MEK Resource page

The MEK and its apologists (the Iran Policy Committee and others) today claim that a "Marxist splinter group" killed four U.S. officers and three civilian contractors working for Rockwell International in the 1970s, and that the MEK never committed terrorist acts against Americans.

But these official bulletins published by the group after the 1979 revolution, when Rajavi was out of jail and in full command of the group, prove the contrary.

• In the June 4, 1980 edition of "Mojahid," the group reveal that it assassinated the deputy chief of the U.S. military mission in Iran, Col. Lewis Hawkins, on June 5, 1973, calling him "one of the criminal agents of U.S. Imperialism in Iran."

• In the May 31, 1980 edition of "Mojahid," the group commemorated the 8th anniversary of the assassination of USAF Gen. Harold Price, chief of the Air Force section of the U.S. Military Advisory Group in Iran, killed by an MEK car bomb on May 31, 1972. " Because of this explosion, [President] Nixon's visit was delayed for 45 minutes and the visit took place in a fearful atmosphere," they write.

The MEK and its apologists claim the group is pro-American, and supports free-market policies. But the MEK welcomed the decision by Khomeini to sever diplomatic ties with the United States in April 1980, calling for the creation of "another Vietnam."

The MEK and its apologists claim the group is pro- Israel. But Rajavi

welcomed Arafat when he came to Tehran after the Islamic revolution in 1979, and presented a machine-gun to Arafat "as a pledge of support from the MKO of Iran." The citation contineus: "In the hope of meeting in a free Quds [Jerusalem], a meeting in which none of the region's reactionaries are present."

1994 State Department report on the MEK. In response to requests from Congress, the State Department produced a damning report in October 1994 on the MEK that laid out the evidence for the U.S. government's determination that the MEK was a terrorist organization. The report names the americans killed by the MEK in the 1970s, describes its support for the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in Nov. 1979, its ongoing support for the Khomeini regime until the split in 1981; its alliance with Saddam Hussein, and more. This is the report the MEK can't get beyond.

MEK effots to buy influence in Congress. The Iran Brief, run by FDI President Kenneth Timmerman in the 1990s, was the first to expose the MEK's efforts to buy members of the U.S. Congress through campaign donations in 1997.

"Torricelli's Terrorist List Friends" - 1998 story from the American Spectator that took the Iran Brief revelations of MEK campaign donations to a wider public. When Torricelli was running for re-election to the U.S. Senate, he dropped his support for the group as soon as he was challenged to defend them by his Republican opponent.

Operation Suture: FBI penetration of MEK Camp Ashraf in the mid-1980s found that the group continued to celebrate its May 31, 1972 murder of U.S. Air Force Brigadir General Harold Price and other U.S. officers assassinated by the group with commemorative songs and festivities.

Human Rights Watch - 2005 report on abuses by the MEK of its own members. Most of the information in this report comes from former MEK members, some of whom acknowledge they have gone back to Iran.

As part of their investigation, they conducted several raids on an MEK safe house in Falls Church, Virginia, FBI agents found that the MEK had drained an indoor swimming pool in the house and covered it over. "The area above the pool was divided into offices. In one of these offices, a hatch in the floor led into the drained swimming pool," which they used to store "flags, t-shirts, magazines, and other PMOI, NCR, and NLA paraphernalia."

The FBI found there was no separation between the three organizations. "In sum, the FBI's investigation revealed that in the United States and elsewhere, the PMOI and the NCRI are not in actuality separate organizations... Thus, the FBI's investigation has confirmed that the NCRI operates as an alias of the PMOI, despite whatever claims these entities make publicly that may fool outsiders, and even some of those inside the entities."

One of the delicious sidebars of the MEK story is the 180 degree pivot of Rep. Bob Ney, who had taken $4,000 from MEK members in 1995 before their lobbying campaign was exposed by FDI. In April 2003, Ney wrote a scathing letter to The Hill newspaper denouncing the "outright lies, exaggerations and deceptions" used by the group. Ney blasted the MEK for using "dozens of pseudonyms, such as the National Council of Resistance and the People's Movement of Iran, to hide contributions and spread its propaganda" and its close ties to Saddam Hussein. Ney also blasted the group for faking its support in Congress, and said that the reason the group steadfastly refuses to publish the names of Members of Congress who signed a letter of support last November is because the list "does not exist." He went on: "At one point, it may have; in fact, when MEK representatives first visited my office several years ago, preaching democracy for Iran, I was glad to join them in what appeared to be their effort. However, I quickly discovered that the MEK are not the proponents of democracy they claim to be but are in fact documented terrorists with a history of killing American citizens and supporting Saddam Hussein."

Just one month later, we discovered that Bob Ney had joined up with Trita Parsi and his newly-formed National Iranian-American Council. Here's how we announced the new marriage at the time:

May 22, 2003: Exiles call for protest of pro-Tehran meetings in California next week. A new pro-Tehran lobbying group, the "National Iranian American Council," an apparent successor to Housang Amirahmadi's American Iranian Council, plans to hold two meetings in California on May 30 and May 31, which have angered Iranian-Americans seeking to promote democracy in Iran. Among the announced speakers are U.S. Representatives Bob Ney (R, Ohio) and Mike Honda (D, CA). The opposition groups have called on supporters to protest the pro-Tehran meetings at the following times and locations...

March 1, 2001: Mujahedin fund-raising ring leaders arrested: The FBI arrested 7 members of the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) at Los Angeles International airport on Feb. 28, on charges of illegal fund-raising for a terrorist organization. The PMOI, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), was using a fake human rights organization as a front for funding military activities in Iraq. According to FBI witnesses inside the fund-raising network, all the money raised for unsuspecting travelers and from Iranian-Americans was shipped to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to buy military equipment for the group's National Liberal Army, based in Iraq.

August 9, 1999: Fom the July issue of The Iran Brief. We carried an exclusive investigation exposing Mujahedin fund-raising in Holland, and recent MEK campaign to buy influence in the U.S. Congress.

April 5, 1999: Mujahedin visa fraud ring. Exclusive: court documents filed in Los Angeles expose a massive alien smuggling ring and a document forgery shop apparently run by the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq. Computer records seized at the MEK's document shop showed they had brought in 22,000 Iranians since 1983.

MEK Chronology (compiled by former MEK members possibly associated with the Iranian regime)

Massoud Rajavi seemed to love Saddam Hussein as much as he earlier loved ayatollah Khomeini.