Both men told reporter Barbara Slavin they were paid for their appearance on behalf of the Mojahedin-e Khalq.
Speaking payments are normal and routine for prominent speakers at events in the United States. But in this case, the event was not a routine speech, but a political event run by the Mojahedin organization to show off prominent Americans endorsing the Mojahedin’s call for removal from the State Depart-ment’s list of terrorist organizations.
The two men who acknowledged being paid for their appearances were Gen. Anthony 
Zinni, former commander-in-chief of the US Central Command, and retired Rep. Lee Hamilton, who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the 1990s.
They are two of a host of prominent military and political figures who have endorsed the Mojahedin organization’s call for removal from the terrorist list in recent months.
It isn’t known if the others received payments for their appearances.
There is nothing illegal about payments for such appearances. But it raises ethical questions when a figure takes a payment to advocate the political position of the group making the payment.
Hamilton may have been uncomfortable and in fact avoidable an outright endorsement of the Mojahedin position. Instead of calling, as others have, for the group to be taken off the list, Hamilton said instead that he was “puzzled” over why they should be kept on the terrorist listing.
He told Slavin the group “presented me with a platform that was thoroughly democratic. Were they misleading me? You always can be misled.”
Zinni advocated the group’s removal from the list now that it had disavowed terrorism, as it did a decade ago.
Zinni told Slavin, who used to report for USA Today, that he received his “standard fee” for appearing before the group, but declined to say what that amount was. He said he was not told what to say at the gathering.
Hamilton told Slavin, who wrote her article for Inter Press Service, that he was paid a “substantial amount” to speak before the group February 19 in Washington.
That gathering was one of six the Mojahedin have sponsored in Washington, Brussels and Paris showing off prominent retired officials endorsing the group.
Others who have appeared include: Michael Mukasey, attorney general under President George W. Bush; Gens. Peter Pace and Hugh Shelton, both former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Bill Richardson, former US ambassador to the UN and energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, who just recently finished two terms as governor of New Mexico; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; and James Jones, who until several weeks ago was President Obama’s national security adviser.
Last summer, a federal court ordered the State Department to review the terrorist designation of the Mojahedin and the group has been very actively fighting to get off the list, which prevents it from raising money in the United States. Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a congressional hearing her office would make the decision “as soon as we can.”