I'm not, and I sincerely appreciate that question because I do not receive any fees for speaking, writing, working, or whatever. As a matter of fact, all of the officers who were working hard at Camp Ashraf have not received any fees. The State Department came out—starting with Ambassador Butler—and discredited people like General Clark, saying they were doing it only for money.
I know all these people, mostly through working with the MeK, but there is no way I can possibly believe that men of the integrity of FBI director, Louis Freeh; Secretary of Homeland Security, Governor Tom Ridge; Howard Dean, and all of these people, would sell out to terrorism. Another person who got attacked was General Hugh Shelton, the Omar Bradley of our generation. Accusing him of working for terrorism for money is like accusing Omar Bradley of supporting the Nazi government. It just doesn't happen.
Also, one of the accusations is directed at some of the members who don't have as much direct knowledge of terrorism. They don't have enough knowledge to speak of it. Without going into naming these individuals, it's really a third group. The first group is the people who worked with them. The second group is the people who did great work in America on terrorism and national security. The third group is subject-matter experts in American government who have come forward. Their role is to see to it that the United States does not make a serious mistake. They are being paid funds, but the funds are for speaking. I have been in numerous meetings and events with these people where they're not getting anything.
What I also saw and brought with me is the attack on Governor Bill Richardson in theAlbuquerque Journal. This thing popped up in the Albuquerque Journal about 24 hours after the day the news came out that people were being paid. There is no way that was a follow-up. That was delivered to the journal, and the intent was to get these people off the bat because it came out just before the Secretary of State's office came over and said they didn't want the Court of Appeals to be involved “because the secretary is too busy to worry about these 3,400 people”.
I saw it as trying to push these people away and scare them. Anybody who thinks you're going to scare those people away really got a surprise. What's interesting is that after Congressman Rohrabacher came out and said he was going to launch an investigation of the Treasury Department for doing this, and then suddenly everybody in the executive branch didn't know who had started it.