In my piece Al Qaeda’s Trojan Horse, I pointed to several reports coming out of the British press connecting Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (UFA) to former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and Begg’s organization, Cage Prisoners. The British press first noted that Begg and one of his colleagues were invited to speak at a conference put on by the Islamic Society at the University College of London in early 2007. Abdulmutallab was president of the Islamic Society at the time.

One of the arguments I made in the piece was that some on the left have a difficult time identifying or understanding jihadists. There is such a rush to embrace the anti-American arguments made by men such as Begg that the press makes little attempt to investigate their backgrounds and stories even when they are demonstrable liars. This is dangerous because Begg is not just an anti-American propagandist. According to a copious record produced by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, Begg has sponsored and trained with terrorist groups in the past and actively supported a known al Qaeda cleric on a number of occasions. (Begg was released from Gitmo over the objections of the entire national security establishment.)