During Friday’s Republican Senate debate, Tom Campbell defended his receipt of campaign funds from Sami Al-Arian as well as the letter Campbell wrote in defense of Al-Arian, after the latter was fired by the University of South Florida. In the debate Campbell claimed the letter was written before Al-Arian’s controversial appearance on the Bill O’Reilly program. But that claim seems to be false and a new round of controversy has begun.

The letter that Campbell wrote on January 22, 2002, in support of Sami Al-Arian, who had been fired by the University of South Florida (and who pleaded guilty in 2006 to terrorism charges), is now circulating. Contrary to Campbell’s protestations, according to which there was nothing generally known about Al-Arian at the time (He said in the debate: “There is one other point to be raised, and that is that he was a professor, and he was terminated from his position at the University of South Florida before any of this evidence came out”), by 2000 much was known of Al-Arian’s activities. However, that did not dissuade Campbell from taking campaign money from him for his race that year, or — in 2002 — from sending a letter defending Al-Arian. He wrote in January 2002:

During my time in Congress, I served, inter alia, on the International Relations Committee and the Judiciary Committee.  In those capacities, I came to know of the practice of using secret evidence against non-citizens in keeping them in detention even when they were not a security risk to the United States, and even when they were not soon to be deported.  I introduced legislation to stop this practice, and worked hard to achieve that end.  In this effort, I came to know Professor Sami Al-Arian, whose brother-in-law had been subjected to this practice.

In the interest of full disclosure, I wish you to know that, after we came to know each other, Professor Al-Arian helped me raise funds for my campaign for U.S. Senate, an effort which, nevertheless, did not succeed.

Moreover, contrary to his statement in the debate, Campbell conceded in the letter that he was aware of Al-Arian’s 2001 appearance on the Bill O’Reilly show: “I read a transcript of the O’Reilly Factor interview last autumn, and I did not see anything whereby Professor Al-Arian attempted to claim he was representing the views of the University of South Florida.” So let the professor keep his spot, Campbell argued, because he wasn’t saying all those awful things as a representative of the university.

The O’Reilly interview from the fall of 2001 is an eye-opener. This sequence is especially instructive:

O’REILLY: In — in 1988, you did a little speaking engagement in Cleveland, and you were quoted as saying, “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem.” Did you say that?

AL-ARIAN: Let me just put it into context. When resident Bush talked about crusade, we understand what he meant here. The Muslim world thought he is going to carry a cross and go invade the Muslim world and turn them into Christians. We have to understand the context. When you say “Death to Israel,” you mean death to occupation, death to apartheid, death to oppression, death to…

O’REILLY: But not death to any human being?

AL-ARIAN: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

O’REILLY: No.

AL-ARIAN: Absolutely not.

O’REILLY: All right. So now what we have here is you saying death to Israel. You’re bringing a guy over here who gets paid by the good citizens of Florida and then goes back and becomes one of the lieutenants or generals of the Islamic jihad, but you don’t know nothing about it. Another guy sets up an interview with Osama bin Laden for ABC, and you don know anything about that.

You know, Doctor, it looks to me like there’s something wrong down there at the University of South Florida. Am I getting — am I getting the wrong impression here?

AL-ARIAN: You’re getting completely wrong impression because you can pick and choose and interpret it, you know, different ways.

The fact of the matter is we have been involved in intellectual-type activity. We brought dozens of people. All of them are intellectual type.  You’re going to get the apple — a bad apple or two, but that — if you focus on them, you get one conclusion.

The fact of the matter is that we’ve been investigated by the FBI for many years…

O’REILLY: Correct.

AL-ARIAN: …and there has been no wrongdoing whatsoever even suggested.

So this was the man from whom Campbell accepted funds and for whose sake he went out of his way to plead with the university that he be kept on staff. It seems as though Campbell never met an Israel-bashing, Islamic jihadist who raised any concerns, even after 9/11.

The Carly Fiorina campaign is calling for Campbell to correct the record and change his website: “Tom Campbell has refused to release this letter despite repeated calls for him to do so. Now we know why. The content of the letter itself, and the date on which it was written reveal that what Tom Campbell told voters in Friday’s debate about his relationship with Al-Arian—and just as importantly, what he knew about him at the time—is quite simply false.” A Fiorina aide goes further, telling me: “Tom Campbell flat out lied in the debate about what he knew and when he knew it, and he flat out lies on his new Campbell ‘facts’ website — it’s so brazen you have to wonder he’s convinced himself that he doesn’t have a terrorism problem.”

Suffice it to say, we are off to the races on this latest revelation.

UPDATE: Chuck DeVore’s Communications Director has chimed in with a statement including this: “We’ve known from the start that Tom Campbell has a problematic past with Islamist radicals, and this just fills in some details. What’s troubling is that two of the three Republicans running for US Senate in California this year have a troubling history in this regard. While Campbell was a darling of the anti-Israel set, Carly Fiorina was presiding over illegal technology transfers to Iran, and delivering paeans to Islamic civilization while the fires at the World Trade Center were still smoldering.” Fiorina has denied any illegal technology transfers occured to Iran during her tenure at Hewlett Packard.