In fact, the Obama administration is not the first to waste tax-funded NASA resources and space program on Muslims. Ronald Reagan and his VP, George H. W. Bush, were. But they just wouldn’t say so publicly. At least Obama’s people are finally open about this outrageous behavior that isn’t new to his administration. Sad, though, that it took Al Jazeera to get it out of them.

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When I was an intern on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1985 and still in high school, Saudi Prince Sultan Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud held a giant party for all of the young interns on Capitol Hill. He and the Saudi Arabian Embassy rented out the Capitol Center and hosted free food, music, belly dancers, and other entertainment, trying to reach out to America’s future leaders and convince them of the modernity, hipness, and “appeal” of Saudi Arabia. The was the real purpose. But the ostensible purpose was to celebrate Prince Sultan’s trip into space, courtesy of NASA–Ronald Reagan’s NASA. While ultimately this was Reagan’s move, it was carefully orchestrated by then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, a close friend to the Saudi Royal family.

There were exhibits all over the Cap Center party honoring Prince Sultan’s space trip. And, at the time, everyone in the U.S. space program knew what a joke it was, what an obvious sop to the Saudis, given that the Prince didn’t have an iota of the years of training and skill it takes to become an American astronaut. He had the title of “payload specialist,” but the only payload for which he was actually skilled was “pay the lady.” Only months earlier, the Prince was the acting Saudi Information Minister and had zero space knowledge.

Everyone knew that this was a PR stunt that was outreach to Muslims in the form of fulfilling this spoiled Saudi Prince’s only unfulfilled Walter Mitty fantasy, courtesy of the Bush family that feted these people for decades. The real American astronauts laughed that the pretentious Prince Sultan insisted on wearing his Islamofascist get-up for the group picture of the STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery crew, yet he dressed in space gear for his individual shot. At the time, Sultan was the youngest person to fly in a space shuttle and not because he earned it. Even worse, U.S. taxpayer dollars helped finance Sultan’s launch and deployment of the Arab Satellite Communications Organization’s ARABSAT-1B satellite in space, the ostensible reason Sultan was aboard the flight. Yes, the Saudis supposedly paid a token amount. But it didn’t cover the overwhelming costs incurred. And that’s not the point.