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Nafeez Ahmed investigates how Dr Haroon Ullah was ousted from a key role in US Government communications by ‘Trump-driven Islamophobia’
This is the untold story of the Donald Trump administration’s internal propaganda war – of how one senior American Muslim official stood in the way of a plan to convert the US Government’s global media network into a propaganda organ for the President’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. And as a result, the Government did everything in its power to destroy that individual, as an example to others.
His case is an astonishing example of the degree to which the Trump administration has sought to purge all ranks of governmental bureaucracy to ensure top-down loyalty.
Dr Haroon Ullah was once the American Government’s highest-ranking Muslim counter-extremism official. But, in November 2019, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for “stealing” $34,000 from the US Government, derived largely from travel expenses.
With the Trump administration turning a blind eye to officials such as Scott Pruit, Ryan Zinke and Tom Price as they spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on unlawful travel, the Government’s determination to put Dr Ullah in jail involved far more than meets the eye.
Former and active USAGM officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation said that they believed Haroon’s downfall was the beginning of an effort by the Trump administration to turn the USAGM into a de facto mouthpiece for Steve Bannon.
Byline Times can exclusively reveal that the prosecution’s case against Dr Haroon Ullah was not only fundamentally flawed but that the prosecution itself was under high-level political pressure to put him in prison.
Former US Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, Haroon’s former boss, had told Trump administration investigators that their leading lines of questioning about Dr Ullah “reminded him of the Bush-McCain campaign during which McCain was accused of fathering an African-American child in South Carolina. Voters are asked if that changed how they voted”.
Indeed, Haroon’s prosecution was simply the beginning of a wider effort by the Trump administration to consolidate control of the US Agency for Global Media (UASGM) –the executive agency which operates all of America’s state-run media outlets.
With an annual budget just under $1 billion and a staff of 4,000 employees and 1,500 reporters, the USAGM hosts the full gamut of US Government international broadcasting operations, including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
Next in Line
Dr Ullah had joined the agency in October 2017 as its chief strategy officer (CSO), making him its highest-ranking Muslim official. An articulate speaker, he was already on track to become the face of the agency. He had played a key role in the agency’s major rebrand away from its old name (the Broadcasting Board of Governors) and had impressed senior officials with outreach activities to think tanks and other Government departments.
By August 2018, he was in line to become second-in-command, beating out several other white contenders in the interview process for the coveted post of deputy director. According to a former USAGM employee who spoke to Byline Times on condition of anonymity, many recognised Dr Ullah as “next in line or at least among a select few who’d be in the running to lead the organisation one day”.
But the Trump administration had other plans. In June 2018, two months before Dr Ullah was making an upward beeline at the agency, the White House had announced President Trump’s intention to appoint Michael Pack as the USAGM’s new CEO. The decision was an indication that the Trump administration wanted to reshape the USAGM under a new, pro-Republican agenda.
Steve Bannon was reportedly “deeply involved” in getting Trump to nominate his friend Pack – a veteran media executive who had previously collaborated with Bannon on two documentaries. Previously, from 2015 to 2017, Pack had served as president and CEO of the Claremont Institute, described by Slate as “a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right” for its affiliations with Pizzagate and Barack Obama birther theories.
Fast forward to November 2019, and Dr Ullah was convicted for theft of government property by fraudulently filing forged invoices, letters and documents and sentenced to three months in prison.
While there can be no doubt that Haroon broke the law and breached the trust inherent in his role as a public servant, court records, official documents and Government sources reviewed by Byline Times reveal that the case against him was heavily overinflated – and that his wrongdoing in 2018 was a result of temporary lapses in judgement due to extraordinary psychological pressures from a career fighting Islamist militants, which the prosecution simply ignored.
Former and active USAGM officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation said that they believed Haroon’s downfall was the beginning of an effort by the Trump administration to turn the USAGM into a de facto mouthpiece for Steve Bannon.
“It’s hard to not draw a link between the seeming over-prosecution of Haroon’s case and Haroon’s official work to protect the independence of the agency and its news networks from the administration’s efforts to influence the agency,” said one senior USAGM official.
After Dr Ullah was gone from the agency, US Government sources confirmed that over the next few months some three other USAGM officials were intimidated out of the organisation for political reasons. And, about six months after Haroon’s conviction, Trump’s nominee, Michael Pack, was confirmed as the new CEO.
As soon as he arrived, Pack accelerated a ‘purge’ of top USAGM executives in an effort to eliminate any firewall between the White House and Government news entities.
