Reader email with Col. Boylan (2 of 2)

----- Original Message -----

From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@gmail.com>

To: "Glenn Greenwald" <GGreenwald@salon.com>

Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:40 AM

Subject: The Boylan emails to me

This is the first email I received, note that the reply came 16
minutes after I sent my message.

Note also that the message ID on the mail you received is the next one
in sequence and that this message was sent 47 seconds after the
message to me denying all knowledge of the message to you.

The message ID sequence is actually the most telling, if you look at
the 'fake' and denial messages you will see that they match exactly.
They also match the message I received. This significantly narrows
down the scope for forgery. The only way that a fake message could
carry the same sequence ID would be if the recipient had recently
received an email from the same server.

It would be much more interesting for me if the message was indeed
fake. This is my field. The problem for me now however is that the
claim of a fake message has been raised and we will start to see real
attacks of this type.

I was thinking of holding off from this topic as the Col. appears to
be a danger to himself. Then I remembered what he has done to
Beauchamp.

-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Hallam-Baker [mailto:hallam@gmail.com]=20
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 6:40 PM
To: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
Subject: You political activities

Your threats to Greenwald have severely damaged both yourself and the
credibility of Gen Petraeus. As a press officer you should have
predicted the result of sending such a letter.

You appear unable to distinguish between partisan political activity
and the duties of a non political military. Your letter proves
Greenwald's point irrefutably.

________________________________________

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From: "Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO" <steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil>
To: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@gmail.com>
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Excuse me, but what email are you referring too and I haven't threaten
anyone of late other than my kids for not listening to their mother. =20

Steven

Steven A. Boylan
Colonel, US Army
Public Affairs Officer to the
Commanding General
Multi-National Force-Iraq
Commercial (703) 343-9399
DSN: (318) 239-9399
Mobile: (914) 360-3819
Iraqna + 964 (0)7901 948 483
VOIP: 243-2242
www.mnf-iraq.com

________________________________________

----- Original Message -----

From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@gmail.com>

To: "Glenn Greenwald" <GGreenwald@salon.com>

Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:43 AM

Subject: The second email, this denial is explicit

-----Original Message-----
From: Phillip Hallam-Baker [mailto:hallam@gmail.com]=20
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 9:06 PM
To: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
Subject: Re: You political activities

Greenwald published your email complaining about his publishing the
last email you sent.

Your message sure looks threatening to me. You might not have intended
it to be so but that is certainly the effect.

You have made yourself the story. Someone leaked the hit pieces to
Malkin. You sure look like the most likely candidate to me.

Dangerous game to play. Congress could not put Rove up in front of a
committee and ask him if he was the source of his numerous leaks
because he was a political appointee. You have no such protection. Nor
can you claim that your activities as press officer are classified.

If you play a partisan game you make yourself a partisan target. Look
what happened to Plame.

________________________________________

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From: "Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO" <steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil>
To: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@gmail.com>
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FILETIME=[9E3B2AE0:01C8198D]

I didn't send him an email today other than in response to a direct
question from him. I have told him it was not my email and have asked
them to take it down since it was not mine. Not playing a game and
since I have already been a victim of ID theft already, I am not
surprised something like this can happen. Taking issues here.

Steven A. Boylan
Colonel, US Army
Public Affairs Officer to the
Commanding General
Multi-National Force-Iraq
Commercial (703) 343-9399
DSN: (318) 239-9399
Mobile: (914) 360-3819
Iraqna + 964 (0)7901 948 483
VOIP: 243-2242
www.mnf-iraq.com

Reader email with Col. Boylan (1 of 2)

----- Original Message -----

From: xxxxxxx

To: GGreenwald@salon.com

Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 3:09 PM

Subject: My exchange w/ the Colonel (carbon-copying Gen. Petraeus)

Dear Mr. Greenwald,

For your information. You're more than welcome to use/publish any of it, but I'd ask that you remove my name and email address.

