Remember That Group Behind DVD About Radical Islam?

NPR's Peter Overby has done some new shoe leather reporting on the Clarion Fund, the 501(c)(3) charity that distributed a DVD on radical islam across 14 battleground states the weekend after the 9/11 anniversary. The DVD caused some buzz because voters received it as an insert in their newspapers...and because no one was sure who was behind it. The video was also shown at a free screening in Dearborn, MI, a city with a large Arab-American population.

Now Peter writes:

Critics of the video suspect that it's being deployed as a partisan campaign tool, to play on the false rumors that Democrat Barack Obama is sympathetic to radical Islam. Clarion declined to say if it targeted particular demographic groups in mailing the DVD...And we still don't know how closely Clarion is tied to Aish HaTorah, an international Jewish educational organization with offices in New York. Clarion's incorporation papers share the same address; the PR firm says that's no longer the case.

For more details, check out Vox Politics' sister blog at the Secret Money Project.

-- Nancy Cook

7:59 PM ET | 10- 7-2008 | permalink

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