How Former Treasury Officials And The UAE Are Manipulating American Journalists

The point is that this coordinated media attack on Qatar -- using highly paid former U.S. officials and their media allies -- is simply a weapon used by the Emirates, Israel, the Saudis and others to advance their agendas. Kirkpatrick explained: "propelling the barrage of accusations against Qatar is a regional contest for power in which competing Persian Gulf monarchies have backed opposing proxies in contested places like Gaza, Libya and especially Egypt." As political science professor As'ad AbuKhalil wrote this week about conflicts in Syria and beyond, "the two Wahhabi regimes [Saudi Arabia and Qatar] are fighting over many issues but they both wish to speak on behalf of political Islam."

What's misleading isn't the claim that Qatar funds extremists but that they do so more than other U.S. allies in the region (a narrative implanted at exactly the time Qatar has become a key target of Israel and the Emirates). Indeed, some of Qatar's accusers here do the same to at least the same extent, and in the case of the Saudis, far more so. As Kirkpatrick noted: "Qatar is hardly the only gulf monarchy to allow open fund-raising by sheikhs that the United States government has linked to Al Qaeda's Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front: Sheikh Ajmi and most of the others are based in Kuwait and readily tap donors in Saudi Arabia, sometimes even making their pitches on Saudi- and Kuwaiti-owned television networks."

One U.S. government cable from 2009, also published by WikiLeaks, identified Saudi Arabia, not Qatar, as the greatest danger in this regard:

"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."

The writer of that cable complained that "it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority."

Prior to his appointment as a Treasury official -- and before he began working as a paid agent of the UAE to finger Qatar as the key threat -- Camstoll's founder and CEO, Epstein, himself fingered Saudis as the key financiers of Al Qaeda and anti-American terrorism. His 2003 Senate testimony included this statement: "the Saudi Wahhabists have bankrolled a series of Islamic institutions in the United States that actively seek to undermine U.S. counterterrorism policy at home and abroad"; he added: "in the United States, the Saudi Wahhabis regularly subsidize the organizations and individuals adhering to the militant ideology espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood and its murderous offshoots Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda, all three of which are designated terrorist."

While the 2009 cable claimed claimed that "Qatar's overall level of CT cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region," it said this was "out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals." But the cable also identified other U.S. allies in the region as key conduits for terrorist financing, stating, for instance, that "Al-Qa'ida and other groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds and as a key transit point." It also heavily implicated the Emirates themselves: "UAE-based donors have provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups, including al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups, including Hamas."

One of the most critical points illustrated by all of this tawdry influence-peddling is the alignment driving so much of US policy in that region. The key principals of Camstoll have hard-core neoconservative backgrounds. Here they are working hand in hand with neocon journalists to publicly trash a new enemy of Israel, in service of the agenda of Gulf dictators. This is the bizarre neocon/Israel/Gulf-dictator coalition now driving not only U.S. policy but, increasingly, U.S. discourse as well.

Margot Williams and Andrew Fishman contributed additional reporting