[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 18 (Wednesday, February 6, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H400-H406]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 54 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, at this time, the first thing I would like
to do is yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).
Paying Tribute to Cardiss Collins, Former Member of Congress
Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. I want to thank the gentleman from
Texas for yielding to me.
I rise to pay tribute to the predecessor of my office, who served for
23 years as a Member of the House, the Honorable Cardiss Collins, who
passed away on Saturday evening here in the District area.
I followed Ms. Collins into Congress when she retired. She followed
her husband, who was killed in an airplane accident. The amazing thing
about her was that she basically had no political involvement and
experience from that vantage point. She was an accountant, who also was
a housewife and involved a bit in local politics. But she got involved
and was a quick study, immediately grasped what takes place here,
ultimately became chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, became
chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, had an
outstanding career, and I simply wanted to acknowledge her work.
People of her community will remember the legacy that she created as
a fighter for women's rights, as a defender of children's rights, and a
real defender of health care.
Again, I thank the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Davis. It's my pleasure to have had the
opportunity to yield to you. It's one of the things that's good if we
do more of, and that is recognizing people for their great
contributions to this country.
At this time, I want to pick up where my friend, Mr. Franks, left off
and follow up on the issue of who will be the next CIA Director. This
is an important matter.
Some think, well, what difference does the past make? Today is a new
day. Every day is a new day. But those of us who majored in history,
studied history, know that our history is the best indication of future
performance.
So with regard to Mr. Brennan, I think it's worth noting that
Secretary of State--former Secretary of State now--Hillary Clinton
warned on her way out as Secretary of State of the danger of what she
called the ``global jihadist threat.'' I am greatly appreciative to
Secretary Clinton for calling this administration's attention to that,
as well as the American public. Secretary Clinton should know. We had
at least four Americans killed at Benghazi during her watch as
Secretary of State.
The question might be: Where is John Brennan today on this central
challenge of our time for Western civilization? And by ``Western
civilization,'' I mean the idea that the Founders of this Nation had,
many of them depicted in the great mural just outside this floor, 56
signers of the Declaration in the mural that John Trumble did down in
the Rotunda. Their idea, when you read their writings, was of a people
who would have the chance to govern themselves.
They all knew that prayer was important. That's why as Ben Franklin
said during the Constitutional Convention--his own handwriting, he
wrote out his speech, but he mentioned that during the revolution, in
his words:
We had daily prayer in this room. Our prayers, sir, were
heard and they were graciously answered.
They understood that. They prayed for wisdom. They prayed for
guidance. They prayed for help in setting up this experiment in
democracy. Yes, Rome had had a Senate. Yes, Greece had had a Senate;
England had had a Parliament. But they had rulers who could just
disband, kill, dismiss. This was going to be different. This was going
to be a people who would have the chance to actually govern themselves,
a revolutionary idea.
There was still such a class system in so many areas of the world in
the 1700s that so many considered that people who were not of the upper
crust would not have the ability to govern themselves. That's not what
the Founders believed after they prayed each day during the revolution,
after they prayed and struggled and argued over the way forward to
reaching that goal.
But there is a threat, as Secretary Clinton said, the global jihadist
threat, of people who think that the Founders' dream is totally
inappropriate, that it leads to degradation; it leads to moral
depravity, in their minds.
{time} 1300
The Founders knew that was a possibility, but it was worth the risk
to give people the freedom of choice as they believed their creator had
given all of us, to make decisions for good or bad, and normally to
have to live with the consequences of those decisions.
[[Page H401]]
The global jihadist threat that Secretary Clinton pointed out does
not have the belief that a democracy is a good idea, that a people
electing representatives in a republican form of government is a good
idea. They believe that we need some religious leader, like the
Ayatollah Khomeini, or now Khamenei in Iran, we need a religious leader
like that, that tells us what we can do, that makes all his decisions
under shari'a law.
Now, all of those who met during the revolution, they believed in the
power of prayer to God, and that's why they prayed during that time.
But they wanted everyone to have the chance to worship as they chose,
be they Muslim, Hindu, but especially Judeo-Christian beliefs where
Jews and Christians had traditionally suffered persecution. They wanted
the chance for people to worship as they please, or not worship. But
they knew to make that possible they had to pray to God.
And that's why we are observing, once again, tomorrow the National
Prayer Breakfast where our President will speak, where we will have a
fantastic testimony from one of the great leaders in our country, who
earlier in his life, when his life was going astray, dropped to his
knees and prayed for help and got it. We will hear about that tomorrow.
