Clare M. Lopez (born 1953)[1] is an American former CIA officer and Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy.[2] She has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist.[3][4][5]
Lopez received a BA in communications and French from Notre Dame College, and a MA in international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, before completing Marine Corps Officer Candidates School.[6] 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.[6]
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."[7] Lopez worked for the CIA for two decades before later joining Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy (CSP)[4] as Vice President for Research and Analysis from 2014 to 2020.[8] In the CSP she described her work as "project manager" in the "counterjihad movement".[9]
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.[7]
Lopez has published papers for the Gatestone Institute and the CSP,[10] 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."[2] 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."[2] 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."[11] 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.[2]
Lopez was featured in the documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America in 2008,[7] was a co-author of the CSP "Team B II" report Shariah: The Threat To America in 2010, and she has written for news websites Breitbart News and WorldNetDaily.[4] In 2016 she was an advisor to the Ted Cruz presidential campaign for national security,[5][12][13] and was later reportedly being considered for deputy national security advisor to President-elect Donald Trump.[3][4][10] According to a Trump adviser, Lopez was considered "one of the intellectual thought leaders about why we have to fight back against radical Islam."[14] Trump also cited her work to support his proposed Muslim immigration ban.[3][4]