In 2012, Patrick Poole pieced together a huge story of how Pakistan’s spy service, the ISI, had successfully run an influence operation inside the United States for decades.  The FBI obtained a conviction against one of the principles, one Ghulam Nabi Fai, whom the ISI recruited while he was head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s first American branch, the Muslim Students Association of the US and Canada.  For the next two decades, the ISI helped him funnel money to DC leaders in order to buy attention and influence in Congress.

The mainstream press did their best to hide the story.  One reason?  Fai had not only obtained access to the halls of government power, he had convinced the media to allow him to write as if he were a dispassionate journalist instead of a foreign spy.  As Poole put it:

Another possible reason for the media’s lack of attention to the Fai scandal can be seen in Fai’s own biography:

His articles appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times,Plain Dealer, Baltimore Sun, and many other foreign policy journals in the United States and around the world.

It should have been a blockbuster tale.  Fai’s conspirator in Pakistan had proven links to both Osama bin Laden and Pakistan’s nuclear scientists.  That conspirator, Zaheer Ahmad, died suddenly two days after those ties were revealed in print by the Hindustan Times.

Only now is the story getting any attention, as it was revealed that one of Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s advisers was a lobbyist for the ISI’s successful front group in DC.  That group was called the Kashmiri American Council (KAC).  According to the Hindustan Times, again, “The aide, Paul Manafort, was part of the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, which was paid $700,000 by the Kashmiri American Council (KAC) between 1990 and 1995.”

The revelation is timely, as it comes among the debate over whether or not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.  Poole describes the facts that link this most successful Pakistani spy with the Brotherhood:

• He came to the U.S. to study under one of the top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Ismail Faruqi, who founded the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which was identified by U.S. Customs as the hub of terrorism financing in the U.S.
• Fai later served as national president of the Muslim Students Association(MSA), during which time, according to an email cited in the FBI affidavit, he began serving on behalf of his Pakistani ISI masters.
• He then served on the Shura Council for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
• The wife of ISNA’s longtime Secretary General and present Director of Interfaith Outreach Sayyid Syeed was one of the original incorporators of KAC. Syeed had preceded Fai as national president of the MSA.
• According to IRS filings, KAC’s Pakistani intelligence influence operation was launched with a $20,000 loan from the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which owns the property to hundreds of mosques around the country.

If you would like to hear more, Poole gave an interview on the topic as part of a broader discussion of the failure of US government outreach efforts to Islamic radicals.  That interview can be heard here.