Walid Shoebat, a "terrorism expert" with a dubious background who was paid by the U.S. government to train law enforcement in counterterrorism, is frequently cited in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged right-wing terrorist who is accused of killing more than 90 people in Oslo last week. Brevik cites Shoebat more than 15 times.
Brevik cites Shoebat to support his arguments that immigration from Muslim countries threatens the West. "This is why the face of Islamic fundamentalism in the West has a façade that Islam is a peaceful religion," Brevik cites Shoebat as saying, "Because they are waiting to have more Islamic immigrants, they are waiting to increase in number, waiting to increase their political power,"
Shoebat, who is also a columnist for the right-wing birther website WorldNetDaily, bills himself as a reformed "PLO terrorist." But several people have pointed out that there are serious discrepancies in his personal narrative. Hussein Ibish wrote in May that "Nothing about his story is verifiable." An investigation by CNN into Shoebat's background "found no evidence that would support [his] biography." Shoebat has said that "“Islam is not the religion of God — Islam is the devil." Shoebat has also claimed that President Barack Obama is "definitely a Muslim."
Shoebat has been cited favorably in the past by right-wing bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds, and several including Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace and Pajamas Media's PJ Tatler, rose to his defense following CNN's story.
Shoebat has been paid up to $5,000 per appearance, but it is unknown how much the U.S. government has given him in total to provide American law-enforcement officials with this kind of "expertise." The Senate Homeland Security Committee, at the direction of Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins, asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the process for selecting counterterrorism trainers, following a story in The Washington Monthly that found DHS had spent an unknown amount of money hiring anti-Islam "terrorism experts."
