A Treasury Department probe cast a wider net than previously known, according to NBC News, to collect information on advocacy by multiple American former politicians and officials for a controversial exiled Iranian opposition group. Last Friday, the Washington Times broke the story that former Democratic Party leader and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell’s speakers’ bureau received a subpoena.

The stories relate the former officials’ advocacy to have the Mojahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) — a group with a long and winding history that was founded as an armed revolutionary group in Iran in the 1960s — removed from the U.S. State Department’s list of “foreign terrorist organizations.”

In addition to Rendell, NBC reports, Treasury’s Department of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces sanctions and international financial regulations, also requested records from the speakers’ bureaus of former F.B.I. head Louis Freeh and former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton. Shelton denied wrong doing:

We’re all pretty miffed. None of us involved in this would say a good word about anyone suspected of being a terrorist.

But the MEK is not only suspected to be a terrorist group, they are designated as such by the U.S. government. (That designation is under review because of a court order, but no decision on reinstating or withdrawing it has been forthcoming from the State Department.) An Obama administration official speaking to NBC made the point:

This is about finding out where the money is coming from. This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism.

Many of the some 40 former officials who advocate for the MEK to be delisted receive high speaking fees for speeches to pro-MEK conferences and rallies both in the United States and in Europe, where the leadership of the group is based. Further complicating matters, some of the speakers work with stateside groups that support the MEK, but are not part of the organization itself. The NBC story, however, mentions at least one incident — which it suggests was a catalyst for the wider probe — where the political wing of the MEK, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (also a designated terror group), worked directly with U.S. speakers’ bureaus:

A small Pennsylvania-based speakers firm called Speakers Access wrote an email in September inviting a Washington based national security expert to speak at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland “on behalf of our client, National Council of Resistance of Iran, Foreign Affairs Committee.”

Reporter Justin Elliott, at the time with Salon, broke a similar story in September of a different speakers’ bureau that was offering cash for speaking engagements on behalf of the NCRI.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team claimed last month that they’ve been working hard at brining the former Massachusetts governor up to speed on global affairs. But his ignorance about what has become a lightening rod issue among the foreign policy community raises questions about their work.

As of December, as shown in a YouTube video that has eluded widespread attention, Mitt Romney claimed to not know anything about the Mojahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial, exiled Iranian group listed by the State Department as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Asked during a campaign appearance about the group, Romney said he’d never heard of the group and asked what they were. Told of the MEK’s status, Romney asked indignantly, “Why would you think that I support a — you said it’s a terrorist group?”

As the questioner informed Romney, one of Romney’s foreign policy advisers — former Ambassador Mitchell Reiss — has been active in the very public, well-financed campaign to get the MEK off the terror list. Romney then replied:

I’ll take a look at the issue. I’m not familiar with that particular group, or that effort on the part of any of my team.

Watch the video of the exchange from December:

It might seem like a small and obscure issue, but the MEK has attracted much attention, including paid speeches by top American politicians and former officials here and in Europe, and multiple full-page newspaper adverts. Another Romney backer, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, has advocated forcefully on behalf of the MEK. More recently, NBC News did a long report on the group’s ties to terror activity in Iran. And the Treasury Department recently announced that it is investigating payments to prominent former American government officials to speak in support of the MEK.

Beyond the public attention, the Romney campaign has been engaged in the MEK issue well before his professed ignorance in December. Romney may not have been aware of it, but Reiss’s advocacy for the MEK was used by neoconservatives in the Romney camp to marginalize Reiss.

In a November GOP debate, Romney spoke of using Iranian “insurgent” groups. (The MEK is by far the best organized militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic.) The remark prompted the conservative Daily Caller website to make a number of inquiries to the campaign that went unanswered, and wrote that the campaign wouldn’t “clarify whether he was referring to the MEK, and what his position is on the organization.”

Now that three months have passed, Romney should make clear his grasp of MEK issues — which involve not only matters of Iran and Iraq policy, but also issues of terrorism — and stake out a position on the group. (HT: Matt Duss)

Last Thursday, NBC News reported that the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian opposition group designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department, conducted a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Former CIA official and visiting Georgetown professor Paul Pillar, citing the U.S. government’s definition of terrorism, observed that “with or without confirmation of details of this story, the assassinations are terrorism.” But numerous right-wing pundits and politicians here in the United States — many of whom regularly decry the use of terrorism as a means to political ends — have celebrated the MEK’s alleged attacks.

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that the MEK should be the Time Magazine “person of the year” if they were behind assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

An editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post said on Friday that the MEK deserves a Nobel Peace Prize:

Let’s be frank: Were the MeK to play the critical role in derailing an Iranian bomb, it would be far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a certain president of the United States we could mention.

And Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin justified the MEK’s action and Israel’s alleged role in financing, arming and training the group:

To those who say it is immoral to use those who have employed terrorism, the only reply can be that it would be far worse for Israel’s government to allow such scruples to prevent them from carrying out actions that might stop the Iranians from going nuclear.

