Com­ment: The Bush admin­is­tra­tion hired Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to work on behalf of the U.S. on two tours in 2006, 2007. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has con­tin­ued the trend, employ­ing him on a tour of the Mid­dle East at the moment.

In FTR #721, we not­ed con­ti­nu­ity between the Bush and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tions with regard to employ­ment of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ele­ments by the State Depart­ment and the CIA.

“ ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Imam Was a Bush-era Part­ner for Mideast Peace” by Megan Car­pen­tier; Talk­ing Points Memo; 8/12/2010.

Excerpt: . . . . If one were to hear­ken back to the hal­cy­on days of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, one would remem­ber that, when Bush advis­er Karen Hugh­es was appoint­ed Under­sec­re­tary of State for Pub­lic Diplo­ma­cy, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion saw improv­ing Amer­i­ca’s stand­ing among Mus­lims abroad as a part of its nation­al secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy. And, as such, Hugh­es set up lis­ten­ing tours, attend­ed meet­ings and worked with inter­faith groups that — shock­ing, by today’s Repub­li­can stan­dards — includ­ed actu­al Mus­lims.

One of those peo­ple was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

Con­tem­po­rary press accounts indi­cate that Rauf and Hugh­es were part of the Feb­ru­ary 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. He was part of a del­e­ga­tion that met with her in March 2006 and held a joint press con­fer­ence. A let­ter to then-Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleez­za Rice in Novem­ber 2007 indi­cates that con­tacts with Hugh­es and Under Sec­re­tary for Polit­i­cal Affairs Nicholas Burns had con­tin­ued apace. . . .