When Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary saw what appeared to be the penetration of a young boy by Jerry Sandusky in a shower in 2001, he saw evil. He punted when he told head coach Joe Paterno instead of going to police; Paterno knew evil had penetrated his program. He punted too, when he went to Athletic Director Tim Curley and senior vice president Gary Schultz instead of to police. Curley and Schultz punted when Sandusky was let off the hook, a decision endorsed by president Graham Spanier, who essentially sealed the deal.
Each man had his own ‘Mike McQueary’ moment (MMM).
It was a moment of truth during which, individuals came face to face with evil and after which, they chose complicity with that evil over defeating it. With each passing day, those individuals implicated themselves further with their silence. They had chosen Sandusky’s side in one respect; they all had a vested interest in preventing the evil truth from coming out because they were all implicated in suppressing it.
The jig was up in 2011 and Sandusky’s defenders paid a price for not coming clean. It was made steeper by how much time had passed without them doing so. It was made much worse by them being found out instead of coming forward.
The heart of the U.S. Government was penetrated by evil too, beginning in at least 1992, when Abdurahman Alamoudi – a Muslim – began buying influence with both political parties. After Clinton was elected, Alamoudi landed a job with the State Department in 1997 as an Islamic affairs advisor. Based on his professed support for Hamas just a few years earlier, it was a ‘Mike McQueary’ moment for the political establishment.
Another MMM came in October of 2000, when Alamoudi stood on a stage outside the White House and referred to Bill Clinton by name while espousing – through a P.A. system – his support for both Hamas and Hezbollah:
It was as if the Clinton administration’s inaction was a foreshadowing of McQueary’s behavior. Right outside its window, the occupiers of the White House could see a man who had penetrated America’s power centers via the State Department. It’s important to keep in mind that establishment Republicans like Senator John McCain and Speaker John Boehner held seats in the Senate and the House, respectively at the time. Was it an MMM for them too?
In what is believed to be the same year that Alamoudi was cheering Hamas and Hezbollah outside the White House, he was also meeting with George W. Bush and Karl Rove, despite the concerns of intelligence officials, that Alamoudi had ties to Osama bin Laden and the “blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdul-Rahman. This would mean that Bush agreed to meet with a man connected to individuals found to be responsible for both World Trade Center attacks, one of which had already taken place.
At that meeting, Karl Rove was handed a book entitled, The Cultural Atlas of Islam. It was authored by a man identified as a co-founder of two Muslim Brotherhood groups – The International Institute of Islamic Thought and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS). Was the book vetted? If so, it didn’t stop meetings between Bush, Rove, and individuals tied to the Brotherhood, from taking place. ‘Mike McQueary’ moment?
In June of 2001, another individual who would eventually be convicted of charges related to funding terrorism – Sami al-Arian – met with Karl Rove at the White House as part of a 160-member delegation from the American Muslim Council, a group founded by… you guessed it, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was also present. This was after Alamoudi pledged support for Hamas and Hezbollah outside the White House one year earlier. ‘Mike McQueary’ moment?
The Washington Post reported about the multiple warning signs available to the Bush administration prior to AMC’s visit. Vice President Dick Cheney was scheduled to speak to the AMC but backed out after a Jerusalem Post article identified AMC as a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah; this demonstrates that the administration was not nearly as ignorant about who it had chosen to associate with. ‘Mike McQueary’ moment?
If none of those things served as ‘Mike McQueary’ moments, the violent penetration of America on September 11, 2001 did. One can imagine that the look on McQueary’s face when he saw Sandusky with a young boy in that locker room shower wasn’t much different than this:
Had the proper course been taken at Penn State, McQueary would have gone straight to police and Sandusky would have been summarily jettisoned from the University in handcuffs in 2001. There was a problem, however. An investigation conducted by Former FBI Director, Louis Freeh determined that Curley and Schultz became aware of Sandusky’s penchant for young boys as early as 1998, when the mother of an 11-year old boy reported that an assault on her son had taken place in the shower. No charges were filed. In 2011, as the scandal was reaching critical mass, Schultz denied knowledge of the 1998 incident in an email he wrote in 2011.
Did knowledge of the 1998 incident contribute to the covering up of the 2001 incident? Dealing with Sandusky properly in 2001 would have involved very uncomfortable questions about the 1998 incident. As we now know, failure to deal with the 2001 incident properly involved a great deal more than uncomortable questions; Schultz lied about his knowledge of the 1998 incident. Does he wish he would have done in 1998 what he was unable to do in 2011, when such a decision was whisked from his control?
Six days after 9/11, George W. Bush stood with CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad inside a mosque and spoke of Islam in very peaceful terms. On September 26, 2001 Bush welcomed individuals with distinct Muslim Brotherhood ties into the White House. Among them was AMC president Yahya Basha, Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and Muzammil Siddiqi, then president of the Brotherhood’s Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
When Rove was confronted after the meeting about the decision to welcome such individuals into the White House, he allegedly said, “I wish I had known before the event took place.”
That statement is as believable as Schultz’s contention that he didn’t know about the 1998 incident when he denied knowledge of it in 2011.
On October 12, 2001 George W. Bush did something Paterno, Schultz, Curley, and Penn State president Graham Spanier did a few months earlier; he identified a responsible party. One such party was the Rabita Trust, an entity that, even according to the United Nations, was involved in the “financing, planning, facilitating” activities of “Al-Qaida”. Like Sandusky, the man who founded Rabita – Abdullah Omar Nasseef – has essentially escaped accountability. As the one time Secretary General for the Muslim World League, Nasseef led a group that is heavily financed by the Saudi government.
In February of 2002, Anwar al-Awlaki was allowed to penetrate the Department of Defense as an honored guest at a plush luncheon. CAIR Executive Director was one of the invitees. Later that year, al-Awlaki was detained at JFK airport after landing. Despite there being a warrant for his arrest, al-Awlaki was released. He eventually traveled to Yemen, where he inspired Fort Hood Jihadist, Nidal Malik Hassan, who would go on to murder 14 at the Texas Army post.
Interestingly, none other than Abdurahman Alamoudi helped to lay the groundwork for the increased presence of Muslim chaplains in the U.S. Military when he founded the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC) in 1991.
Jerry Sandusky founded The Second Mile and was able to penetrate young boys for years. One of the reasons he was able to do so was because those charged with stopping him chose instead, to implicate themselves by covering up his crimes. The Muslim Brotherhood continues to penetrate the U.S. Government for similar reasons.
The consequences for those who chose to cover up for Sandusky will be far less than those who have chosen to cover up the truth about the penetration of America by her enemies. The bad news is that there will be far more victims.
In any case, those in the Republican establishment who choose to close their eyes, ears, and mouths can be expected to utter words similar to those uttered by Joe Paterno when he finally realized it would have been much better had he come clean in 2001 than face a day of reckoning years later:
“It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
It would seem, however, that the Republican Party establishment has had quite a few more ‘Mike McQueary’ moments than Penn State did.
Ben Barrack is a talk show host and author of the upcoming book, Unsung Davids