America’s First Political Prisoner

In the last eight years we’ve seen many things we thought we’d never see in America. Certainly, we never imagined we’d see political prisoners. I met America’s first one last night, at an event sponsored by Bill Becker’s, FreedomX. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a white haired, grandfatherly Egyptian-American Coptic Christian. This is the man who made the laughably bad video President Obama and Secretary Clinton blamed for Benghazi.

We all know the attacks on Benghazi weren’t caused by “a spontaneous protest of a video”, we all know protestors don’t have rocket launchers, armored trucks, and automatic weapons in their back pockets. None of us believe for a second the White House, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the Pentagon didn’t have real time contact with those on the ground and knew EXACTLY what was happening. We now know Clinton had emailed her daughter that night and told her it was a attack by an Al Queda-like group. The next morning she called the President of Libya and the Egyptian Prime Minster and told them the same thing. Yet, over the coffins of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, Secretary Clinton promised to “get” the man who made the video……Not the terrorists who planned and executed the attacks – no, the gentle, elderly man we met last night.

Kenneth Timmerman, a nationally known investigative reporter, war correspondent and Noble Prize nominee, wrote, “Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi” and “Deception: The making of the YouTube Video Hillary and Obama Blamed for Benghazi. Timmerman spoke about meeting Nakoula after he had written his first Benghazi book. Timmerman ran into Pastor Wiley Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church, who is providing asylum for Nakoula and his family. Timmerman had just written a book on what actually happened in Banghazi, so Pastor Drake arranged a meeting between the two.

Before September 11, 2011, only a few hundred people had even looked at the “Desert Warrior” aka “innocence of Muslims” on YouTube. There was so little interest in the film, when Nakoula rented the Vine Theater on Hollywood Boulevard for a screening, not one person came to see it. Not one. And this was after flyers had been passed out at every place Muslims gathered! Obviously, there wasn’t enough interest for people to see the video, let alone protest it. But after our government blamed Benghazi on the video, it got about a million views a week. Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress in the video, whose face was seen on every news outlet, begged Google to take it down because she was getting death threats. Google spent more than $2 million to keep it up, not in defense of the First Amendment, but to keep the narrative going.

Nakoula was taken into custody by Federal Agents with no charges, no due process, no attorney. I can’t imagine how it would feel to hear the Secretary of State say on television that they would “get” you for making a video. Nakoula is no angel, he had been involved in some sketchy schemes and was on probation, but the Feds manufactured reasons to put him behind bars so they could say they “got the man responsible for Benghazi”. Our government knew who the terrorists were, reporters interviewed at least one of them, but the only one behind bars was an inept, elderly man.

What is remarkable is that Nakoula holds no bitterness or resentment for the treatment he received at the hands of our government. The first thing he said when introduced was that we shouldn’t be afraid because we are in God’s hands. He said he made the video to say we should be fighting the ideology, not the people. His life has been radically changed. Even five years after Benghazi it was necessary for FreedomX to have heavy security at this event with two security guards siting beside Nakoula. His children had to drop out of school for a year due to threats and harassment. He Pastor Drake gave Nakoula asylum because there is a fatwa against the Egyptian.

It should concern us all that our government will go to these lengths to keep the truth of the dangers of Islam from the public. It should also concern us all that it has become necessary for us to have heavy security at any event where the “religion of peace” is discussed.