Columnist Clarence Page Spoke at Rally for Iranian Militant Group

Update July 9, 2012: We reported last week that Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page was paid $20,000 to speak at a rally for an Iranian group designated as a terrorist organization. Page told ProPublica he planned to give back the money. Now, the Tribune has reprimanded Page, saying he violated the paper’s editorial ethics code by accepting the speaking gig without approval. It also said he would not have received approval to appear at the Paris event.

“I’m pleased with that; I think it’s a sensible settlement of the whole thing,” Page told the Tribune. Page also weighed in on the matter in a column over the weekend.

Late last month,  syndicated columnist Clarence Page
appeared at a rally in Paris in support of the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK), an
Iranian group that has been lobbying Washington to be removed from the U.S.
government’s list
of designated foreign terrorist organizations.

Before a huge
crowd waving portraits of MEK leaders Maryam and Massoud Rajavi as well as
Iranian flags, Page called for the MEK to be removed from the official
terrorist organization list.

Contacted about the appearance by ProPublica, Page said he
has decided to give back his speaking fee for the event, as well as reimburse the
cost of travel to and from France, which was paid for by a group called the Organizing Committee for
Convention for Democracy in Iran.

“I thought they were simply a group of Iranian exiles who
were opposed to the regime in Tehran,” Page said. “I later found out they can
be construed as a MEK front group, and I don’t think it’s worth it to my
reputation to be perceived as a paid spokesman for any political cause.”

Page said he was paid a fee of $20,000 and travel expenses
and that he attended the June 23 event during vacation time. He said he just
arrived back at work from vacation and has not yet given back the money. He did
not have the text of the speech he delivered, but he told ProPublica he spoke
in favor of the MEK being removed from the list of  terrorist organizations, a move
he expects to occur shortly.

The MEK, which fiercely opposes the current regime in Iran, has  mounted a
high-priced lobbying and legal battle to get off the terrorist list in recent
years. The group was placed on the list in 1997 by the Clinton Administration,
which cited its record of attacks against Iranian targets.  The group also “assassinated several
U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in
Tehran” in the 1970s when the U.S. was allied with the Shah, according to
the State Department. The MEK says it has renounced violence. A federal appeals
court last month ordered
the State Department to decide within four months whether the MEK should remain
on the list.

Groups supporting the MEK have paid
millions of dollars to attract former officials and retired military
officers to appear at events supporting the group in recent years. But because
the MEK is an officially designated terrorist organization, it is illegal for
Americans to accept money from the MEK itself. NBC reported
in March that former officials had received subpoenas as part of a federal
probe “focused on whether the former officials may have received funding,
directly or indirectly, from the [MEK].”

Besides Page’s role as a columnist whose work is distributed
by Tribune Media Services, he is also a member of the Chicago Tribune’s
editorial board. Page has not written about Iran in his  column recently, but the Tribune
editorial board regularly weighs in on foreign policy. Last month, the paper called
on the Obama administration to “ratchet up the economic pressure” on Iran
in the dispute over the country’s nuclear program. A spokeswoman for the
Tribune did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Organizers assert  that 100,000 people attended the Paris
event last month, but that figure has not been independently verified. In a
speech, Maryam Rajavi hailed the “unparalleled bipartisan coalition
which has challenged the official policy” that labels the MEK a
terrorist group.

Others attending the event last month include
Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former New York City Mayor
Rudy Giuliani, former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, former Bush
administration official John Bolton, and several former high-ranking military
officers.

“When I got involved with it, I saw the stellar list of VIPs
who were also on the program, and I saw this to be another conference with
another speech,” Page said.

Page said the invitation to the event last month came through his agent Janet LeBrun Cosby and Bethesda-based Speakers Worldwide.

This is the promotional video produced after the event,
which Page appears in around the 1:07 mark:

Correction: We incorrectly reported that Clarence Page’s invitation to speak at an MEK rally came through the Harry Walker Agency. In fact, while Page has previously worked with the agency, his appearance at the event was organized by Speakers Worldwide.