Here’s some interesting information about the pro-terror Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a stunningly biased “academic journal” that seems legitimate until you start to read their virulent propaganda. Turns out it’s run by a “non-profit” group called the Council for the National Interest Foundation, with numerous links to Islamic extremists: Council for Islamist Interests.

Dr. Laura Drake is another extremist linked to CNIF/CNI. In 1993 and 1994, she served as director of research at CNI. By 1998, she was director of The United Association for Studies and Research, described by law enforcement as “the political command of Hamas in the United States.” Speaking in December 2002 at the ICNA-MAS Annual Convention in Chicago, IL, Drake voiced her feelings about Israelis: “So now the occupiers are whining to the U.S. that they are being hit back, that they are getting burned once in a while, that the settlers are being set aflame. Let them burn I say, let them burn.” Such disturbing rhetoric from a former CNI employee is hardly unusual. For two decades, CNI’s founders have run a subversive, ideological campaign under the shroud of an academic journal called the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA).

In the 1990s, WRMEA acted as CNI’s mouthpiece by publishing numerous CNI articles and newsletters. The journal even shared the same address as CNI for a number of years. CNI’s founders, Richard Curtiss (a career Foreign Service officer in the Arab world) and Andrew Killgore (a former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar), serve as the executive editor and publisher, respectively, of WRMEA. Self-described “outspoken Arabists,” the pair of former diplomats has frequently printed incendiary propaganda. For example, Mr. Killgore makes light of Hezbollah terrorism in a July/August 2004 WRMEA article, stating that “the ‘terrorism’ of which Syria is ‘guilty’ is giving aid to Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group which successfully fought Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.” And a 1997 article by Mr. Curtiss blasts the jailing of Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook as the “American Dreyfus Affair.”

Despite all of the aforementioned extremism, CNIF and CNI still receive some degree of legitimacy and support on the far Left. Both organizations continue to sponsor public hearings on Capitol Hill and attract big-name speakers such as presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Just this week, CNIF placed an ad in USA Today calling on its readers to “support a balanced Middle East policy.” Apparently, CNIF and CNI believe that coddling terror is the way to achieve such balance.