EMET To Give “Speaker of Truth Award” to Reza Kahlili

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Richard Bartholomew

From Sarah Stern’s Endowment for Middle East Truth:

Rays of Light In the Darkness Dinner
Wednesday June 19, 2013

Washington, DC
EMET is proud to bestow the Speaker of Truth Award to honor a courageous defender of truth, Reza Kahlili, a former CIA operative in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). He is the author of the award-winning book, A Time to Betray.

Bret Stephens will also receive the distinguished Speaker of Truth Award. Mr. Stephens is the Deputy Editor of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. In addition, Mr. Stephens writes the Journal’s “Global View” column on foreign affairs.

The words “Reza Kahlili” and “Truth” do not fit well together at the best of times; in the context of an “award”, the word  association becomes simply ludicrous.

Kahlili, as I’ve noted previously, writes for WorldNetDaily, and he claims to be the continuing recipient of secret information from inside the regime. However, his claims are so extravagant that Anatoliy Golitsyn would blush: these include the awful disclosures that Iran is in the process of weaponizing smallpox and liaising with al-Qaeda to attack France and Germany.

According to a 2010 Washington Post review of his book, Kahlili did have some association with the CIA while in Iran in the 1980s, but he appears to have exaggerated his significance, and there’s no explanation as to how he continues to receive highly-sensitive information, which he chooses shares with WND rather than a credible news source. However, Kahlili’s stream of revelations has made him a fixture on the Conservative speaker circuit, and the obligatory conversion to Christianity means he now also has a religious audience.

However, Kahlili – who only ever appears in public wearing a medical mask – has declined to accept the award in person; according to an announcement:

The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) regrets to announce that due to heightened security concerns, Reza Kahlili – in consultation with EMET – has determined that he will be unable to attend in person to receive his Speaker of the Truth Award at the EMET Rays of Light in the Darkness dinner on June 19th in Washington, D.C.

This unfortunate situation is yet another reminder of the reality of the threat posed by the Iranian regime against those who have the courage speak out against their tyranny.

Naturally, we are not given any actual details of the supposed “heightened security concerns”

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