August 18, 2011
New York (NTN24 Wires) - A Muslim militant has urged American followers to assassinate U.S. talk show host David Letterman, saying his tongue deserves to be cut out, a U.S. intelligence monitoring group said on Wednesday.
The SITE intelligence group said the death threat was posted on a website used by militants after the writer became upset by a joke Letterman made about the death of a leading member of al Qaeda killed in an airstrike in Pakistan.
The militant called on Muslims in the United States to “cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever,” according to SITE’s translation of the website message. The popular late-night television host is not Jewish.
The writer was angered after watching a show in which Letterman drew his finger across his neck while talking about the June death of senior al-Qaeda figure Ilyas Kashmiri.
The message was posted on the website Shumukh al-Islam. SITE analyst Adam Raisman told Entertainment Weekly that the website is “a clearing house for al-Qaeda material” and draws supporters of the group headed by the late Osama bin Laden.
Executives at broadcaster CBS and a spokesman for Letterman on Wednesday declined to comment on the threat.
David Letterman’s Reaction:
David Letterman Jokes About Jihadist Threat To Him
“We have great audiences night in and night out, but tonight
especially, it means a lot to me. Tonight, you people are more, to
me, honestly, more than an audience — you’re more like a human shield.”
“I’m so sorry, I’m a little late coming out. Backstage I was talking
to the guy from CBS. We were going through the CBS life-insurance
policy to see if I was covered for jihad.”
“You’re not going to believe what happened. A guy, a radical
extremist, threatened to cut my tongue out. I wish I had a nickel for
every time a guy has threatened that. I think the first time was
during the Academy Awards.”
“I have a fatwa on me. And they say the guy that issued the fatwa is
an Internet jihadist. Internet jihadist! And I said, ‘Well, heck,
who says Obama isn’t creating jobs?’ “
“And so now, State Department authorities are looking into this.
They’re not taking this lightly. They’re looking into it. They’re
questioning, they’re interrogating, there’s an electronic trail —
but everybody knows it’s Leno.”
