Outlandish is probably the polite way to describe a claim made by the U.S. State Department during a recent court hearing on the People's Mujahedin of Iran.
State Department counsel told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the U.S. government had never had access to Camp Ashraf, the town to the north of Baghdad where many PMOI activists have lived for decades.
The United States has no way of knowing whether the PMOI still supports terror, counsel claimed, because its members have never allowed a thorough inspection of the 15-square-mile camp.
"They say that they have turned over a new leaf but that has never been verified by the U.S. military," counsel said.
This brazen lie was all the more surprising given that the most qualified people on this very subject were sitting in the courtroom.