Center for Security Policy
The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is a US far-right,[5][6] anti-Muslim,[7][8] Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The founder and former president of the organization was Frank J. Gaffney Jr. (now Executive Chairman). The current president since January 1, 2023 is Tommy Waller, a former US Marine.[9] CSP sometimes operates under its DBA[b] name Secure Freedom.[c][4] The organization also operates a public counter-jihad campaign and the website counterjihad.com.[10]
For the think tank based in Geneva, Switzerland, see Geneva Centre for Security Policy.Abbreviation
CSP
1988
52-1601976
defense policy think tank
- PMB 189
- 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
- Washington, D.C. 20006-1811
- United States
Tommy Waller[a]
$1,831,582[4]
$4,700,851[4]
Controversy[edit]
The Center and Gaffney have been criticized for propagating conspiracy theories by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post,[29] Simon Maloy of Salon,[30] CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen,[15] Grover Norquist,[31] Jonathan Kay,[32] Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding,[33] Center for American Progress,[34] Media Matters for America,[35] the Southern Poverty Law Center,[18] The Intercept,[36] the Anti-Defamation League,[37] and the Institute for Southern Studies,[38] among others. Gaffney has been described as an influential member of the counter-jihad movement,[39] and the CPS has been described as "arguably the most important" counter-jihad advocacy group.[40]
In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labeled the CSP as a hate group and a "conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement",[41][42][43] a characterization disputed by the CSP.[44] SPLC representatives have characterized the CSP as "an extremist think tank" and suggested that it is led by an "anti-muslim conspiracy theorist."[45][25] The SPLC further criticizes CSP's "investigative reports", saying that they are designed "to reinforce [Frank] Gaffney's delusions".[18]
One of the CSP's "Occasional Papers" accused Huma Abedin, then Hillary Clinton's aide, of being an undercover spy for the Muslim Brotherhood.[18] On June 13, 2012, Republican members of Congress Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland, sent a letter to the State Department Inspector General including accusations against Abedin cited to the CSP. The letter and the CSP's accusation were widely denounced as a smear, and achieved "near-universal condemnation", including from several prominent Republicans such as John McCain, John Boehner, Scott Brown, and Marco Rubio.[32][38][46]
Writing in Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner described the organization as "a far-right think tank whose president, Frank Gaffney, was banned from the CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference] ... because its organizers believed him to be a 'crazy bigot'".[47] The Center for Democratic Values at Queens College, City University of New York has said the center is among the "key players in the Sharīʿah cottage industry", which it describes as a "conspiracy theory" that claims the existence of "secretive power elite groups that conspire to replace sovereign nation-states in order to eventually rule the world".[48]
In March 1995, William M. Arkin, a reporter and commentator on military affairs, criticized the CSP's Gaffney as a "maestro of bumper-sticker policy" who "specializes in intensely personal attacks" and who has "never met a flag-waving, pro-defense, anti-Democratic idea he didn't like."[14] Gaffney has also generated controversy for writing in 2010 that the logo of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency "appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo" and was part of a "worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam".[20][49]
