Conservatives were united in disgust over Chinese Communist influence in the Clinton White House. But conservatives now seem divided over radical Islamic influence in the Bush White House. The matter involves groups sympathetic to the Hamas terrorists who have unleashed suicide bombers on Israel and are threatening to do so against the United States.

The controversy has been covered in the form of a dispute that has broken out between Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. Gaffney has been barred from attending a regular conservative gathering at the headquarters of Norquist’s group because of some comments he made about a Bush White House official.

It’s a strange story made even more curious by virtue of the fact that the Islamic groups with access to the White House are opposed to the administration’s policy on Iraq. They are the American Muslim Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Steven Emerson, the investigative journalist who did the 1994 program on public television called Jihad in America, says both groups support Hamas terrorists. Hamas has carried out suicide bombings in Israel and has now urged Iraq to send thousands of attackers with explosives strapped to their bodies into a war against the West.

Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi said, "We call on the Arabs and Muslims to burn the land under the feet of the American invaders…because this war is not against Iraq, it's against the Islamic nation." More recently, Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin issued a Fatwa, or religious decree, to kill American soldiers if the U.S. attacks. The American Muslim Council acknowledged in a press release that an official named Ali H. Tulbah, the Associate Director of Cabinet Affairs in the Bush White House, invited them to a White House briefing on a "controversial" Immigration and Naturalization Service policy of registering aliens from Muslim and terrorist nations. The council said the policy has "created mounting consternation in the Muslim and Arab American community." Perhaps as a result, the Bush administration extended the deadline for a large number of foreigners who are required to register with immigration officials while in the U.S.

This is precisely what Gaffney had warned about in a speech expressing concern about allowing those groups to meet with White House officials. In the speech he had criticized White House official Tulbah’s role in setting up the meeting. He said such meetings give radical opponents of the administration a chance to water down immigration, law enforcement and intelligence procedures they find objectionable.

Both Islamic groups belong to the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, which gave Norquist an award in July 2001. Its president, Sami Al-Arian, is a former professor based in Florida who was recently indicted for running a terrorist group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He met and was photographed with then-candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign, and attended a White House briefing with Karl Rove after Bush became president.

Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org