Judicial Watch highlighted a story last week that has yet to galvanize much media attention, and it probably won’t. Rob Malley’s name may be familiar to many. He was recently tapped to be Barack Obama’s new Islamic State czar, but his history is the reason for his familiarity. A “czar” is a term for an executive appointee who’s been commissioned to handle a specific situation — in this case, coordinating Obama’s roulette with the Islamic State. But as NBC News notes, “While Malley has almost two decades of experience in national security, he has seen his share of controversies.” Here’s why:

He ran into his first firestorm in 2001 when he co-wrote an article about a Camp David summit on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which had ended in failure the year prior. In the article, Malley said it was unfair to blame only Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat — who most observers argued was the reason the talks fell apart — and pushed for “a more nuanced and realistic” analysis showing Israeli leader Ehud Barak was partially responsible, too. …

His next run-in with critics came during a casual return to politics in 2008, when he was an informal foreign policy adviser for Obama’s presidential campaign. He was forced to sever ties with the campaign when news outlets reported he had met with members of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization.

With Obama no longer facing re-election, Malley rejoined Team Obama last year by serving on the National Security Council. Judicial Watch notes that Malley has penned numerous literature sympathetic toward militant groups. But more scandalously, it adds, “Shortly after Obama got elected president Israel’s largest news site revealed that … Hamas engaged in talks with Obama for months through his ‘fired’ adviser. The article quotes Ahmad Yousuf, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s political adviser, saying this: ‘We were in contact with a number of Obama’s aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to come out with any statements, as they may have a negative effect on his election campaign and be used by Republican candidate John McCain (to attack Obama).’”

Imagine that: Another cover-up.