Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law on the Joint Staff, met recently with Hasham Islam, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England's close aide. The officials said Mr. Islam, a Muslim who is leading efforts for the Defense Department's outreach to Muslim groups, sought to convince Mr. Coughlin to take a softer line on Islam and Islamic law elements that promote extremism.

There is also evidence that a whispering campaign is under way to try and discredit Mr. Coughlin as a "Christian extremist with a pen" and force him out of the building, according to the officials.

Mr. Coughlin came under fire from pro-Muslim officials after a memorandum he wrote identified several groups that are being courted by Mr. Islam's community outreach program as front organizations for the pro-extremist Muslim Brotherhood. --from this news item

Stephen Coughlin is one of the keenest analysts of Islam working for the American government, possibly the very best inside the Pentagon. If he is pushed out, if he is subject to any campaign by Muslims and their non-Muslim collaborators and puppets, that will be, or should be, a matter for alarm as great as any raised about the infiltration by Soviet agents during the Cold War. Because such people are not working for an identifiable state does not mean that they are not working for a cause -- and the cause in this case is to neutralize all those who understand the meaning, and menace, of Jihad, and its varied instruments. And one of those instruments is the fog machine designed to confuse and distract Infidels, and to keep them from seeing clearly the nature of an ideology, its imperviousness to change, and the ways in which, even under the surface of the so-called "moderates" -- the claims on the loyalty of adherents of that Total Belief-System remain. Everyone, anyone, who is out to get Coughlin is working against the interests of the legal and political institutions of this country, and should be investigated by Congress (one is no longer sure about the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. and the levels of incomprehension there). This is more than a scandal. This terrifies.