But if we don't know the history of this country, if we don't know
the dream of the Founders, if we don't understand the Constitution,
then we lose it. And people need to understand when there is a global
jihadist threat, not of moderate Muslims, like our friends, the
Northern Alliance, who fought and defeated the Taliban on our behalf,
not the enemy of our enemies, but these are radical Islamic jihadists
who want a caliphate in which the United States is subjugated to a
religious ruler.
And they're willing to use violence, if necessary. Although the
Muslim Brotherhood now seems to indicate that here in America they've
made so much progress in infiltrating and getting positions of power in
our government, in our State Department, in our Homeland Security
Department, in our Justice Department, at the White House directly,
direct lines to the President, they have made so much progress in
moving toward that goal of a caliphate here in the United States, under
shari'a law, not under the Constitution, that they're thinking maybe
violence is not the way forward in America to achieve their goal of
making this a shari'a compliant caliphate.
But the Muslim Brotherhood around the world believes in many places
violence is the way forward in those areas. But we've got to understand
who we are facing and what they want to do. And Secretary Clinton,
unfortunately it is on her way out that she notes this, instead of
being able to spend the last four years with the clarity she had when
she said that we face this danger of a global jihadist threat. It is a
threat. She now acknowledges it on her way out.
And the question now is, since Secretary of State Kerry will now be
carrying that mantle, for heaven's sake we have got to have somebody in
intelligence directing intelligence who understands the threat against
us and will ensure that we are protected and understands the global
jihadist threat.
The Obama administration has focused almost entirely on al Qaeda,
believing people when they came in and said, ``Look, the only people
who can actually give you advice on dealing with these radical folks
are Islamic believers, so you must get advice from us, form
partnerships with us, let us give you advice, let us tell you how to
deal with this threat.'' And they made great inroads in this
administration in that approach.
But the blindness of the larger jihadist threat, the enterprise that
is being pursued by the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, has resulted in the
practice of drone-delivered assassinations of al Qaeda figures, with
what many are questioning or arguing is due process without that, and
this administration's repeated declaration that al Qaeda is being
defeated. They know not of what they speak.
The idea that al Qaeda is being defeated is helping recruit others
who are radical jihadists, because they're able to point to a United
States administration that is so blind and so uninformed of what really
is going on, that they think al Qaeda is on the decline when radical
jihad is on its way up.
The drone technique of killing American citizens and killing radical
jihadists is apparently thought by this administration to be a very
advanced and practical approach. Well, it does avoid putting Americans
at risk right now. But those same people in this administration that
talked about the danger of waterboarding because, yes, some acknowledge
we got very critical information by using that, even though there was
no threat to their health, you had doctors there, there was no
intention to do any harm. The intent was to perform a procedure that
did not harm but would gather information.
Well, this administration ran against John McCain, and even though
John McCain agreed, yeah, we don't want to waterboard, we don't want to
do anything that somebody might someday call torture, they complained,
gee, this is allowing radicals to be recruited against the United
States because of the unjust nature of doing a procedure that is not
harmful to someone's health to gather information to save American
lives, which it did.
So here we are now with this administration that thought
waterboarding helped jihadists recruit more radicals, using a process
of having a high administration official think to himself or herself,
``I don't think this may be enough, yeah, blow them up,'' without
giving adequate consideration to civilians who will be killed, to
family members who will be upset, to the ability of our enemies to use
that to recruit other radicals many times over to replace those that
have been killed with a drone strike.
This administration's systemic failure to understand what the Muslim
Brotherhood calls ``civilization jihad'' is putting this country in
severe jeopardy. That's why I appreciate Secretary Clinton, on her way
out, unfortunately, pointing back to the danger of this global jihadist
threat.
According to the--and this is the name of the document--``Explanatory
Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North
America,'' the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood is this:
``A civilization-jihadist process--a kind of grand jihad in
eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and
sabotaging its miserable house by their,'' i.e. Americans', ``hands and
the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's
religion is made victorious over all other religions.''
{time} 1310
The mission statement I've just quoted translates into a
comprehensive effort to penetrate, to influence, and otherwise subvert
our American civil society, our form of government, our governing
institutions. And that explanatory memorandum that I just quoted from
was written on May 19, 1991 by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative,
Mohamed Akram.
