Former IRI President: McCain personally supported grants for mainstream Khalidi group

by: Salaam

Mon Nov 03, 2008 at 18:51:59 PM EST

As I'm sure most readers know by now, Khalidi is the Palestinian American scholar and director of Columbia University's Middle East Institute who Senator McCain recently compared to a "neo-Nazi." McCain's camp has also claimed that Khalidi was a spokesman for former PLO leader Yasir Arafat, though there is no evidence this is true. As my colleague Scott Horton noted:

The McCain-Khalidi connections are more substantial than the phony Obama-Khalidi connections...The Republican party's congressionally funded international-networking organization, the International Republican Institute-long and ably chaired by John McCain and headed by McCain's close friend, the capable Lorne Craner-has taken an interest in West Bank matters. IRI funded an ambitious project, called the Palestine Center, that Khalidi helped to support. Khalidi served on the Center's board of directors. The goal of that project, shared by Khalidi and McCain, was the promotion of civic consciousness and engagement and the development of democratic values in the West Bank.

Consider here, too, the recollections of R. Bruce McColm, who was the president of the International Republican Institute (IRI) - appointed to his post with strong support from John McCain - when it first granted money to Khalidi's group. In an email today, McColm told me:

All our [grant] proposals had to be approved at board meetings with John McCain in attendance and in agreement. John did think highly of these grants. ... Ironically, it was Khalidi's academic background and his known coolness to the PLO that attracted our interest. How strange to see the McCain campaign use Khalidi as a "type of terrorist" with whom Obama hangs around.

Story here.