Daniel Pipes, a controversial authority on the Middle East, claims a staff member of the American Civil Liberties Union protested his speech at AU in January.
Pipes posted on his Web site that ACLU National Field Organizer Matt Bowles went to the speech and sponsored a protest against him. He said that Bowles was the leader of the protest, which was the primary reason he mentioned it on his Web site.
He also said that he wrote Bowles a letter about his involvement in the protest, during which some members of the audience wrapped black pieces of cloth around their mouths to protest Pipes' views on the Middle East.
Pipes said that Bowles responded to his letter by saying that he was "an individual concerned citizen."
An ACLU staffer said the organization had no knowledge of Bowles' involvement at the speech, and if Bowles had been there, "it was not in his official capacity."
Pipes posted on his Web log a letter from Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, which said Bowles attended the speech in his "personal capacity" and that the ACLU "does not attempt to control, nor are we responsible for, actions taken by our employees on their own time."
Representatives at the Middle East Forum, the organization Pipes directs, were unavailable for comment.
Pipes has been criticized for his views of the Middle East and Islam. He has argued that in order to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the United States must take an impartial position.
Bowles is a critic of U.S. foreign policy in Israel. In an article he wrote for the anti-capitalist group Left Turn, he called the Israeli government a "colonial apartheid regime," comparing it to the former South African government that disenfranchised many black South Africans.
He is also a member of the national D.C. chapter of Stop U.S. Tax Funded Aid to Israel Now (SUSTAIN), according to the Left Turn article. SUSTAIN is an organization "committed to working against U.S. military and economic aid to Israel"
