According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Gaffney went "off the rails" sometime after being forced out at the Pentagon. The SPLC has described him as a formerly "respectable Washington insider" who has become "gripped by paranoid fantasies." According to the SPLC, Gaffney's beliefs stem from the discredited 1991 testimony of a lone Muslim Brotherhood member that he has come to believe is a "smoking gun, a mission statement pointing to a massive Islamist conspiracy under our noses."
David Keene of the American Conservative Union has contended that Gaffney "has become personally and tiresomely obsessed with his weird belief that anyone who doesn't agree with him on everything all the time or treat him with the respect and deference he believes is his due, must be either ignorant of the dangers we face or, in extreme case, dupes of the nation's enemies."
Gaffney has been characterized as a conspiracy theorist by Reason Magazine, Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative, Steve Benen, and Slate Magazine.
Among the conspiracy theories Gaffney has promoted include:
- The belief that the logo of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is a coded indicator of "official U.S. submission to Islam" because it “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star.”
- The belief that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing.
- Accusations that Republican Party strategist Grover Norquist is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Gaffney, Norquist had, as of 2014, "been working with the enemy for over a decade." (Responding to the accusation, the board of directors of the American Conservative Union unanimously condemned Gaffney’s charges as “reprehensible” and “unfounded.” The organization also banned Gaffney from its Conservative Political Action Conference.)
- Accusations that former Hilary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. (After the allegation was repeated by Michele Bachmann, U.S. senators John McCain, Scott Brown, and Marco Rubio joined in dismissing it, and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner said "accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.")
- The belief that Barack Obama is not a "natural born citizen of the United States" (popularly known as the "birther conspiracy").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gaffney