On the front cover of the book, Terror Tagging, is imagery of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with pen in hand. Appearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee in March 2011 where she discussed Iran, she seems poised to lift the terrorist designation of an Iranian opposition organization—the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK), a.k.a., the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The imagery demonstrates the power of the pen: With one simple signature to remove the terrorist tag on the MeK, Secretary Clinton would empower the pro-democracy movement for regime change in Iran.
“Terror Tagging of an Iranian Dissident Organization is a scholarly study that is timely enough to have an impact on the policy process. And it is my delight to find research that is empirically based and can help edify Members of Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive branch. The book suggests that it is time to end the injustice of an inappropriate use of selected political criteria over legal or historical circumstances to justify continuation of a terrorist tag on an Iranian dissident group—the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq [MeK/PMOI]. Professor Tanter is to be commended for his important contribution to achieving that goal.”
Michael B. Mukasey, Attorney General of the United States, (2007-2009)
“Last year, in a powerfully worded opinion, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit found that the Department of State neither explained to the PMOI what in the unclassified record provided the basis for State’s redesignating it a terrorist organization, nor did it permit the PMOI to respond before it was so designated, only after. It is very rare that a federal appellate court so rebukes the State Department in the field of foreign policy, charging it with, essentially, adopting a Red Queen procedure: execution first, then trial. State’s actions clearly suggest that its decision about the PMOI was rooted not in evidence, but in appeasement – a basis that could not tolerate sunlight.”
R. James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence of the United States, (1993-1995)