Excerpt:
President Obama's new Muslim envoy Rashad Hussain admitted Friday to once defending a man who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a terrorist group -- an admission that contradicts earlier claims from the White House that the quotes had been mistakenly attributed to Hussain.
Hussain, named by Obama as an envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, said Friday his comments at the time were "ill conceived or not well formulated."
In 2004, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs quoted Hussain saying at a seminar on Muslim issues that Sami al-Arian was the victim of "politically motivated persecutions" after al-Arian, a university professor, was charged in 2003 with heading U.S. operations of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.