It's deeply disturbing to me that this man has nothing better to do than correspond with me while Iraq burns. Thanks for bringing his strange behavior--which I sincerely hope will be curbed as a result of the publicity--to light.

Best regards,

xxxx xxxxx

________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx, xx
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:14 PM
To: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
Cc: Petraeus, David GEN MNF-I CMD GRP CG
Subject: Your improper behavior

Colonel Boylan,

First, a reminder that I am a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, and that I
therefore subsidize your salary. As such, I expect you to keep your
political biases to yourself. You are charged with the protection of all
Americans, and if you don't like it, you should retire immediately.

I am the granddaughter of two Colonels (one Air Force and one Army), so
I am familiar with the conduct required of officers. In what is either
your deeply inappropriate, highly political, unsolicited communication
with journalists like Glenn Greenwald with whom you disagree or a
failure on your part to investigate the misuse of your email address--a
very serious matter, indeed--yours falls well outside of the acceptable
range.

Since you appear to need a reminder, you should be focusing your energy
on our war with Iraq, not your own personal war with American
journalists. You evidently need also to be reminded that the Alien &
Sedition Act was repealed quite some time ago, and that in America,
speech--especially by the press, who serve as a check on what would
otherwise be unfettered government power of the sort we are purportedly
in Iraq to fight against--is protected. I am deeply troubled by the
recent, disturbing tendency on the part of so-called "patriots" in our
country to flout the Constitution, and I can't imagine that any action
short of dismissal is appropriate in your case.

As your employer, I ask that you either stop behaving in such a
blatantly political way or step down immediately. I have no faith
whatsoever in your ability to do the job I'm paying for adequately. You
clearly disagree with American values generally, and as such, have no
place in a role of such importance in our military.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald//index.html

With great disgust,

xxxxxx xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxx, xxx

________________________________

From: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
[mailto:steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil ]
Sent: Tue 10/30/07 11:08 AM
To: xxxx, xxxxx
Cc: Petraeus, David GEN MNF-I CMD GRP CG
Subject: RE: Your improper behavior

Dear Mx. xxxxxx,

Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns.

As I have explained to Mr. Greenwald over the past couple of days, I did
not send him the email and my first contact with him since the
mid-summer was when he sent an email to me asking for authentication. I
explained to him that I had not sent the email.

In fact, based on the date/time on the email that he sent to me, it was
while I was not in my office or even at work since it was a Sunday
morning early. Since we do not have an early morning briefing, which is
the one day that I can take a little bit longer to get into the office.


The email that was sent also has errors concerning my career which also
indicates that whoever sent it if in fact it was really ever sent and I
have my doubts, does not completely know my career timeline.

Lastly, I do not read Mr. Greenwald's postings as I find that they are
just that, his opinions and therefore would not have any reason to email
him.

I can assure you that I am completely focused on the duties here in
Baghdad and also am very removed from the political discussions and go
to great lengths to ensure that remains the case.

Again, thank you for your letter and concern.

Respectfully,

Colonel Steven Boylan

________________________________

From: xxxxx, xxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 8:25 PM
To: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
Cc: Petraeus, David GEN MNF-I CMD GRP CG
Subject: RE: Your improper behavior

What you continually refuse to address, Col. Boylan, is the extremely
serious proposition that if you did not, as you claim, send the email in
question, someone else must have. That should raise a rather loud alarm,
don't you think? I know it does for me, given the heightened risk at
which we find ourselves as the result of our misplaced aggression in the
Middle East.

I can only assume, evidently, that you are doing the right thing and
ensuring the forging and/or abuse of a U.S. military email address--that
of an officer in Iraq, no less--is investigated and that the perpetrator
is brought to justice.

____________________________________

From: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO [mailto:steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil]
Sent: Tue 10/30/07 11:35 AM
To: xxxxxx, xxxxx
Cc: Petraeus, David GEN MNF-I CMD GRP CG
Subject: RE: Your improper behavior

Mx. xxxxx,

I can assure you that I am taking this seriously, but do not feel that
it is appropriate to discuss with those not here and especially those
that are posting to a blog site.

