A Brief History…

Strange things are going on at the Pentagon. Earlier this month, I posted a question about the firing of a military expert on Islamic radicals. Claudia Rosette seems to have been just as interested in this story. She made inquiries about Hesham Islam, the “expert” whose opinions were enough to end Coughlan’s stint at the Pentagon. Last Friday, she wrote an article at NRO about who Islam really is. Now his profile has disappeared from the Pentagon website. That is a cached version.His exciting life story, questioned by Rosette, has some oddities. He describes being bombed as a child in his apartment in Cairo during the 1967 War. Israel did not bomb any Cairo residential areas. The Pentagon has no evidence, or is willing to share no evidence, to support many of his biographical details. He says he was a survivor of a ship sinking in the Arabian Sea at the age of 16.The profile goes on to describe young Hesham Islam as a “merchant mariner adrift for three days in the Arabian Sea after an Iranian torpedo sunk his 16,000-ton cargo ship, drowning all but Islam and four of his crewmates.”That profile is now gone from the Pentagon website. Rosette, an experienced investigative reporter (who wrote the definitive account of the oil-for-food scandal) can find no evidence of such a sinking.Later, his career took another turn:In 1985 he joined the Navy as an electronics technician in the submarine service. According to his Pentagon biography, he went on to serve on a number of ships, in largely technical and operational posts, before hooking up with Gordon England and finally arriving at his current job in the Pentagon.My earlier guess that a 20 year career that ended as a LT Commander (A major in other branches) would not be distinguished unless begun as an EM, was correct.He does have one qualification for his high position in the Pentagon; he hates Israel.He argued that U.S. support for Israel “has negatively affected the attainment of U.S. objectives in the Middle East.” He blamed the influence of American Jews on U.S. policy for a host of ills, ranging from Arab “retaliation” against Americans, to jobs lost overseas, to hampering sales of “defensive arms to friendly Arab states.”Is that why Gordon England, his boss and #2 man at the Pentagon, chose him as a senior aide ?Well, he did have a distinguished career before enlisting in the Navy as an EM.In 1980, according to the profile, Islam immigrated to the U.S. to get married, being suddenly love-smitten after receiving a photo of an American pen pal with whom he had been corresponding sight-unseen for more than three years. For the next five years he worked in what the spokesman describes as the “food services” industry. In 1985 he joined the Navy as an electronics technician in the submarine service.Well, at least he wasn’t driving a taxi ! What in the hell is going on ?Is this guy a mole ? An Islamic mole ? Does anybody else read Tom Clancy novels ? In one of them, I think Executive Orders, an Islamic mole becomes a Secret Service agent, ready to assassinate the President when given the order by his Ayatollah.This is going to be a big story , I hope. We need to find out why this guy was spiking careers of people who were worried about Islamic radicals infiltrating our society.