The San Diego chapter of the U.S. Naval Academy Association is pressing ahead with a planned Wednesday luncheon featuring a firebrand speaker who has been called a racist by the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group.
Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said by phone Tuesday that his advocacy group has urged the alumni organization to drop “Islamaphobe” John Guandolo, a 1989 graduate of the Naval Academy as well as a former Marine officer and FBI agent.
“He’s a guy who claimed that cabbies and 7-11 employees were trying to take over America. He called a CIA director a ‘secret Muslim’ — not that there’s anything wrong with being a Muslim. He’s even said that mosques are stockpiling weapons to conduct armed attacks on local churches,” Hooper said.