Oh, the irony… An administration that revels in smearing Birthers as conspiracy theorists who don tinfoil hats, is sending an anti-Israel, 9/11 Truther as its representative to a human rights conference?!

Apparently, the State Department isn’t finished ripping its mask off.

Via the Washington Free Beacon:

Jewish leaders expressed outrage Friday over the State Department’s praise for, and defense of, a controversial Muslim leader who has defended terrorist groups and suggested that Israel may have been responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Salam al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was picked to represent the United States government at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) annual 10-day human rights conference, the Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM).

Al-Marayati’s well-known anti-Israel bona fides prompted Jewish leaders and others to express outrage over the Obama administration’s selection.

“It is regrettable that someone with such distorted, conspiratorial views—even with a lackluster apology—is delegated by our government to represent our country abroad,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to the Free Beacon.

It would appear that over the last several years, al-Marayati has attempted to rehabilitate his image by staying away from the more incendiary, anti-Israel rhetoric. In 2004, however, Steve Emerson chronicled instances in which MPAC leaders, to include Marayati, expressed views that the modern left outwardly claims to vehemently reject.

For example, on the day of the 9/11/01 attacks, the MPAC founder appeared on a Los Angeles radio show and made the following, ridiculous claim:

If we’re going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.

He also made the claim that John Walker Lindh was the only known American supporter of al-Qaeda.

Emerson also cited an exchange between Marayati and a questioner during a speech given by the MPAC founder in 1997. Al Marayati would not condemn Hezbollah as a terrorist organization:

Question: “You mentioned Hizbollah, do you consider it to be more of a, I guess a national liberation movement or a terrorist group?”

Al-Marayati: “…I don’t think any group should be judged 100% this or that, I think every group is going to have, um, its claim of liberation and resistance …there’s the part that deals with the military confrontation with Israel and if you look at the numbers though, Hizbollah attacks against Israeli civilians are like a fraction of Israeli attacks against the Muslims.”

Al Marayati went on to paint a somewhat rosy picture of Hamas by talking about the group’s “educational operations”.

According to Discover the Networks, al-Marayati also called on the U.S. government to unfreeze the assets of a one Holy Land Foundation, the primary defendant in the largest terrorism financing trial in the U.S. HLF was found guilty on all counts.

If you’re still not convinced about the background of the group al-Marayati founded, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy laid it out quite well recently, to include the relationship between al-Marayati’s wife and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

Marayati and his wife, Laila al-Marayati (founder of the “Muslim Women’s League”), remained Clinton favorites. Mrs. Marayati served on the Clinton State Department’s advisory committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and was tapped by Hillary Clinton to join the then–first lady’s delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women. The Marayatis, moreover, helped Mrs. Clinton organize the original White House Iftaar dinner in 1996. The event, marking the end of Ramadan, has since become an annual gala to which invitations are coveted by bipartisan Beltway luminaries. In 2009, at the first Iftaar dinner held by the Obama White House, which is more unabashedly Leftist than its Clintonian predecessor, Salam al-Marayati was called on to close the program. “Ramadan,” he told the revelers, “is a time of preparation to work for social justice.”

In light of the questions raised by Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other Congressmen earlier this year about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. State Department, coupled with legitimate questions about the Benghazi consulate’s lack of security, it is curious that al-Marayati would be the Department’s choice to represent it anywhere, let alone at a human rights conference.