Saturday, 20 August 2011 00:20
Hassan Dai, 18 August 2011
For the past 10 years NIAC has persistently claimed that it is the largest Iranian-American organization in the United States, and hence solely equipped to represent the view of the Iranians in the American circles. This claim is deceitful, and fraudulent. Purporting to represent the Iranian-American community, Trita Parsi has gained access to the corridors of power in Washington.
This is the end of my commentary. The rest of this article is only bare facts backed by NIAC’s internal documents obtained during a defamation lawsuit filed by NIAC against me in 2009. Iranian Americans judge for themselves.
· NIAC website proudly posts Roger Cohen’s claim that the group represents one million Iranian Americans. No attempt to correct the quote. God knows how Cohen got that number!
· In communications with US officials, Trita Parsi claimed to represent Iranian-Americans. He wrote: “On behalf of Iranian-Americans I thank you for ….”
· In several CVs that Parsi prepared for Amnesty International, Saban Center at Brookings Institute or Eurasia Fund, etc. he openly lied about NIAC membership and claimed 10000 members for NIAC.
· In a meeting with Sen. Chafey’s office, Parsi declared that a survey was sent to 10000 NIAC members and 86% opposed sanctions against Iran. The truth was that the survey was only responded to by only 220 people (193 NIAC members).
· The minutes of a meeting of the NIAC Board in 2007 contains: “Trita reviewed the membership trends: 1,034 (2005) increased to 1,307 in 2006 and 1,680 as of today – citing these figures as absolutely unacceptable”. Note that only about half of them paid membership and considered active members.
· The same minutes shows that Alex Patico, NIAC co-founder and a board members felt that: “…. it would not be deceitful to mention NIAC as being comprised of 25,000+ members when dealing with the media and other inquiries.”
· NIAC documents show that the group had only 1068 members in 2008 and 1100 in May 2009.
· In July 2009, less than 500 (members and non members) participated in a NIAC members’ survey. 275 of them responded to the questions. For almost 2 months NIAC websites and newsletters urged the Iranian-Americans to respond to this survey.
· NIAC financial documents show that its membership contributes to about %5 of its annual revenue.
· In Dec. 2010 Trita Parsi claimed that NIAC has 4000 paid members and 43000 active supporters. However, during his testimony in May 2011 and under oath he confessed that 43000 is really NIAC’s mailing list. The real membership was only around 1000 members.
