(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01183)) against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seeking access to records detailing a February 2012 meeting between FBI Director Robert Mueller and Muslim organizations. Judicial Watch is also investigating the FBI’s subsequent controversial decision to purge the agency’s training curricula of material deemed “offensive” to Muslims.

On March 7, 2012, Judicial Watch submitted FOIA requests to the FBI and the DOJ seeking access to records concerning or relating to a February 8, 2012, meeting between FBI Director Robert Mueller and various Islamic organizations.

Judicial Watch seeks “any and all records setting criteria or guidelines for FBI curricula on Islam or records identifying potentially offensive material within the FBI curricula on Islam,” as well as any directives to withdraw FBI presentations and curricula on Islam. Judicial Watch also seeks records of communications between the Office of the Attorney General and several entities, including the Obama White House, the Executive Office of the President, and Muslim organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Council for American-Islamic Relations regarding the FBI’s curricula on Islam.

The FBI acknowledged receipt of Judicial Watch’s FOIA request on March 20, 2012, and was required to respond by May 1, 2012.  The DOJ acknowledged receiving Judicial Watch’s FOIA request on March 14, 2012, and was required to respond by April 11, 2012. To date, neither agency has responded to Judicial Watch’s request in accordance with FOIA law.

FBI Director Robert Mueller reportedly met secretly on February 8, 2012, at FBI headquarters with a coalition of Islamist organizations, some with radical ties to terrorist organizations. For example, per The Washington Examiner, one group that reportedly met with Mueller – the Islamic Society of North America – “was tied to the terror groups Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in federal court documents.” The government named the Islamic Society of North America as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing lawsuit, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the North American Islamic Trust.

During the February 8 meeting, Mueller reportedly assured the Islamic groups in attendance that the agency had ordered the removal of presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that were deemed “offensive.” As reported by NPR, overall, “The FBI has completed a review of offensive training material and has purged 876 pages and 392 presentations, according to a briefing provided to lawmakers.”

The material purge was reportedly initiated in response to a letter of complaint sent by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). However, other members of Congress, including Rep. Allen West (R-FL), object to allowing radical Muslim organizations the opportunity to dictate U.S. counterterrorism policy and want the material to be reinserted into the documents: “Now you have an environment of political correctness which precludes these agents from doing their proper job and due diligence to go after the perceived threat,” Congressman West said.

“There is no question that the country is less safe when we allow radical Muslim organizations to tell the FBI how to train its agents and do its job,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI’s purge of so called offensive material is political correctness run amok and it puts the nation at risk. The Obama administration owes the American people a full accounting of how and why his terrible decision was made.”

This could not have come at a worse time considering gang violence in the United States is at an all-time high. In fact, the latest annual gang threat assessment issued by the agency—National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC)—on the chopping block is downright alarming. It says that gangs are responsible for nearly half of all violent crimes in most parts of the country and up to 90% in many jurisdictions. That’s because there are over 33,000 active gangs in the U.S. with some 1.4 million members, according to the NGIC.

To help curb the growth of gangs and related criminal activity, Congress directed the FBI to establish the NGIC in 2005. It’s a multi-agency operation that combines the efforts of several federal and local agencies working together to tackle a crisis. According to its website, the NGIC integrates gang intelligence from across federal, state and local law enforcement on the growth, migration, criminal activity and association of gangs that pose a significant threat to the nation.

Why, then, would FBI Chief Robert Mueller eliminate the NGIC? A conservative news website uncovered Muller’s plan because a congressman grilled him about it at a House Appropriations Committee hearing this week. That’s where government agency heads go for money each year. It turns out that the FBI’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal calls for the elimination of the NGIC, which has more than a dozen positions and an annual budget of nearly $8 million.

That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions that have been wasted under the president’s fraud-infested $787 billion stimulus, which he vowed would jumpstart the economy and put Americans back to work. Instead, much of the cash has gone to unthinkable things like a genitalia-washing program for uncircumcised African men, international ant research and a Pennsylvania “tunnel to nowhere.” Click here to read Judicial Watch’s stimulus fraud reporting.

