Leaked documents reveal how a UAE-backed reputational campaign extended into the United States, resulting in the creation of a blacklist containing prominent Muslim organisations and dozens of American citizens.
A private intelligence firm working on behalf of the United Arab Emirates hired an American researcher to prepare a report targeting Muslim organisations in the United States as part of a campaign seeking to damage their reputations by linking them to what will be referred to here as the “Muslim Organisation”, according to an archive of leaked documents obtained by Drop Site News.
The assignment by Geneva-based Alp Services produced a 2018 report prepared by Lorenzo Vidino, the author of several books on the Muslim Organisation and director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
That report, together with other documents contained in the archive, outlined a proposed campaign against Muslim organisations in the United States. Some elements of that campaign appear to remain active today.
Vidino’s report was titled The Muslim Organisation in the United States and named dozens of Muslim Americans and civil society groups that it alleged were part of a broad and secretive extremist network operating across the country.
The organisations named included the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR; the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA; the Muslim Public Affairs Council, or MPAC; the Muslim American Society, or MAS; the US Council of Muslim Organizations; Islamic Relief USA; and numerous other organisations, mosques, activists and religious leaders identified individually.
The report presented no evidence supporting Vidino’s allegations. In practice, however, it created a blacklist of Muslim American organisations and individuals that could be used to damage their reputations by alleging connections to the Muslim Organisation, amid continuing efforts, partly driven by the UAE, to persuade the United States to designate the organisation as a terrorist entity.
Neither Vidino nor Alp Services responded to requests for comment. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs also did not respond to questions.
Efforts to connect American Muslim organisations to the Muslim Organisation continued in the years following Vidino’s report for Alp Services.
On 5 August 2026, a subcommittee of the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Organisation Network in America.
Lara Burns, a senior researcher with Vidino’s Program on Extremism, was one of three witnesses.
During the hearing, Burns described CAIR, ISNA, the North American Islamic Trust and the Muslim Students Association as components of what she called a covert infrastructure connected to the Muslim Organisation and Hamas, citing Vidino’s published work in parts of her written testimony.
A Covert Smear Campaign
The UAE has long been among the strongest advocates for designating the Muslim Organisation as a terrorist entity in Western countries.
That campaign intensified after the organisation won elections in several countries following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, reinforcing Abu Dhabi’s perception that it represented a threat to the ruling order.
Over time, the campaign expanded into a broader effort targeting political opponents and even individuals viewed by the UAE with suspicion or hostility.
Documents contained in the archive, which was provided by the European Investigative Collaborations network, reveal how the reputational campaign was intended to operate.
An internal Alp Services planning memo from July 2017 proposed developing a “map”, with Vidino’s assistance, of alleged Muslim Organisation and Qatari influence networks in both the United States and Europe.
The proposed map was intended to include charities, lobbying groups, media outlets, academics, political supporters, banks, investors and business figures.
Alp also considered conducting deeper investigations designed to uncover what it described as “red flags”, meaning potentially damaging personal or professional information, as well as rumours concerning selected targets.
In February 2018, Alp Services received approval to carry out an operation codenamed “Arnica 6”.
The operation was intended ultimately to transform some of those investigations into covert pressure campaigns aimed at damaging targets’ reputations and finances.
The operational plan proposed publishing material through hostile media outlets, providing unattributed briefings to trusted journalists, making negative edits to Wikipedia pages associated with targets, submitting damaging information to regulatory compliance databases and conducting covert political lobbying.
The New Yorker previously reported some details of Alp’s activities in Europe on behalf of the UAE, highlighting efforts targeting commodities trader Hazim Nada as well as Muslim organisations across Europe.
The allegation of association with the Muslim Organisation, circulated by Alp Services through anonymously published online articles and Wikipedia entries, devastated Nada’s business and reputation while generating millions of euros in revenue for the firm.
The New Yorker reported that Mario Brero, head of Alp Services, whose principal client in the project was an Emirati research institution affiliated with UAE leader Mohammed bin Zayed, asked Vidino to search for “interesting elements or rumours” on the other side of the Atlantic.
