Bus and Driver: Inadequate Vetting Edition

Bus and driver rolls on, and over, Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who Barack Obama's campaign had picked to be its Muslim outreach director.

Too bad Asbahi had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamists.

The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which is published by a Washington think tank and chronicles the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group based in Egypt. Other Web sites, some pro-Republican and others critical of fundamentalist Islam, also have reported on the background of Mr. Asbahi. He is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Justice Department named Mr. Said an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial. He has also been identified as a leading member of the group in news reports going back to 1993.

Mr. Said is the imam at the Bridgeview Mosque in Bridge-view, Ill., outside Chicago. He left the board of the Islamic fund in 2005, Securities and Exchange Commission filings state. A message left for Mr. Said at the mosque was not returned.

Allied Asset Advisors is a subsidiary of the North American Islamic Trust. The trust, which is supported financially by the government of Saudi Arabia, holds title to many mosques in the U.S. and promotes a conservative brand of Islam compatible with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and also akin to the fundamentalist style predominant in Saudi Arabia. Allied executives did not respond to inquiries.

The Obama campaign failed to vet Asbahi, and it took outside sources to expose his links to radical Islamists and unindicted coconspirators. Expect those vetters to be tossed under the bus as well for exposing Obama to yet more ridicule.

This is just a taste of the kind of experience and ethical operations that Obama would bring to the White House. It also shows what happens the moment Obama realizes that you no longer provide Obama any utility.