Again, I have my serious doubts that any of what has been said is real
and I have no reason to engage Mr. Greenwald. I am checking into this
matter. I have been called many things over the years and when those
that do not agree with the information we (I) have provided in the past,
the blogosphere is a venue that is used to go after those that they set
their sights upon.

Respectfully,

Colonel Steven Boylan

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxx, xxx
Sent: Tue 10/30/07 12:07 PM
To: Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO
Cc: Petraeus, David GEN MNF-I CMD GRP CG
Subject: RE: Your improper behavior

Mr. Greenwald is a lawyer and, though perhaps not by you, a well-respected journalist. Yet you have doubts that he's telling the truth about the email he received? What on earth would his motivation be?

It should be simple for IT professionals in the military to examine its servers and determine whether there has indeed been a security breach in the hijacking of a military officer's email address. I wouldn't expect for a moment that you would discuss such an investigation with me or anyone outside the military, but as an American citizen, it's important to me that you are taking such a potential breach seriously. That you mistrust Mr. Greenwald should not prevent that.

Thank you for your responses and for your consideration of my concerns.

E-mail headers from Col. Boylan and MNF

Original email this morning which Col. Boylan denies sending

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From: "Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO" <steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil>To: <ggreenwald@salon.com>X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Oct 2007 11:15:05.0804 (UTC) FILETIME=[CAF430C0:01C81953]Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bitX-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mailer.salon.com id l9SBFgrP024411Status: OX-UID: 273Content-Length: 4757X-Keywords:

1st email from Col. Boylan today, denying the authenticity of that email:

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From: "Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO" <steven.boylan@iraq.centcom.mil>

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2nd email from Col. Boylan today, denying the authenticity of that email:

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3rd email from Col. Boylan today, denying the authenticity of that email:

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Email from Col. Boylan, July 23, 2007:

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Email from Col. Boylan, July 24, 2007:

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From: "Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO"
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Unsolicited email from Col. Stephen Boylan, spokesman to Gen. David G. Petraeus

(response here)

----- Original Message -----

From: "Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO"
To: ggreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 8:15 AM

Subject: The growing link between the U.S. military and right-wing media and blogs

Glenn,

I had hoped to post this in response to your article, but apparently it is closed already.

I am not sending this as anyone's spokesperson, just a straight military Public Affairs Officer, with about 27 months overall time in Iraq who is concerned with accuracy, context and characterization of information and has worked with media of all types since joining the career field in 1991. The issues of accuracy, context, and proper characterization is something that perhaps you could do a little research and would assumeyou are aware of as a trained lawyer.

I do enjoy reading your diatribes as they provide comic relief here in Iraq. The amount of pure fiction is incredible. Since a great deal of this post is just opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinions, I will not address those even though they are shall we say -- based on few if any facts. That does surprise me with your training as a lawyer, but we will leave those jokes to another day.

You do have one fact in your post -- then Brigadier General Bergner did work at the National Security Council on matters concerning Iraq. Not surprising as he had returned from a year plus deployment to Iraq as the Multi-National Division - North Assistant Division Commander. It would seem reasonable that someone with Iraq experience would work issues at the NSC that was familiar with and had experience in Iraq. All else after that portion in your post about Major General Bergner is just your wishful thinking to support your flawed theory.

The claims about Steve Schmidt being out here on the staff in Iraq are just flat wrong. Pray tell, where do you think he is and how long have you fantasized that he has been here? Based on our records of who is in Iraq, I am really sorry to disappoint you, but he just isn't here. You are either too lazy to do the research on the topics to gain the facts, or you are providing purposeful misinformation -- much like a propagandist.