However, the magazine did not provide details of subsequent efforts to identify or target Americans or organisations based in the United States.
On 12 May 2018, Vidino sent a series of documents to Alp through WhatsApp, including his report on the Muslim Organisation in America and supporting memoranda concerning Muslim organisations in Chicago and groups connected to the Turkish government.
The report was sent as a Microsoft Word file containing metadata identifying Vidino as its author.
Other documents indicate that the proposed fee for preparing the report was €2,000.
The report mapped a broad spectrum of Muslim American civic activity, including established and formally registered organisations, which it alleged collectively formed a covert Muslim Organisation network in the United States.
Vidino provided no evidence that the people or organisations listed were members of the Muslim Organisation or any other transnational organisation.
Instead, he claimed they constituted an “extension” of the movement and represented its “centres of gravity” in the United States.
By July 2018, Alp had transformed Vidino’s material into a polished report for its client, an Emirati entity called Ariaf Studies and Research.
Alp also assembled a separate package of documents for an 8 August meeting with Matar Hamed Al Neyadi, an Emirati official who appears elsewhere in the archive as the client’s point of contact for Arnica and who currently serves as the UAE ambassador to Kuwait.
Al Neyadi did not respond to a request for comment.
Targeting Muslim Civil Society
Before joining George Washington University’s programme, Vidino worked for the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a research organisation founded by Steve Emerson, a controversial terrorism commentator who has been accused of spying on American Muslim organisations and of falsely claiming that major European cities had become “no-go zones” controlled by Muslim migrants.
Vidino continues to hold influence as a specialist commentator in the United States.
In an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal in early August, Vidino wrote that the Trump administration should begin targeting what he described as non-violent “Islamist groups”.
He claimed such organisations were already active in “politics, education and grassroots activism” and alleged that “Islamist actors” were funding politically aligned candidates in elections across the United States.
The article offered no evidence supporting those claims and did not define what Vidino meant by “Islamist actors”.
Farid Hafez, an Austrian academic now living in the United States, was among those previously targeted by Vidino and Alp Services in Europe.
After Alp circulated rumours alleging that he was connected to the Muslim Organisation, which were later shared with Austrian intelligence services, Austrian police raided Hafez’s home in November 2020.
He was later cleared of wrongdoing, and Austrian courts subsequently ruled that the measures taken against him had been unlawful.
“Vidino never said anything specific, such as that this person belongs to the Muslim Organisation,” Hafez said.
“Instead, he used a strategy of saying these people are connected to other people who themselves are connected to the Muslim Organisation.”
Hafez said Vidino’s reports relied largely on secondary sources.
“There was never a clear statement that he could be held accountable for in court, because he never said anything very specific in his allegations. That was precisely the strategy.”
Vidino’s report prepared for Alp claimed that despite the absence of a visible organisational structure, the American branch of the Muslim Organisation was “without doubt one of the largest and best organised branches in the West”.
It alleged that the organisation established itself as Muslim university students arrived in the United States during the 1960s, before expanding its influence through an interconnected network of political, financial and educational organisations.
Beyond naming individuals and staff connected to some of the largest and most prominent Muslim organisations in the United States, the report also laid the groundwork for a potentially broader campaign against American mosques.
It did so by targeting the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the property titles to hundreds of mosques across the United States.
A short section covering charities also identified several organisations, including Islamic Relief USA, Zakat Foundation of America, Life for Relief and Development and Anera, which assists refugees in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan.
Islamic Relief, a UK-based charity operating in disaster zones around the world, was also targeted in a separate UAE-funded campaign codenamed “Crocus”.
According to the documents, the operation sought to connect the charity to American Muslim scholar Yasir Qadhi.
Documents in Alp’s archive relating to the Crocus campaign cite several British media reports about Qadhi dating from 2017, referring to earlier statements he had made concerning Islamic criminal punishments, homosexuality and Shia Muslims.
The documents described him as an “extremist preacher” and noted that some of his social media posts had been shared by Islamic Relief employees.
Qadhi had previously distanced himself from some of his earlier views, while the charity defended him as an opponent of terrorism.
