Ted Cruz appoints anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist as security adviser

WEST COLUMBIA, SC - MARCH 14: Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) talks with organizer Frank Gaffney after addressing the South Carolina National Security Action Summit on March 14, 2015 in West Columbia, South Carolina. (Photo by Richard Ellis/Getty Images) less WEST COLUMBIA, SC - MARCH 14: Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) talks with organizer Frank Gaffney after addressing the South Carolina National Security Action Summit on March 14, 2015 in West Columbia, South Carolina. ... more Image 1 of / 21 Caption Close Ted Cruz appoints anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist as security adviser 1 / 21 Back to Gallery

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is taking fire for a controversial placement on his campaign's freshly released roster of national security advisers.

Among 23 right-leaning former government officials and think tank personnel named Thursday in Cruz's "national security coalition," there was Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration assistant secretary of defense who lost credit in political circles for his fervent promotion of conspiracy theories and his radical anti-Islam inclinations.

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"Once a respectable Washington insider, Frank Gaffney Jr. is now one of America's most notorious Islamophobes," wrote the Southern Poverty Law Center in its profile of Gaffney, who it dubbed an extremist. "Gripped by paranoid fantasies about Muslims destroying the West from within."

Most prominently, Gaffney helped propagate the narrative that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, lying to Americans about his faith.

But his list of unsubstantiated anti-Muslim allegations goes on. After Gaffney was barred from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2011, he announced the event had been infiltrated by Islamic fundamentalists trying to bring the U.S. under Koranic law.

Also in 2011, he alleged on his radio show that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was guilty of "treason" for allowing the appointment of a Muslim lawyer as a judge.

In a 2009 interview on NBC, Gaffney alleged that Saddam Hussein was behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Gaffney heads the Washington D.C.-based Center for Security Policy. In June, the CSP released a widely discredited study, which found that a quarter of American Muslims supported violence against the United States.

That study became a crucial piece of supporting evidence behind GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's call to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.

When Trump cited the CSP study in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper in December, Tapper said, "Donald, we wouldn't even put that poll on the air. It's a hack organization with a guy who was dismissed from the conservative circles for conspiracy theories. You know that."

The Cruz campaign's main national security adviser, who has raised eyebrows for her credentials in art history, told Bloomberg that a wide range of personal perspectives from those picked for the campaign's coalition were "by design and not accident."

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Other members of the coalition have stressed the importance of engaging and involving Muslims as part of America's 15-year "War on Terror" in the mostly Muslim nations of the Middle East and Central Asia.

Here's the full roster of Cruz's new national security coalition, as written by the Cruz campaign:

Elliott Abrams was an assistant secretary of State in the Reagan administration and a deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration; he is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stewart Baker served as assistant secretary for policy at DHS, as general counsel of the National Security Agency, and as general counsel of the bipartisan commission that investigated intelligence failures involving WMD and Iraq.

Ilan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, and an expert on Iran, Russia and radical Islam.

Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin is a retired US Army Delta Force and Green Beret commander and the Executive Vice President of the Family Research Council.

Fred Fleitz is senior vice president of the Center for Security Policy and a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst.

Randy Fort has served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations in senior positions in the intelligence community, and is currently an executive with the Raytheon Company.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He acted as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under President Reagan.

Nile Gardiner is a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a former speechwriter for the Bush Administration and editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal.

Katharine C. Gorka is the president of the Council on Global Security.

Steven Groves is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation where he concentrates on the protection of American sovereignty, treaties, and international law.

Mary Habeck is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies al-Qa'ida, ISIS, and jihadi-salafism, and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Kristofer L. Harrison is a co-founder of the China Beige Book and was an official in both the Departments of Defense and State in the George W. Bush administration.

Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain, is the principal director of the Stoneridge Group, a national security consultancy.

Michael Ledeen is freedom scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, holds a Ph.D. in Modern European History, and is the author of more than 35 books, including the forthcoming The Field of Fight.

Clare M. Lopez is vice president for research & analysis at the Center for Security Policy.

Andy McCarthy is former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, led the prosecution of the "Blind Sheikh" and 11 other jihadists for waging a terrorist war against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

Robert C. O'Brien is a partner at Larson O'Brien LLP; he was a senior foreign policy advisor to Gov. Scott Walker and Governor Mitt Romney, and was a US Representative to the UN General Assembly.

Michael Pillsbury was a Reagan campaign advisor in 1980, served as assistant undersecretary of defense for policy planning under President Reagan, and is the author of three books on China.

Charles "Cully" Stimson is the senior legal fellow and manager of National Security Law Program at The Heritage Foundation; he is a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs.

Jim Talent was a U.S. senator from Missouri and served on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees for twelve years; he is currently a senior fellow specializing in military preparedness at the American Enterprise Institute.

Daniel P. Vajdich is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and was Governor Scott Walker's deputy foreign policy director and lead staffer for Europe and Eurasia on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Christian Whiton was a State Department senior advisor and deputy special envoy during the George W. Bush administration; he is the author of Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War, and is a principal at DC International Advisory.