Noticeably, the MEK’s defenders chose not to address the NBC report’s other major disclosure. The MEK reportedly worked with Ramzi Yousef, the terrorist behind the first attack on the World Trade Center, to bomb an Iranian shrine, killing at least 26 people.

The NBC report did not go on to substantiate any direct links between the Israeli government and the assassination campaign, and the MEK denied any involvement in the attacks.

Indeed, the MEK’s American supporters find themselves in the increasingly difficult position of lobbying to remove the organization from the State Department’s terror list while openly celebrating the group’s involvement in terrorist attacks.

An exclusive report by NBC News cites two U.S. officials confirming links between an assassination campaign against Iranian scientists and an Iranian exile group designated as a foreign terror organization by the State Department since 1997. Two officials confirmed to NBC that the group, the Paris- and Iraq-based Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), was involved in the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

The State Department designates the MEK as a “foreign terrorist organization,” though the group’s supporters have mounted an aggressive lobbying effort aimed at getting delisted through claims it laid down arms in the early 2000s.

The NBC story cited two U.S. officials linking the MEK to the recent spate of assassinations, and a third who neither confirmed nor denied the allegation:

Two senior U.S. officials confirmed for NBC News the MEK’s role in the assassinations, with one senior official saying, “All your inclinations are correct.” A third official would not confirm or deny the relationship, saying only, “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All the officials denied any U.S. involvement in the assassinations.

The group, through its political wing (which was also added to the State designation), denied any involvement in the latest attacks. A “representative” of the group in Washington also denied involvement.

The NBC report also claimed that Israeli intelligence services “financed, trained and armed” the MEK, though the story did not go on to substantiate any direct links between the Israeli government and the assassination campaign.

The U.S. denial of involvement last month, after the latest killing by a bomb blast in Tehran, was unequivocal: “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, condemning the attacks.

Founded in the mid-1960s as an armed revolutionary group, the MEK fought against the Shah and his U.S. backers — allegedly killing Americans — in the 1970s, but then split with Iran’s clerical leadership in the early 1980s. Eventually, the group ended up based in Paris and Iraq, where, from the latter location, it was helped by Saddam Hussein to raise arms against Iran during the war between the two countries. Since 1997, when such designations were introduced, the MEK has been considered a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department. As many as 3,400 members of the group, which it claims are former fighters who laid down their arms in the early 2000s, are still based in Iraq.

Last week, former CIA director and NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden shared that during the George W. Bush administration “the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.” But in a radio interview yesterday, ex-CIA director James Woolsey pushed in the opposite direction, calling on the Obama administration to consider military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) facilities.

Woolsey, who served as President Bill Clinton’s CIA director from 1993 to 1995, told Aaron Klein, the Jerusalem bureau chief of the right-wing WorldNetDaily, that IRGC facilities and “anything that is related to the thugs that are oppressing the Iranian people” were “fair game” for attacks if Iran moves to close the Strait of Hormuz:

Let it be known that if there is a closing of the Straits of Hormuz or any other aggressive action by Iran — after all we went to war in 1812 over something just about like what Iran says it’s going to do, close the Straits — if we see that [...] virtually nothing that is tied to the Revolutionary Guard is out of our sights.

Woolsey went on to compare the IRGC to “a combination of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Black Shirts” and declared:

If we let it be known that we’re going to be able to do what unfortunately Britain and France were unable to do in [19]36, ’37, ’38, which would be to take out Hitler’s regime. If we let it be known that we can do that in Iran, then I think we’ll be in a much stronger position.

But Woolsey is no stranger to staking out hawkish U.S. foreign policy positions. Last year, he spoke in support of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian exile group currently listed on the U.S. government’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations for its role in the killing of six Americans in the 1970s. Woolsey also serves as chair of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and advocated for the invasion of Iraq through his involvement with the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Woolsey told Klein that the U.S. should send four to five aircraft carriers to the Indian Ocean to retaliate against Iran if it decides to close the Strait of Hormuz — the U.S. has 11 carrier strike groups — and suggested that Obama should emulate Teddy Roosevelt who dispatched the Great White Fleet to circumnavigate the globe for two years.

Indeed, Iran’s nuclear program is comprised of some troubling components. Last week, the IAEA expressed concern that elements of the program could suggest the development of nuclear weapons and the European Union just announced an oil embargo against Iran, banning all new oil contracts with Tehran. But Woolsey is setting himself apart from a growing number of retired American and Israeli intelligence chiefs expressing reservations about the rush to military action against Iran.

As ThinkProgress noted in August, one of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s top foreign policy advisers has taken an active role in a campaign of advocacy for a controversial Iranian exile group listed by the State Department as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO).

Mitchell Reiss, a former Bush administration State Department official, has spoken at events and moderated at least two panels making the case that the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a formerly-Islamic Marxist armed revolutionary group now claiming to renounce violence and preaching democracy, should be removed from the U.S. terror rolls.

On Thursday, Reiss made the announcement of formal foreign policy advisers to the campaign that Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy described as a “shadow National Security Council.”