Schmidt was here, but at the time for the vote on the Iraqi Constitution, October 2005 for 30 days. He was never on the MNF-I staff and for that short period was actually detailed to the Department of State. He hasn't been back since. Sorry to burst your bubble, but a little actual research on your part would have shown that he is actually not here, but that would contradict your conspiracy theory. I am curious as to when you think the media relations or operations changed here in Iraq. I in fact do know exactly the day and time thatit changed and want to see if you are even in the same ballpark as reality.

For the third matter concerning the Beauchamp investigation and the documents that were leaked - it is very unfortunate that they were - but the documents are not secret or classified. So, there is your third major error in fact. Good thing you are not a journalist. The information that was released and it appears that has since been taken off the net is more of a matter concerning the Privacy Act. Since we don't know who released them, we are not able to take the appropriate actions and the media tends not to give up their sources -- good, bad or indifferent...I will not judge. That is our system and we must work with it.

As for working in secret with only certain media is laughable. The wide swatch of media engagements is by far the most diverse it could be. But you might not think it that way since we chose not to do an interview with you. You are not a journalist nor do you have any journalistic ethical standards as we found out from the last time I engaged with you. As we quickly found out, you published our email conversation without asking, without permission -- just another case in point to illustrate your lack of standards and ethics. You may recall that a 30-minute interview was conducted with the program that you claim to be a contributor. So instead of doing the interview with you, we went with the real talent, Alan Colmes.

I also noticed that you fail to mention the amount of material that is leaked to those other publications that I dare you to call right-wing like the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. I do not condone or wish them to happen, but it happens. If you believe they are right-wing, then again, it is nice to live in a fantasy world.

I invite you to come see for yourself and go anywhere in Iraq you want, go see what our forces are doing, go see what the other coalition forces are doing, go hang out with the reporters outside the International Zone since that is where they live and work and see for yourself what ground truth is so that you can be better informed. But that would take something you probably don't have.

Steve

Steven A. Boylan

Colonel, US Army

Public Affairs Officer

(response here)

Senate Intelligence Committee FISA bill summary

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE BIPARTISAN INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

FISA MODERNIZATION PROPOSAL

October 18, 2007

The bipartisan Intelligence Committee FISA bill fixes a number of deficiencies in the flawed Protect America Act that passed in August. Specifically, it strengthens our national security, protects the civil liberties and privacy rights of all Americans, and ensures that the unchecked wiretapping policies of the Bush Administration are a thing of the past.

STRENGTHENING OUR NATIONAL SECURITY

The bill ensures that the Intelligence Community has the surveillance tools needed to go after foreign terrorists and other threats to American security. It allows the Attorney General and DNI to authorize the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be outside the U.S. for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence for up to 1 year.

PROTECTING AMERICAN RIGHTS THROUGH MANDATED COURT REVIEW AND APPROVAL

The bill strengthens the role of the FISA court by requiring judicial review and approval in four ways:

• First, the court must review the certification submitted by the Attorney General authorizing the foreign intelligence surveillance;
• Second, the court must approve the foreign targeting procedures for determining that the target of the surveillance is reasonably believed to be outside the United States;
• Third, the court must approve the procedures for minimizing the identities of and information about Americans incidentally collected during the surveillance of foreign targets – a glaring omission in the Protect America Act;
• Finally, the court will be required to approve or disapprove the targeting of Americans overseas under this new authority, on an individual basis, based on its review whether there is probable cause to believe that the person is an agent of a foreign power.

IMPROVED OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The bill includes a 6-year sunset to allow Congress to evaluate how the new authorities are carried out and to ensure that abuses do not occur before authorities are extended further.

The bill requires the Intelligence Community to conduct an annual review and requires detailed semi-annual reports to be submitted to the Senate and House Intelligence and Judiciary committees concerning collections authorized in the bill -- including instances of non-compliance.

The bill also requires the Intelligence Community to conduct a yearly audit to determine whether foreign intelligence information, in fact, will be obtained.

