Bannon's associates include:
Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism: In 2015, Emerson was described as a "complete idiot" by then Prime Minister David Cameron for claiming falsely on Fox News that Britain is full of Muslim "no go zones" (like the entire city of Birmingham), and that London is run amok by Muslim religious police who beat and wound people who refuse to dress according to a Muslim dress code".
Walid Phares, who advised Trump on his national security team during the presidential campaign, and Robert Spencer: Both are connected to the Washington DC-based Center for Security Policy (CSP), a far-right think tank run by former Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney, where they appear regularly as guests on CSP's 'Secure Freedom' radio podcast run by Gaffney. Phares is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.
Frank Gaffney's CSP commissioned the original flawed opinion poll that was cited by Trump to justify his 'Muslim ban' when he first announced it in late 2015. So it's clearly no coincidence that Kellyanne Conway, the pollster who carried out the flawed poll, is now Counselor to the President.
Gaffney thus has a significant degree of ideological influence on the Trump regime. He has appeared at least 34 times on Bannon's Breitbart radio program. His work has also been cited in speeches by Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor.
Alarmingly, Gaffney has disturbing connections to full-blown neo-Nazi groups across Europe, such as the Danish People's Party (DPP) and the Vlaams Belang (VB) in Belgium.
But he simultaneously has close ties to the US military-industrial complex. In 2013, CSP tax records showed that the CSP had received funding from six of America's biggest aerospace and defense contractors, namely Boeing ($25,000); General Dynamics ($15,000); Lockheed Martin ($15,000); Northrup Grumman ($5,000); Raytheon ($20,000); and General Electric ($5,000). The CSP has a particularly close relationship with Boeing, the second largest defense contractor in the world, which still provides Gaffney's group with "general support."
Michael Reilly, who has been Director of Federal Budget and Program Analysis at Boeing since 2010, was previously Gaffney's Vice President for Operations at the CSP.
These incestuous ties with the US private defense sector comprise one prime reason that fully 22 officers or advisors of Gaffney's CSP ended up having appointments in the George W. Bush administration.
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