Six Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have alleged ties between the CAIR founders and Hamas. Both cofounder Omar Ahmad and Awad were involved previously with the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a group described by the FBI, in 1993, as "intimately tied to the most senior Hamas leadership.", and participated in a meeting held in Philadelphia on October 3, 1993, with Hamas sympathizers and officials of the Holy Land Foundation (which was designated in 1995 by Executive Order and later designated in a 2008 court case, as an organization that had raised millions of dollars for Hamas). Based on electronic surveillance of the meeting, the FBI reported that "these participants took great pains to disguise their association with Hamas...referring to it simply as 'The Movement'."