Unto the Breach
Dr Haroon Ullah’s conviction – triumphantly announced by Trump’s Justice Department in a press release – was a spectacular fall from grace for the former career State Department official who had held senior roles in both the Barack Obama and Trump administrations.
Before joining USAGM, Dr Ullah had been a member of the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff, serving under Rex Tillerson where he specialised in counter-extremism and public diplomacy. Yet he was by no means a Trump loyalist.
A practising Muslim, Dr Ullah had risen up the ranks in the Obama administration, where he had been an advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry. Before that, he cut his teeth in the State Department, setting up America’s first countering violent extremism unit in the US Embassy in Pakistan. His work was renowned among US Government counter-terrorism experts.
When he first joined the USAGM in October 2017 as its chief strategy officer, the appointment ruffled the feathers of pro-Republican staffers at the agency who had been there much longer.
Qamar ul-Huda, a former senior policy advisor at the US State Department who had served under John Kerry and during the first seven months of the Trump administration, told Byline Times: “I know three USAGM officials, all of whom are Republicans – and who are much older than Haroon – who felt threatened by him. It’s not unusual for those assigned senior positions by Trump to bring their own people in. They wanted the agency to reflect Trump.
“I don’t know if it was a concerted effort. I do think Haroon may have come across as a Democrat loyalist – and they had to find a way to scrutinise his record. Rejigging and realignment of bureaucracies with a new administration is fairly standard. But, in Haroon’s case, it seemed to me that this was to some degree personal – someone at the agency was really gunning to get him.”
Haroon is one of a very select group of individuals who know how to defeat ISIL 3.0, which is already on the horizon. We need Haroon Ullah to help our country now and for many decades to come
General John Allen
Two former and one current USAGM source confirmed widespread jealousy over Dr Ullah’s rapid ascent. The agency was far behind corporate America and other government agencies like the State Department or USAID in the diversity stakes. In August 2018, the same month that Haroon was applying for the deputy director role, a veteran pro-Trump staffer who had wanted the same role but had been turned down complained that Dr Ullah was billing the Government for personal travel.
“He was one of the few people of colour in the USAGM C Suite,” said a former USAGM staffer. “He was a target because he was rising fast as a Muslim and many people had been there decades and felt they deserved it more.”
When USAGM authorities looked into it, they flagged up a handful of hotel invoices for talks that Dr Ullah had given. He was accused of falsifying the invoices so that he could claim expenses for personal travel “either to promote his book, or for weekend trips during which little to no USAGM business was conducted”.
But part of Dr Ullah’s job at the agency was to speak to different audiences and stakeholders about USAGM’s work. His speaking engagements on behalf of USAGM received wide praise internally, including from the CEO, and he travelled extensively on behalf of the agency to talk about its mission to counter disinformation – his own area of expertise.
Byline Times obtained detailed materials about Dr Ullah’s talks and presentation slides for the events identified by the prosecution, all confirming that they heavily promoted and explained USAGM’s work. In these cases, the Trump administration claimed that the invoices were double-billed because Dr Ullah’s accommodation was being paid for by third parties. But he would routinely file invoices months at a time, and only two of them related to third parties. When he had filed these, he had not been reimbursed by the third parties.
The alleged irregularities were used by senior USAGM officials to justify opening up a wider prolonged investigation into Dr Ullah’s expenses. In doing so, however, there was a clear agenda. Rather than investigating to determine what had happened, the course of the investigation attempted to select as much evidence as possible to incriminate Dr Ullah while systematically ignoring exculpatory evidence.
Ignoring Medical Evidence
The prosecution’s most damning finding was that Dr Ullah had justified business-class flight upgrades for his travel by filing a falsified doctor’s note referring to a damaged knee, including a forged signature.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” he told Byline Times. “It was wrong, stupid, and indefensible. It was one of many terrible lapses in judgement that year – but I was not attempting to defraud the US Government. If I’d simply taken the time to get my doctor to write the note, I would have been entitled to those flight expenses. But instead I lied to rush it through myself.”
Documents seen by Byline Times indicated time and again that disputed flights were taken in Dr Ullah’s official capacity on behalf of USAGM, and that his medical condition justifying the upgrades was quite real.
Medical records confirm that, in 2018, Dr Ullah was undergoing an intensive programme of physical therapy – funded by health insurance paid for by the US Government – due to a serious knee injury which meant that remaining seated for more than an hour would cause him significant pain. As the months went on, his condition improved and he was able to sit a few hours longer. The medical records confirm that, during the period from March and October 2018, when he upgraded to business-class, his knee injury required him to avoid sitting for too long to avoid pain and further injury. The vast bulk of the expenses that the prosecution categorised as stolen were accounted for by these flight upgrades.