In addition, the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice and elements of the Intelligence Community are authorized in the bill to conduct independent reviews of agency compliance with the court-approved acquisition and minimization procedures.

ENSURING THAT THE UNCHECKED WIRETAPPING POLICIES OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ARE A THING OF THE PAST

The Bush Administration’s 5 ½ year warrantless surveillance program prevented both the judicial and legislative branches from conducting oversight of electronic surveillance. The Administration’s decision to circumvent the FISA court and limit even cursory knowledge of the program’s existence to only a handful of congressional officials was misguided and ultimately undermined the legitimacy and effectiveness of the program.

· The bill contains an exclusivity provision that reasserts that FISA and Title 18 are the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance may be carried out.

· By granting the authority to collect against identifiable foreign targets without requiring individualized court orders and by requiring court oversight of these activities, the bill effectively eliminates any justification for a President to seek unwarranted and unchecked surveillance.

IMMUNITY FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES

Private companies are essential partners in law enforcement and national security efforts. In the case of support following the 9/11 attacks, it is clear participation was based on what they believe to be lawful requests made by the government. The onus should be on the government to ensure that the requests it makes of private companies are fully supported by the law. While private citizens should be able to hold their government accountable, companies should not be put in the situation of complying with a legitimate security request and then being unable to defend themselves due to the government’s assertion of state secrets.

· The bill provides narrowly circumscribed immunity to companies that may have participated in the warrantless surveillance program from 9/11 until it was placed under FISA court authorization in January 2007.

· The bill requires a certification to the court by the Attorney General that the company’s participation was pursuant to a written request or directive of the Attorney General or intelligence agency head or deputy head and was part of program authorized by the President and determined to be lawful.

· Nothing in the bill provides retrospective immunity for government officials for their actions, nor to companies outside the specified timeframe.

Email from Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Dear Glenn; I will be calling you shortly to discuss, but I put a few points in writing that hopefully would give you a better perspective of our efforts in this area:

We share your concern, and are glad you share ours, about how the “constant, trivializing use” of terms like Hitler, Nazi, Gestapo, and Holocaust in debasing civility and political discourse in America and other democracies. Given the relentless criticism of us for decades for supposedly harping to excess on the misuse of Holocaust-related language and imagery, we at the Wiesenthal Center have often felt like a Cassandra who foresees a danger that most everybody else chooses to ignore.

The Wiesenthal Center was founded in 1977 and our earliest focus on the misuse of the Holocaust was the Soviet Union's ongoing campaign to depict Israeli leaders and soldiers as latter day Nazis. That culminated in our major exhibit called Portraits in Infamy that we presented in Europe. It wasn't until Gorbachev came to power that that viral practice was dropped. Unfortunately, the infection was passed on to the Arab World where today, tragically it is an accepted part of the mainstream view.

Domestically, Wiesenthal Center Dean Marvin Hier started speaking out on this issue in the 1980s when our focus was not the political left, but right wing extremists who targeted—sometimes lethally—abortion service providers as perpetrators of “a new Holocaust.” In virtually every statement since then, Rabbi Hier has made clear that the language that trivializes genocide and inflames contemporary hatreds is wrong and dangerous—whether it comes from the left or the right.

Our special concern has not been with criticizing particular individuals or organizations complicit in this troubling phenomenon, but in tracking alarming global trends as debasement of the terminology and meaning of the Holocaust has spilled over from the Middle East into the Western academia and media and from the political fringe into the mainstream.

We watched the initial stirrings, around the time of the 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing, when perhaps for the first time an American President was equated with Hitler by Middle Eastern fanatics who, on other occasions, expressed undisguised admiration for the Fuehrer. In 2002, we saw an award-winning British cartoon depicting Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a Nazi cannibal devouring Palestinian babies in some sort of perversion of the Passover ceremony become a popular image in American college newspapers.

