Jeff Stein has found himself another doozy in the new book catalog... Turns out former
Michigan Rep. Mark D. Siljander wasn't just indicted last month for raising cash for an Al-Qaeda connected group.
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"The outspoken anti-gay, anti-abortion fundamentalist
Christian... had immersed himself in clandestine operations, according to an ill-timed and -titled memoir, 'A Deadly
Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian
Divide,' scheduled for publication in June...Throughout the book he portrays himself as God’s James Bond, carrying out secret missions in Libya, Sudan,
Indonesia and other Islamic countries in a personal crusade to defuse religious misunderstandings...*Like a modern-day St. Paul going the wrong way down the road to Damascus, however, Siljander one day discovered the similarities of the Bible and Koran and decided his mission in life was to bring Christians and Muslims together — starting at the top...
In 1999, he slipped into Libya with a friend for a religious chat with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s longtime strongman.
They had to settle for the foreign minister, who bellowed at them over the Reagan administration’s 1986
air attack on Tripoli (in response to a German discotheque bombing that killed and maimed GIs)...In a kind of Christian ritual, Siljander had already decided to ask
Qaddafi’s forgiveness for the death of his daughter by U.S. warplanes.The evangelist hints that his visit nudged Qaddafi into turning over the suspects for trial.
All the time they were in Libya, an intelligence source told him later, he was under surveillance by U.S. spies.
