Conspiracy theories promoted by Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson, Michael Savage, and Walid Shoebat (oh, and Jim Hoft, of course) UPDATE: and Glenn Beck
A couple of days ago I noted Pamela Geller’s promotion of a story at Frontpage by a certain Daniel Greenfield concerning Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, the Saudi student who was injured in the Boston attack. I added it as an update simply to log how low Geller and her allies would go, given that the story was based on a wilful and flagrant misrepresentation of Alharbi’s Facebook profile – Alharbi had just been cleared of any involvement, so one would have thought that would be the end of it.
Apparently not, thanks to Steve Emerson; WorldNetDaily reports:
“I just learned from my own sources that he is now going to be deported on national security grounds next Tuesday, which is very unusual,” Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism told Sean Hannity of Fox News Wednesday night.
The Reuters news agency reported President Barack Obama met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Wednesday, noting “the meeting was not on Obama’s public schedule.”
After that meeting was mentioned, Emerson told Hannity, “That’s very interesting because this is the way things are done with Saudi Arabia. You don’t arrest their citizens. You deport them, because they don’t want them to be embarrassed and that’s the way we appease them.”
The obvious implication is that Alharbi was indeed involved in the attack, and that Obama is seeking to protect a terrorist from facing justice. How this would be achieved without anyone blabbing about the conspiracy is – as ever – never explained, but Emerson’s story has since been debunked; according to The Hill (H/T: LGF)
Administration officials told The Hill on Thursday that news reports about the student injured in the bombing are confusing him with another student from Saudi Arabia who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for violating his visa.
The first Saudi student is not a suspect in the Boston bombings but was hospitalized after the attack and questioned. Authorities also searched his apartment in Revere, a suburb of Boston.
In the meantime, Geller has predictably thundered that “American People Must Demand the Full Story”, while Aaron Klein bashed out a second piece for WorldNetDaily, with input from veteran bandwagon-jumper Walid Shoebat. Terry Krepel notes:
…the guy shares a last name with “al-Qaida operatives.” Not that the guy is an Al Qaeda operative, not that his family members are Al Qaeda operatives — only that he shares a last name with them.
It’s not until the ninth paragraph that Klein gets around to admitting that “it is not clear whether the Alharbi questioned as part of the marathon probe is a member of the well-known Saudi clan.”
…Further, it appears Klein is basing his article on something published by Walid Shoebat, who even more explicitly ties Alharbi to “Al-Qaeda terrorists” based solely on his last name.
Shoebat also outlined his conspiracy on the radio, in conversation with Michael Savage (this guy); Alternet notes:
…Savage invited a self-proclaimed “ex-PLO terrorist” named Walid Shoebat onto his April 16 show. For a full hour, Shoebat outlined the key players, from the Obama administration to Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia to longtime Hillary Clinton assistant Huma Abedin to the CIA, FBI, US military, liberals and gay activists, all united in a conspiracy to hide the true Saudi identity of the bomber, pin the blame on a more convenient target, and advance the creeping Islamicization of America.
Savage urged Shoebat along at each lurid twist and turn, heaping layers of anti-Muslim vitriol atop his guest’s bizarre diatribes.
Another character touting Shoebat is Accuracy in Media award-winner Jim Hoft, who is very much the Ed Wood of Wingnut commentators. Hoft writes at his Gateway Pundit site:
Tonight Steven Emerson told Sean Hannity that the non-suspect Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi is being deported back to the Saudi Kingdom.
Barack Obama met with the Saudi foreign minister today. It was not on public schedule.
UPDATE: Shoebat Foundation reported that ali Alharbi had links to several Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Hoft also has a contribution of his own, in the form of a photo taken of Albarbi at a picnic with about 25 other Saudis. One of these has a green-tinted Guy Fawkes mask perked on his head, which Hoft notes darkly is “an Anonymous mask”.
Shoebat regularly trades on his Arabic background, which he uses to compensate for the fact that in fact he has no special knowledge and no real insight; I previously discussed his attacks on Huma Abedin here (Shoebat has also claimed to have had an inside track on the origin of the Innocence of Muslims YouTube video, and he has gone so far as to claim that his Arabic skills have shown that we should re-write the Bible in order to discern the prediction of a “Muslim Anti-Christ”).
In 2010, Emerson claimed to have “shocking revelations” about Faisel Rauf – that turned out to be a dud, too.
UPDATE: It goes on – Right Wing Watch now notes (19 April):
Near the end of today’s radio broadcast, Glenn Beck declared that the cover-up of the Saudi link to the Boston Marathon bombing makes this the second most important thing (behind 9/11) that he has ever covered in his broadcasting career….
Beck then went on to send a semi-coded message to those in the upper level of the government warning that they had better come clean about this Saudi national because The Blaze has information that reveals that he “is a very bad, bad, bad man” which will be revealed on Monday.
Beck’s claims have also been endorsed by David Reaboi, who is sidekick to Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy. Noting the RWW post, Reaboi writes on Twitter:
Lookie-lookie: Stalinist jerks at @RightWingWatch publicizing Beck’s ICE scoop. Boy, Monday’s gonna be fun!
UPDATE 2: Shoebat continues, with an “exclusive” translation from Saudi media:
“Michelle Obama visited the two injured Saudis Abdulrahman Ali Essa Al-Salimi Al-Harbi and Nura Khalid Saleh Al-Ajjaji to check on their medical conditions.”
…Now, contrarians to those with concerns about this visit will likely say that the first lady was simply paying visits to all the victims in the hospital, of which Alharbi was one and had been cleared two days earlier.
In light of recent reports that Alharbi was scheduled for deportation on ‘national security grounds’, the first lady’s visit takes on much added significance if those reports are true.
…DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano… actually never really answered the question [of Alharbi’s deportation]; she just got rankled and blew it off.
Just because the Obamas were visiting all the injured and the deportation story has fallen apart doesn’t mean that Michelle Obama didn’t visit him as part of some sort of conspiracy! Naturally, WND and the Blaze have picked up the story.
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