Morocco Lobby Watch: The Disappearing Expert Sources at MACP

It is interesting to note the transformation of the Moroccan American Center for Policy’s (MACP) list of “expert sources” since I first took a look at that list back on February 27.  Here again is the original list on their website, Morocco on the Move:

Dr. J. Peter Pham, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center

Professor Yonah Alexander, Director of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies’ International Center for Terrorism Studies

Leila Hanafi, Staff Attorney and Programs Manager, The World Justice Project

Professor I. William Zartman, Professor Emeritus, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University

Professor Lahcen Haddad, Morocco Country Representative, Management Systems International

Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel (ret.), President, Moroccan American Center

Jean R. AbiNader, Executive Director of the Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center

Robert M. Holley, Executive Director, Moroccan American Center for Policy

The current list reads:

Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel (ret.), President, Moroccan American Center

Jean R. AbiNader, Executive Director of the Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center

Jordan C. Paul, Executive Director, Moroccan American Center for Policy

Robert M. Holley,Senior Policy Advisor, Moroccan American Center for Policy

Leila Hanafi and Lahcen Haddad were the first to go, disappearing from the list within a couple weeks after my post. Pham, Alexander, and Zartman hung in there a bit longer. While I can’t say that I’ve been regularly monitoring the list, I noticed their welcome departure today. I would like to think that even this group of rabidly pro-Moroccan academics and pundits realized that association with the MACP’s cabal of paid Moroccan agents, lobbyists, and stooges was not a really bright idea.

The current list also includes one notable addition. Apparently to celebrate his recent elevation from Director of Government Affairs to Executive Director of the MACP, Jordan C. Paul now makes the list. As if to flaunt his cojones as the new alpha dog of the Morocco lobby, Paul recently emerged from the shadows of Holley and Gabriel with a particularly strident and typically dishonest article on Globalpost.com (Why Are We Perpetuating a Source of Instability in North Africa?). In a nutshell, the article is a feeble attempt to pin all the ills of the Maghreb on the Polisario Front by conjuring up an imaginary alliance between the Polisario and Al Qaeda-linked terrorism.