toledoblade.com --

In 1986, Mark Deli Siljander blamed a self-described act of "stupidity" involving a tape recording for his re-election defeat as a Republican congressman from Michigan.

He said the lesson from that experience was, "You can't afford to play around with tapes."

Now, Mr. Siljander is facing a federal indictment over his alleged involvement with a terrorist organization - possibly in part because of conversations overheard and recorded by federal investigators, according to a friend.

The Rev. John Booko, of Three Rivers, Mich., founding and former pastor of Riverside Church, said he has remained in contact with Mr. Siljander since that 1986 re-election defeat.

Mr. Booko said he believes in Mr. Siljander's innocence.

"He's a fine man and he just innocently got caught up in this," Mr. Booko said.

Mr. Siljander, of Reston, Va., was charged with money laundering, conspiracy, and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

The indictment in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Mr. Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying - money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Reverend Booko said Mr. Siljander became a suspect because he was heard on secretly wiretapped conversations.

"Here's Mark conversing with them and he's wiretapped too. He's such a friendly, outgoing guy that they heard him conversing with these guys and thought he was in with them," Mr. Booko said.

He said Mr. Siljander checked out the group to make sure it was legitimate and was satisfied that it was.

"He's like a son to me. He calls me Dad. We've been praying about this situation that I've known about for some months," Mr. Booko said. "He has been doing so much good in trying to build bridges between Muslims and Christians. He goes to Africa and the Middle East; he's been very well-received in helping out at Darfur. He wouldn't ruin his reputation for $50,000."

He said Mr. Siljander is married and the father of four children, including one daughter in the military.

Mr. Siljander was 29 when, with the help of the Christian fundamentalist organization Moral Majority, he was elected to replace David Stockman in the congressional district that then-included Lenawee County and most of Hillsdale County in 1981. Since then, the district's boundaries have changed and no longer include any of southeast Michigan.

After winning the 1981 primary, he won the general election and was re-elected twice before he was defeated in the 1986 Republican primary by the current congressman, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R., St. Joseph). Mr. Upton could not be reached for comment yesterday.

At the time, Mr. Siljander blamed himself for sending a tape to conservative ministers that appeared to equate his opponent with Satan.

"We must get every single voting Christian to the polls. In order to break this confusion, the smears, the attacks, the impugning of my integrity ... we need to break the back of Satan and the lies that are coming our way," the tape said.

The tape, distributed in the closing days of the campaign, was turned over to the Upton campaign by one of the ministers who received it.

"I was a victim of my own stupidity. I handed the Upton campaign a bomb and they lit the fuse," Mr. Siljander told The Blade.

In 1983, Mr. Siljander said he wore a bulletproof vest to attend a Washington rally in support of Jews wishing to leave the Soviet Union because the Secret Service had warned him that he was targeted for assassination by Arab terrorists. The Secret Service said it had no knowledge of such a threat.

Richard Imgrund, of Three Rivers, treasurer of the St. Joseph County Republican Party, said he did not initially support Mr. Siljander in 1981 but became a supporter later because of his opposition to abortion rights.

"I think he won that nomination [in 1981] because he worked harder than the other candidates," Mr. Imgrund said.

Mr. Siljander summed up his campaign philosophy in 1981 as "PPO" - for "persistence pays off."

Robert Sills, chairman of the St. Joseph County Republican Party, said Mr. Siljander lost in 1986 because he "just plain wore out his welcome. From what I remember, he just plain lost his Republican support."

Mr. Siljander was born in Chicago and received bachelor's and master's degrees from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. He was a real estate broker and a trustee for Fabius Township in St. Joseph County, and served in the state House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress from Virginia in 1992.

Mr. Siljander is president of Global Strategies, Inc., a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., operates an import-export firm, and works as a radio commentator.

He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1987 and 1988.

In 2005, he gave a lecture titled, "The place of Muslim-Christian dynamic in international negotiations" to the Edinburgh Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Edinburgh Centre's Web site says he was the primary sponsor of the African Famine Relief Act as a member of Congress; is a student of the Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese languages, and has spent over 10 years studying the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Contact Tom Troy at: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058.