Though the Justice Department established in Federal court during the
Holy Land Foundation trials in Dallas, Texas, that the groups
identified by the Muslim Brotherhood in their memo are ``their
organizations,'' a number of them and their successors have been
treated by the Obama administration as key interlocutors in dealing
with radical jihad, and this administration believes that these Muslim
Brotherhood front organizations are legitimate representatives of the
Muslim American community.
They have enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to recruit and to show
others, Look, we're the ones that the White House trusts. We can call
the White House. We can call and tell them there are three people who
are giving a seminar at Langley--CIA headquarters--to law officers,
hundreds of them, and we believe they will be teaching them things that
are offensive to us. Well, yeah, because they call them what they are.
They read from their own documents.
These individuals, who have spent their careers learning and teaching
about the threat of what Secretary Clinton called the global jihadist
threat, were stopped in August a year and a half ago by a call to the
White House. That call also was instrumental in prompting this
administration through the intelligence department, the Justice
Department, the FBI, all these departments, into purging documents,
purging words, purging things from our materials that someone who
[[Page H402]]
wants to destroy our way of life and take us over and make us a
caliphate may be offended by.
I can't go into what has been purged because they decided to declare
it a classified setting when Michele Bachmann and I--and for a while
Lynn Westmoreland--went through documents to see what had been purged,
documents that we knew before we went in had supposedly been purged
because someone who wants to destroy our way of life might be offended.
Well, I am offended, every American should be offended, and every
Muslim should be offended that a governing administration put the
feelings of people who want to destroy us ahead of their oath to
protect this Nation and preserve the Constitution. It doesn't mean
anything to preserve the Constitution if you preserve the document but
you do not preserve the enumerated powers and laws set out in that
document.
Last June, four of my colleagues and I wrote to five different
departments in this administration. In each separate letter--each was
different--we wrote to the inspector general of each department, and we
pointed out in each letter specific facts about that department that
should give rise to an investigation into the influence of people who
have embraced the idea of civilization jihad and taking this country
over and subjugating us to sharia law and a religious leader who could
tell us how to avoid moral depravity.
There was such an uproar, even by some Republicans--by a few of them,
anyway. But some in the media went ballistic. Instead of doing their
own investigation, they start blaming the messenger. But I don't hear
any of those people attacking Secretary Clinton on her way out for
saying, By the way, there is a global jihadist threat. It's what we've
been trying to tell people for a couple of years, at least. There is a
global jihadist threat. Thank you, Secretary Clinton. You're right.
Now, for this administration to bring people into top positions who
do not understand the threat to this country and think that ignoring
due process of our Constitution and killing American citizens with
drone bombs is somehow preserving the Constitution, it requires another
look. It requires oversight. There may be circumstances where that's
what needs to be done. But I do find it interesting that this
administration and certain leaders here on the Hill had no problem with
al Awlaki leading prayers here at the Capitol, here on Capitol Hill,
prayers by al Awlaki that were videotaped, that you can still find. He
led prayers on Capitol Hill, and then he goes to Yemen, and this
administration thinks we better kill him with a drone without due
process. What were they afraid of? Maybe that he would come back and
lead prayers on Capitol Hill, or maybe he would be captured and talk
about who all he led prayers with on Capitol Hill? What was the need
for taking this man out?
We're told he had blood on his hands, and so it does seem. But there
seems to be a problem when leaders of this country will say you cannot
waterboard to get information, even though it's not a threat to the
health of the individual--it scares them--but we will take an American
citizen out who not so long before was leading prayers of Muslim staff
members here at this Capitol on Capitol Hill.
It would be a grave mistake for our Senate to confirm John Brennan as
the chief architect that he has been for his failure to understand and
comprehend the global jihadist threat that Secretary Clinton has noted
going out.
There was an article today, February 6, by Jim Geraghty, and I'm
quoting from the article:
Let me throw you a curveball by quoting Adam Serwer of Mother Jones,
reacting to the administration's release of its legal justification to
kill Americans believed to be involved with terror without a trial, by
drone.
{time} 1320
Let me parenthetically note here that I'm not someone who comes to
the table without an understanding about trials, about evidence, about
due process, about constitutional rights, and about a death sentence.
I've signed death sentences. It's a heavy, weighty matter, and as
someone who has believed in capital punishment in the right
circumstances, it's still a challenging moment when you watch your hand
sign an order to have someone put to death. I've done it twice. In both
cases, the evidence was overwhelming beyond a reasonable doubt. The
evidence was also overwhelming beyond a reasonable doubt that those two
individuals murdered an individual or more, knew what they were doing
when they murdered one or more individuals, were complicit in actually
either murdering or participating in the murder, and that there was no
evidence.
