Did Israel lobby task force on Egypt
meet with Salafis under false pretenses?
Maidhc Ó Cathail, The Passionate Attachment, Dec 4 2012

During the Q&A at a recent WINEP policy forum luncheon to discuss areport by WINEP’s bipartisan Task Force on the Future of US-Egypt Relations entitled “Engagement without Illusions: Building an Interest-Based Relationship with the New Egypt,” a questioner may have inadvertently revealed one of secrets to the Israel lobby’s extraordinary access to avowed enemies of the Jewish state in the Middle East. Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment, who apparently kept bumping into WINEP’s Robert Satloff and the report’s authors Vin Weber and Gregory Craig during their fact-finding trip to Egypt, remarked in passing:

And by the way, the Salafis, those three very endearing guys who looked about 15 years old, thought you were a delegation from the White House. I don’t know what you told them.

The panel didn’t make the audience any wiser, but their hearty laughter at the revelation spoke volumes. The exchange begins around the 1:14:00 mark.