sold for cash to help fund terrorism.
The Times should have disclosed to the public that their other principal source quoted for this story, Nihad Awad, was the partner of Sami Al Arian. Both men founded the IAP, which was closed down for being a front for the Hamas terrorist group. (www.AmericAnsagainstHate.org/cw/profiles_cw.php).
It is clear that the Times has a hidden agenda. They are consistently on the side of the Islamic extremists. IHEC and the Intelligence Summit stand proudly on the side of the Islamic reformers. Our charity funded and assisted a new organization to bring together all of the major Islamic reform scholars and spokespersons. Their "St. Petersburg Declaration" issued on Monday, March 5, is an inspiring example to the more than thirty million Muslims around the world who followed the television coverage of our Islamic Summit.
The St. Petersburg Times never read this historic Declaration because they never even bothered to show up until after the Islamic session had concluded. Instead the Times just took Mr. Awad's word that our Islamic speakers "promote anti-Muslim bigotry and hatred." The other members of the press who were here, from the Wall Street Journal to CNN, know what a sad and cruel slander the Times has printed against these fine Muslim leaders, many of whom ignored explicit death threats to speak out against terrorism.
I warned my board that if we moved our Intelligence Summit from Washington to St. Petersburg that we should expect to get attacked by the St. Petersburg Times. In 2002, the Times was extremely critical of me after I sued Sami Al Arian and exposed his terrorist ties. Shortly afterwards, the Times apologized over the phone for their many errors, but not in writing, This time, I must insist that the St. Petersburg Times print my response, and have their ombudsman investigate both instances.
John Loftus,
President, IHEC
Host of the Intelligence Summit and the Secular Islam Summit.