Washington Times conceals fact that a Pakistani agent is a Pakistani immigrant

Howard Sutherland writes:

The Washington Times is on the Greater D.C. crime beat again, reporting on the misdeeds of misbehaving Virginia men. The Virginia man in question appears to be an agent of the Pakistani government. What an odd thing for a Virginia man to be! Well, maybe not. This particular Virginia man is Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, so he may not be of the stock of Washington and Lee after all, although the story calls him a U.S. citizen. (And I have to ask: what was the benefit to Americans and America in giving Mr. Fai our citizenship in the first place? What priceless skills, other than knowing how to pray on Friday evenings, does he bring us?)

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai is a Virginia man in the same way Nidal Malik Hasan is a Virginia man. Wouldn’t it have been more honest to describe Fai as a naturalized Pakistani, or Kashmiri, or whatever he in fact is? I know I harp on this, but this kind of obfuscation is very irritating. While I expect it from the Washington Post and the New York Times, I would hope the Washington Times, which calls itself conservative, could be more honest.

LA replies:

I would add that while the reporter, Jerry Seper, says in the second paragraph that Fai is a “U.S. citizen,” he never says that Fai is a naturalized U.S. citizen, which presumably he is, otherwise why would Seper even mention that he is a “U.S. citizen”? The story also never says that he’s an immigrant from Pakistan, which presumably he is, given his close ties with the Pakistan government. So the obfuscation in this story is worse than the description of Fai in the lead sentence as “a Virginia man.” The Times is reporting on this man with a Muslim name who is charged with being a secret agent of the Pakistani government, and it never states the simple fact that the man is in fact from Pakistan and got into the U.S. via immigration and was given U.S. citizenship notwithstanding his actual loyalty to Pakistan.

James P. writes:

Note that elsewhere in the story, the Washington Times refers to “Zaheer Ahmad, 63, a U.S. citizen who lives in Pakistan.” Was he born in the United States? When did he get naturalized? Who knows!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 20, 2011 10:26 AM | Send