Equally outrageous was the “Hitler as Sharon” shorthand used in European protests to demonize the Jewish state’s prime minister. Indeed, Dutch Jews reacted angrily when one of Dutch society’s elite, Gretta Duisenberg, wife of European Central Bank President Wim Duisenberg, publicly equated the Fuehrer with Israel’s democratically elected Prime Minister and genocidal Nazis with Israelis. Upon returning from the West Bank to Amsterdam she declared: “The cruelty of the Israelis knows no bounds . . . . The Nazis never went so far during the Dutch occupation.” Asked whether he supported her claim that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza was even worse than the Nazi occupation of Holland, during which 100,000 Jews—the vast majority of Dutch Jewry—were deported to their deaths, Mr. Duisenberg said he supported his wife “100 percent".

In 2004, we became concerned about the MoveOn.org cartoon equating President Bush with Hitler—but not because it was the worst example of its kind or because we believed that organization a leftwing reincarnation of the Storm Troopers. Instead, our reason was that this was the first time that such toxic language and imagery entered America's political and media mainstream. We were pleased when MoveOn.org distanced itself from it. For the record, I am including below the January 7, 2004 press release from the Wiesenthal Center related to the Moveon.org ad.

In 2003, the year before the MoveOn.org ad flap, Rabbi Hier told Lisa Fernandez of the San Jose Mercury News that he was “worried that anti-Semitism isn't just a fad with some segments of the left. He sees it globally and on the right as well, pointing to French Jews who were beaten for wearing yarmulkes and statements made by conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Buchanan linking the war in Iraq to top Jewish aides in the Bush administration.”

We don’t believe in “moral equivalence,” but we do agree with the equal outrageousness of conservative stalwart Grover Norquist’s linking of the estate tax with “the morality of the Holocaust” and liberal media mogul Ted Turner’s lament that his inability to buy a major network made him feel like “those Jewish people in Germany in 1942.”

Perhaps you are correct to sense some hesitation on our part about what to do now that hyperbolic distortions—kidnapping the language of the Holocaust to sensationalize media debate and demonize political opponents—has become pervasive and an equal opportunity blood sport in our increasingly polarized body politic. You may—or may not—be correct that the most egregious examples today are on the right and in conservative media rather than on the left and in liberal media. We haven’t seen convincing documentation—one way or the other. What’s clear is that there’s an epidemic raging, and nobody sensible is altogether sure how to stop it.

Organizations like ours can, of course, continue to turn out reams of condemnatory statements about this or that individual or organization at one or the other extreme so that we’re perceived as even-handed, but we fear that won’t solve the problem.

We wonder whether it might be better for decent people in the political , intellectual and journalistic communities to join with us in adopting a Best Standards Code pledging not to equate our opponents with Nazis or portray participants in contemporary controversies as somehow like either the perpetrators or the victims of the Holocaust.

George Orwell warned us long ago about the totalitarian turn politics can take when the English language is debased. As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of Orwell's warning, we better watch out lest we warp back into "1984." In fact, it was 1984 when Simon Wiesenthal chastised both sides of the global conflict then raging because "Nazi war criminals have been the chief beneficiaries of the Cold War." We didn't get any praise from the political right for that statement, but that didn't matter to Mr. Wiesenthal or to us.

_________________________

January 7, 2004

SWC CONDEMNS TARGETING OF POLITICAL OPPONENTS AS NAZIS

In a statement today, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the recent rash of targeting political opponents as Nazis. "These attacks, coming from both the left and right, are an insult to the millions of victims of Hitler and his Third Reich, as well as to the millions of brave US servicemen and women who laid their lives on the line to fight Nazism. It is a cheap effort to score political points by appealing to the lowest level of stereotyping, and at a crucial point in world history does nothing more then obscure the very real issues that we all face in todays world."

Rabbi Hier, reacting to recent incidents involving MoveOn.org and an op-ed piece in the New York Post urged politicians and the media to "Act responsibly, to reject these smear tactics and to avoid cheapening the memories of the Holocaust."

The Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe.