By Allegra Kirkland:
While Gorka, a former Breitbart News national security editor and fixture on Fox News, published the New York Times bestseller “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War,” held various positions at military educational institutions and even testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the threat of “global jihadism,” he was little-known in mainstream D.C. circles before the 2016 election year.
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Omid Safi, director of Islamic Studies at Duke University, was much more biting in his assessment, labeling Gorka’s book “propaganda.”
“He opines on everything from the Koran to Mohamad to jihad to Islamic history to contemporary politics but does so in a way that is inaccurate, sloppy, superficial, bigoted and ideological,” Safi said.
Gorka’s resume details a long list of short-term professorships and work for small conservative think tanks, several of which he founded with his wife, Katharine, a national security analyst who served on Trump’s Department of Homeland Security landing team. The people TPM spoke with who work on counterterrorism issues said they weren’t familiar with those Gorka-founded organizations, including Threat Knowledge Group, a consulting firm that claimed to provide strategic advice to the FBI, Army and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Threat Knowledge Group’s website, like Gorka’s own, has been taken offline since he joined the administration in late January.
Since joining the Trump White House, Gorka has swiftly become the public face of Trump’s foreign policy, making dozens of radio and cable appearances to tout the President’s focus on defeating “radical Islam” via an executive order on immigration. A White House spokeswoman on Wednesday declined to respond to TPM’s request for comment on how experts characterized Gorka’s past work and what his role as deputy assistant to Trump entails.
Gorka’s name and views appear to have a higher profile among experts on Islamophobia than in the counterterrorism community.
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