Also Thursday morning, Reiss’s name conspicuously appeared in the Washington Post — but not in a news article. Instead, he was listed among the signatories to a paid, full-page advertisement (PDF) by a British group supporting the U.S. de-listing the MEK as a terrorist group. In an “Open Letter to President Obama,” the signatories urged Obama to “Delist the MEK (PMOI) Now” and to “Protect Camp Ashraf” — the camp inside Iraq where more than 3,000 of the group’s former-fighters live.

Here’s a photo of the signatories:

Both Reiss and the Romney camp at large have been less than forthcoming about their relationships with the MEK. Here are a few questions intrepid reporters should press them on at availabilities:

- Many of the other signatories listed to today’s Post ad have admitted being paid huge sums of money for speaking appearances both before the group itself at rallies in Europe and at Washington panels where close associates of the group advocate for their delisting. Has Reiss been paid for any of his appearances?

- Several commentators have raised questions about whether or not some of the advocacy for a designated terror group crosses the line into “material support for terror.” This is particularly true since the Supreme Court found an expansive definition of “material support” in Holder vs. the Humanitarian Law Project, where “coordinated” speech with terror groups was prohibited. Georgetown law professor David Cole observed that “(b)y ‘coordinated,’ [Chief Justice John Roberts] seemed to mean speech that involves some kind of direct contact with the group in question.” Has Reiss had any contact with the MEK either with the leadership in Paris or the former-fighters in Camp Ashraf?

- Lastly, though Romney seems to have a position on Iran (largely defined by attacking Obama’s policies), he has yet to stake out a position on the MEK itself. It seems clear that with a two-time campaign foreign policy adviser is a staunch supporter of the group. So where does Romney stand on delisting the MEK and giving them American government support as an Iranian opposition group?

This week on Fox News, anchors Bill O’Reilly and John Stossel discussed former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s advocacy for the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian opposition group designated as a “foreign terror organization” by the State Department. The leadership of the group is based in Paris, while more than 3,000 former fighters linger in Camp Ashraf — a base set up outside Baghdad in the 1980s when the group allied with Saddam Hussein against Iran — where they face violent harassment by the Iraqi authorities.

O’Reilly and Stossel went through some background about the group and Dean’s history of paid speeches advocating for their removal from the terror rolls and U.S. recognition of the group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, as the president of Iran.

Their history is shoddy. For example, Stossel blames the group’s U.S. designation solely on acts committed in the 1970s, which he says were carried out by a “nasty fringe” and occurred “30, 40 years ago.” But the MEK only renounced violence in 2001 and fighters were separated from their tanks in Camp Ashraf only in 2003. The U.S. government actually directly accuses the MEK of carrying out terrorist acts as recently as the late 1990s.

But the really staggering ignorance on the part of Stossel is his misunderstanding of the statutes that criminalize material support for groups designated as terrorists. Stossel compares Dean’s paid speeches advocating for the MEK to speeches on behalf of medical industry groups and Stossel’s own paid speeches. O’Reilly, to his credit, pushes back:

O’REILLY: He’s lobbying, and he’s getting paid by this group, Dean, to…

STOSSEL: We don’t know that he’s lobbying for them. He’s made speeches for them, but so has Rudy Giuliani.

O’REILLY: Come on. Why would these guys do that unless they were getting paid?

STOSSEL: Because they say, “Oh, we have Howard Dean speaking here in Belgium. Come over and meet Howard Dean.”

O’REILLY: That’s right. And Dean wouldn’t do that unless they were greasing him.

STOSSEL: Right. They’re greasing him.

O’REILLY: Yes, so he’s getting money from these people.

STOSSEL: So? I make speeches for money.

O’REILLY: Yes.

STOSSEL: If he checked them out and he believes…

O’REILLY: You do the chamber of commerce in Toledo. Not the Muhajadeen.

STOSSEL: If I believed in their cause, as he says he does.

O’REILLY: Oh, yes, he believes in their cause. Socialized medicine people? That’s what he believes in.

STOSSEL: He’s also taken money to change the patent rules for pharmaceutical companies. I don’t blame him for doing that.

O’REILLY: Dean is a lobbyist now, that’s what he does. And he gets paid by MSNBC.

Watch the whole exchange:

Stossel’s defense closely mirrors that of Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend (a paid CNN contributor), who argued after they were accused of material support for terrorism that they didn’t consider the MEK to be a terror group.

That Dean was paid by the group — or more accurately, American supporters of the group (if that’s indeed the case) — is less important than whether or not he made what is considered speech that was “coordinated” with the group. Having spoken to actual MEK rallies in Europe alongside Rajavi, that is a difficult defense for Dean and other paid or unpaid advocates to make. (This is not to say one shouldn’t be able to speak in favor of delisting the MEK, or that they do not deserve today to be delisted, but simply that until they are delisted, the laws on the matter are clear.)

But one does not simply get to choose which laws they follow and which designations they recognize. In a nation where the rule of law matters, it needs to be applied equally to all violators, irrespective of what they or others feel about it. That’s why the false comparison between the MEK and the Toledo Chamber of Commerce is so staggering.