Islamic Relief continues to face recurring social media campaigns led by online influencers backed by the UAE.
Vidino’s report on American Muslims also included a section concerning alleged Turkish government influence in the United States, including relationships between Turkish officials and several Muslim American organisations and individuals.
Turkey had become a regional competitor to the UAE in the years following the Arab Spring, with the two states finding themselves on opposing sides of several regional disputes.
American Muslim activists named by Vidino rejected the allegations contained in the dossier, describing them as political attacks aimed at excluding Muslims from political life.
Salam Al-Marayati, president and co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said such tactics had been used for years to marginalise Muslim Americans and push them out of politics.
“These are tactics that have been used against us all these years to marginalise us and exclude us from politics,” Al-Marayati said.
“They are worried about losing their control and monopoly over the American political landscape, and when they cannot win the argument, which they lose every time, particularly on foreign policy, their response is to claim that we are ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ or a ‘Trojan horse’, or that we belong to the Muslim Organisation.”
Allegations of Extremism
During her August appearance before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, Lara Burns submitted written testimony describing CAIR, ISNA, the North American Islamic Trust and the Muslim Students Association as components of a covert infrastructure connected to the Muslim Organisation and Hamas.
Another witness, Ariel Kliegman of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, accused a broader network including CAIR, the Islamic Circle of North America, ISNA, MAS, the Muslim Students Association and the North American Islamic Trust of being covert extremist groups, citing a series of Vidino’s published reports.
Kliegman urged lawmakers to apply financial and legal pressure against CAIR in particular, pointing to proposed legislation that would strip the organisation of its tax-exempt status, designate it as a terrorist organisation and investigate its alleged foreign ties.
Other efforts seeking to restrict Muslim participation in American public life have included proposed legislation and executive orders.
A bill introduced by Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, and Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, would require the US government to submit annual reports identifying and assessing branches of the Muslim Organisation for potential terrorist designation and sanctions.
A separate bill introduced by Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, seeks to designate CAIR as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organisation, freeze its assets, revoke its tax-exempt status and prohibit Americans from conducting transactions with it.
In November 2025, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the State and Treasury departments to begin the process of designating certain branches of the Muslim Organisation, including those in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, as terrorist organisations.
That same month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation designating both CAIR and the Muslim Organisation as foreign terrorist organisations and transnational criminal organisations.
Abbott said the designation would prevent them, along with entities alleged to be associated with them, from purchasing land in Texas.
On 29 September, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the state had formally designated the Muslim Organisation, CAIR and Antifa as terrorist organisations.
These efforts have continued to receive support not only from pro-Israel organisations but also from Emirati officials, who have pursued an ambitious strategy of using their influence in the United States and Europe to deploy terrorism allegations against political opponents, with alleged links to the Muslim Organisation serving as a favoured tactic.
In January 2026, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the Trump administration’s designation of branches of the Muslim Organisation in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon as terrorist organisations.
Roy’s proposed legislation targeting CAIR also explicitly cites the UAE’s own 2014 designation of the organisation as a terrorist entity.
Osama Abu Irshaid, national director of American Muslims for Palestine, whose name and organisation appeared in documents produced by Vidino and Alp, said the UAE had become a destabilising force both in the Middle East and in relation to Arab and Muslim communities in the West.
“The unfortunate reality is that the UAE has become a destabilising player in the Middle East and when it comes to Arab and Muslim communities in the West,” Abu Irshaid said.
“They are not doing this because they genuinely believe that we are an extension of the Muslim Organisation in the United States or the European Union. They are doing it because they feel their interests are threatened, because we advocate for freedom and openness and are succeeding in our aspirations for integration, and they fear that one day this could translate into foreign policy pressure on them to stop their repression across the region.”
Abu Irshaid said there was no evidence supporting the allegations.
“We are American organisations. We are American citizens. We have the right to assemble and organise politically, and everything we do is public. There are no secrets,” he said.
“They want to demonise us and obstruct our agenda, but the claim that we are part of some grand conspiracy is simply a big lie.”
