| Clare M. Lopez | |
| Image Upright: | 0.85 |
| Education: | Notre Dame College (BA) Maxwell School of Syracuse University (MA) |
| Nationality: | American |
Clare M. Lopez (born 1953) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who has served as Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy.[1] She has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist by HuffPost and other media outlets.[2] [3]
Lopez received a Bachelor of Arts in communications and French from Notre Dame College, and a Master of Arts in international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, before completing Marine Corps Officer Candidates School.[4] She then declined a military commission to instead join the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a career operations officer, gaining deep experience in the Middle East.[4]
During her service she acquired "extensive expertise in counterintelligence, counternarcotics, and counterproliferation issues with a career regional focus on the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans," and "has served in or visited over two dozen nations worldwide, [and] speaks several languages, including Spanish, Bulgarian, French, German, and Russian."[5] Lopez worked for the CIA for two decades before later joining Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy (CSP),[2] where she became Vice President for Research and Analysis from 2014 to 2020.[6] In the CSP she described her work as "project manager" in the "counterjihad movement".[7]
Lopez has also been vice president of the Intelligence Summit, a senior fellow at the Clarion Project, co-founder of the Iran Policy Committee,[1] professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Senior Scientific Researcher at the Battelle Memorial Institute, a Senior Intelligence Analyst, Subject Matter Expert, and previously produced Technical Threat Assessments for U.S. Embassies at the Department of State.[5]
Lopez has published papers for the Gatestone Institute and the CSP,[8] and given interviews and presentations claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood, which she considers to be a terrorist organization, has "infiltrated the United States government, and that Sharia law is taking hold in American courts."[9] According to Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative, she "believes President Obama and his administration have a 'pattern' of 'enabling' or directly supporting Muslim terrorist groups," and "claims that Obama and Huma Abedin, an aide of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood."[9] She has said that because Obama's father was Muslim, that "de facto makes him [Obama] a Muslim,"[1] and that the "Obama administration very clearly has switched sides in the war on terror."[10] Furthermore, she asserts that the Muslim Brotherhood has an "unholy alliance" with the Black Lives Matter movement, that 80% of American mosques promote extremism, and that there are Muslim no-go zones in Minnesota.[9]
Lopez appeared in the documentaries in 2008,[5] and Iranium in 2011.[11] She was a co-author of the CSP "Team B II" report in 2010,[12] [13] and has written for the news websites Breitbart News and WorldNetDaily.[2] She was named one of the twelve most hardline anti-Muslim women in America by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2015.[1] In 2016 she was an advisor to the Ted Cruz presidential campaign for national security,[3] [14] [15] and was later reportedly being considered for deputy national security advisor to President-elect Donald Trump.[2] [16] [8] According to a Trump adviser, Lopez was considered "one of the intellectual thought leaders about why we have to fight back against radical Islam."[17] Trump also cited her work to support his proposed Muslim immigration ban.[2] [16]