Home >> Middle East >> Iran

     Email   Print 

The Bigger the Lie, NIAC’s Actual Membership Numbers

Dr. Arash Irandoost - 9/9/2011

How would a lobby organization go about advocating for favorable policies and doctoring up good reasons on behalf of an ideologically-driven and anti-Semitic regime such as the Islamic Republic in Iran, a regime that has: occupied the US embassy, held Americans hostage for 444 days, chanted death to America almost daily, held the highest records of violation of human rights, been listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, a secret nuclear weapons program, and a slew of sanctions imposed on it? It would seem as a daunting task indeed!

During the years 1936-38, the National Socialist Party of Germany was seeking ways whereby it might justify its military and social actions. Among other things, Adolph Hitler wanted to annihilate the Jewish race. Joseph Goebells was assigned the responsibility and that of creating good "reasons" for doing so. It was then that Goebells adopted the phrase: Tell a Lie That is Big Enough, and Repeat it Often Enough, and the Whole World Will Believe It. He assumed the world would not be gullible enough to believe "little lies," but the bigger the lie, the more likely it is that people would eventually accept it as true. By lying and use of misinformation, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda was successful beyond the generation's realization.

NIAC and Parsi to the Rescue!

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), started by establishing a non-profit organization, claimed that it is an organization representing the interests of the Iranian-American community, and engaged in a series of cock-and-bull stories to conceal his true intent. Everything seemed OK for Parsi's deceitful ploy until his boss, the corrupt and convicted former Congressman Bob Ney, was caught being bribed by an arms dealer in London who tried to go around the sanctions and buy a VIP airplane for the Iranian regime. As the scandal unrolled, the flood of articles denouncing Parsi started including those of an alert Iranian-American expert journalist. To teach them a lesson, the self-appointed representative of the Iranian-American community, Trita Parsi, engaged in a series and “cease and desist” tactics and smear campaigns to intimidate his opposition into silence. They filed a defamation lawsuit against Hassan Dai which has fortunately backfired with hopefully terminal consequences for NIAC and Parsi who is not even an American.

The lawsuit resulted in release of numerous court documents, tax returns, email correspondence, financial records, bank accounts that paint a very troubling picture of the tax- exempt organization.

Court documents reveal that Trita Parsi took great liberties when defining what constituted a “NIAC member” and presenting such membership numbers to various entities. The issue of NIAC's membership is critical in the lawsuit, since for NIAC to gain legitimacy and credibility in political circles, it had to portray itself as a powerful organization supported by a large number of Iranian-Americans. After three years of court proceedings, NIAC had resisted disclosing the actual list of its members and its stated numbers varied somewhere between less than a 1,000 to 43,000 members. In his sworn deposition when Parsi was questioned about vast variance in membership numbers, Parsi admitted: "at the time we were using several different definitions of "membership."

Taking a page from Joseph Goebells’ doctrine, Trita Parsi started to tell a lie that was big enough and repeated it often enough to hide the lack of interest and low participation of Iranian-Americans at NIAC and the dislike a great majority of Iranian-Americans have for the NIAC and Trita Parsi. When confronted with a low recruitment numbers (1,680) after three years of recruitment which Trita considered “absolutely unacceptable” NIAC's founding board member, Alex Patico, reasoned that it would not be deceitful for Trita to use 25,000+ when dealing with the "media and other inquiries." In a letter to a Congresswoman, Parsi refers to NIAC as the largest Iranian-American grassroots organization representing Iranian-Americans. Parsi boasted a membership of 35,000 to its major donor, the Parsa Foundation. When questioned by the defendants' attorney and I quote: "Dr. Parsi, president of NIAC, do you agree or disagree with Alex Patico's statement that it would not be deceitful to refer to NIAC as having 25,000-plus members when dealing with the members of the media or public?" Trita Parsi replied: "I do not have a strong opinion of that."

Determined to beat its main rival, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, Trita had to make NIAC look like a legitimate, credible and a large organization with strong Iranian-American backing. To do so, Trita needed members and a lot of them. With not much interest from the Iranian-American community, Trita appears to have included any and everything he and NIAC has come in contact with as NIAC members. NIAC’s all-inclusive and imaginary membership spectacle seems to have included: supporters, active members, mailing lists, current members, paid members, non-paid members, email lists, member of other organization, business contacts, donor organizations, expired memberships, even the people who called to register a complaint. The resulting outcome and with the impending lawsuit: Trita Parsi has dug a deep hole that he will find very hard to pull himself out of. When Parsi was asked: "If somebody's membership expired 1,606 days ago, can you --- do you at NIAC still consider them to be a member, albeit expired? Trita answered: Yes, he has had people who after 1,600 days have renewed their membership.

If a member had lost his job and wrote a letter to excuse himself from NIAC membership, Trita continued to carry him on as an "expired member." In fact, Trita continued to carry many people for two, three, four years. If a member did not pay his/her membership dues, Trita believed that there would be time for them to do so, he did not want to "second guess" them, since they might eventually renew. It appears that "once a NIAC member always a NIAC member" has been the modus operandi at NIAC.

Trita’s all-inclusive member list even included a dissatisfied person who had called in and talked to a NIAC staffer after receiving the second letter of solicitation from NIAC and insulted Trita for ten minutes, the staffer’s note about the incident reads:

"Trita is a paid Rafsanjani lobbyist. Said Nayak was a Rafsanjani lobby. Accused us of changing our stance from a nonpartisan organization. Accused us of changing our stance from a nonpartisan organization pushing for better relations to being part of the reformist Mousavi Rafsanjani camp. Accused us of having a blog that is pro-Mousavi and pro-Rafsanjani. Accused us of changing our mission to be nonpartisan without consulting our members. Said Trita had his salary for the past four years by the Rafsanjani camp. Threatened to expose us to the Iranian-American community as a Rafsanjani lobby."

When asked by defendant’s attorney: “My question for you is, as president of NIAC, would a person such as [name deleted by the author], who had sent that sort of e-mail and has no membership history, be counted as -- in NIAC's contacts list here as a member? Trita replied [when] " .... someone expresses dissatisfaction is not a reason to take them off the membership list against their wishes unless they specifically state so.

Another letter of complaint reads:

"You sent me the same letter even after I responded to you and your organization. I guess you have this strategy that by tell lies and repeating them again and again, people are going to believe that lies are truths. But most people are not that stupid. I like you and your organization [to] know that I am a staunch supporter of the State of Israel. I support her Jewish nation and all the Jewish people around the world. I despise the terrorist regime of Islamic republic in Iran who by spending the wealth of Iranians supports the terrorist Hamas and the terrorist Hezbollah in Lebanon. The same goes with Syria, who for more than years the Iranian oil was and is a free gift from the terrorist regime in Iran, while many Iranian families out of dire poverty had to sell their little kids as prostitutes, many -- and many youths out of sheer hopelessness committed suicide."

This does not seem to have deterred Parsi, either. He seems to have continued to count and include her as a member and an active supporter.

Official court documents recently released show that NIAC, throughout its more than a decade of existence, has had less than 1,200 members. Proving once and for all that Trita Parsi and NIAC lied and intentionally inflated its membership to elevate its position among the US decision makers so as to enable it to advocate for policies favorable to the Islamic Republic in Iran, as accurately claimed by Hassan Dai.

Upon review of NIAC's court documents, a former FBI special agent in counterintelligence and counterterrorism Kenneth Piernick said, “It appears that this may be lobbying on behalf of Iranian government interests. Were I running the counterintelligence program at the bureau now, I would have cause to look into this further. The question is why hasn’t the FBI looked into NIAC further?