Bless the FBI for trying to save taxpayers money. In its 2013 budget proposal the bureau assures that nixing the NGIC won’t hinder its ability to counter the threat posed to the U.S. by criminal gangs. The congressman challenging the NGIC’s closure, Frank Wolf of Virginia, struck back with a rather interesting statement indicating that the White House was behind the plan.

“We received a revised version of your testimony late yesterday that the OMB [the White House’s Office of Management and Budget] inserted language making the absurd claim that the elimination of the National Gang Intelligence Center – $7.8 million and 15 positions – will not hinder the FBI’s ability to perform the analytical work done there,” Wolf said to the FBI chief.

Could this be part of a bigger Obama plan to pander to Latinos in an effort to earn that crucial Hispanic vote in the upcoming election? After all, it’s been well documented that most violent gangbangers in the U.S. are, either Hispanic or illegal immigrants.

It’s a government-wide call to end Islamophobia, if you will. A few months after the White House ordered an investigation of government counterterrorism training, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has destroyed instructional material that characterizes Muslims as prone to violence or terrorism.

So far 700 pages of documents from about 300 presentations given to agents since the 2001 terrorist attacks have been purged, according to a news report published this week. The White House order came after the same publication reported in late November that the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ) and Pentagon taught employees that mainstream Muslims embrace violence and compared the Islamic religion to the death star.

Last year Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that anti-Muslim instructional materials hurt the country’s fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. As a result of this mentality, the Joint Chiefs of Staff was asked to collect counterterrorism training materials at all military academies and academic centers such as the National Defense Intelligence College and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center. The goal, evidently, is to banish any material that could be viewed as offensive to Muslims.

To fulfill the mission the FBI enlisted the Army Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to purge material that conflates terrorism with mainstream Islam, according to inside information cited in the news report. The cleansing also includes a White House review on any information related to “cultural awareness” training for troops that were preparing to deploy to the Middle East.

This appears to be part of a wider Muslim outreach effort on the part of the Obama Administration and the president’s allies in Congress. Last spring, for instance, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee quietly scheduled a special hearing to better protect Muslim civil rights in America. Organized by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the event came in “response to the spike in anti-Muslim bigotry” and marked the first ever congressional hearing on Muslim civil rights.

Other Muslim outreach efforts under Obama include; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano meeting to discuss national security matters with a group of extremist Muslim organizations, the nation’s space agency (NASA) being ordered to focus on Muslim diplomacy and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signing a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S.

The president also sent an America-bashing mosque leader (Feisal Abdul Rauf) who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks on a Middle Eastern outreach mission and ordered a government-funded meal program for home-bound seniors to offer halal cuisine prepared according to Islamic law.

After all, Obama and his top aides—including Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett—were prominently mentioned at both of Blagojevich’s federal trials in Chicago because he was charged with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Obama got elected president. For all intents and purposes it was one of the biggest political scandals of modern times.

The nation’s commander-in-chief and his top aides were subpoenaed (only Emanuel testified) as were records associated with the mystery FBI interview, which took place after Blagojevich got criminally indicted. In the end, Blagojevich got convicted of 18 corruption charges and, this week, was sentenced to 14 years in prison, making him the fourth Illinois governor in recent history to serve time.

Throughout the scandal, the White House has insisted the president had nothing to do with Blagojevich. However, in 2009 Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Illinois Governor’s Office that prove Obama and Blagojevich had repeated contact after Obama became president. They include a letter from Obama to Blagojevich less than a week before the crooked governor’s arrest.

Judicial Watch has a long-standing public-records request to access the now famous FBI interviews with Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett relating to Blagojevich’s corruption case. The “most transparent” administration in history has refused to make the information available and has also denied requests to explain the president’s involvement in the Blagojevich scandal or the nature of the FBI interrogations.

What we do know is that court testimony at both trials (the jury hung the first time and Blagojevich was retried) indicates that Obama was embroiled in the scandal. Judicial Watch covered both trials in the same Chicago federal courtroom where witness after witness indicated top-level White House involvement in the Senate-appointment scheme.

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