The question put to the jury: Is there any evidence that mitigates
against the imposition of the death penalty as the Supreme Court has
found? Any evidence. It's a ``no evidence'' question. Is there any
evidence that mitigates against the death penalty? That's one of the
three questions, and that's the standard. That's what juries in States
that allow capital punishment have had to wrestle with, but I'd like to
know who is considering those weighty issues in this administration.
So we go back to Geraghty's article. He quotes from Mother Jones:
The Obama administration claims that the secret judgment of
a single ``well-informed, high-level administration
official'' meets the demands of due process and is sufficient
justification to kill an American citizen suspected of
working with terrorists. That procedure is entirely secret.
Thus, it's impossible to know which rules the administration
has established to protect due process and to determine how
closely those rules are followed. The government needs the
approval of a judge to detain a suspected terrorist. To kill
one, however, it need only give itself permission.
Of course, the hypocrisy of most liberals doesn't get us
off the hook on the need to have a coherent view on this.
Okay, conservatives. Big question now: If this were President
Romney, would we be shrugging, concerned, complaining or
screaming? I think ``concerned.'' At the very least, you
would want another set of eyes--the House or Senate
Intelligence Committees or some independent judges--taking a
look at the Presidential ``kill list''--right?--at least for
the American citizens.
Our Charles C.W. Cooke said, ``In case my position isn't
obvious, I am appalled by any President processing the
unilateral power to kill American citizens extrajudicially.''
Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, puts it rather bluntly:
``Every American has the right to know when their government
believes that it is allowed to kill them.''
Geraghty finishes his article by saying, ``That doesn't seem like too
much to ask.''
The article in Mother Jones is worth considering. It's dated Tuesday,
February 5, posted at 8:53 a.m. Pacific Standard Time by Adam Serwer.
It takes a good look at this issue.
So what is the result of this administration's deciding secretly or
some bureaucrat's deciding, ``Yeah, we've got enough. We'll kill this
man. Yeah, we've got enough. We'll kill this person, this American
citizen''? How is that working out?
There was an article published on January 31, 2013, by Catherine
Herridge. Catherine has a great book out on radical Islam. This article
Catherine has entitled, ``Al Qaeda affiliate in Africa looking to
strike more Western targets, intelligence officials say.'' She says in
her article, quoting Secretary Clinton:
``Yes, we now face a spreading jihadist threat. We have
driven a lot of the al Qaeda operatives out of . . .
Afghanistan, Pakistan. Killed a lot of them, including, of
course, bin Laden, but we have to recognize this is a global
movement.''
My comment: It's not a movement that is simply attacking overseas in
some foreign country. Anyway, it's a good article by Catherine
Herridge. She understands the threat.
Let me read a quote directly from White House counterterrorism
adviser and nominee for Director of the CIA, Mr. John Brennan. He said:
Hezbollah started out as purely a terrorist organization
back in the early eighties and has evolved significantly over
time, and now it has members of parliament in the cabinet.
There are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the
Hezbollah organization . . . and so, quite frankly, I'm
pleased to see that a lot of Hezbollah individuals are, in
fact, renouncing that type of terrorism and violence and are
trying to participate in the political process in Lebanon in
a very legitimate fashion.
They have not sworn off violence in Lebanon. They have not sworn off
violence in Egypt, in Syria and, as we well know, in Libya, Albania,
Tunisia, even in African nations further south.
I've said before and have expressed my concern of this administration
in its helping people we didn't know for sure of their identities and
in encouraging them to overthrow this Nation's
[[Page H403]]
ally, President Mubarak. I expressed concerns before it was done about
giving military assistance to people that we knew included al Qaeda to
overthrow a man who had blood on his hands but, since 2003, had been
this Nation's and this administration's ally, Qadhafi. They
participated in taking him out--gave military aid to do so--to protect
al Qaeda and other revolutionaries in setting up a government, a
situation, that naturally was going to get Americans killed and which
happened.
So I applaud Secretary Clinton for noting the global jihadist threat
on her way out, but I come back to her question that will ring in
people's ears for years to come when Senators were trying to get to the
heart of the matter: What happened at Benghazi? Please just tell us
what happened. We're not going to prosecute anybody here at the Senate.
We just need to know what happened. Of her question, those words will
ring: What difference does it make?
What difference does it make? Americans got killed.
I was inquiring: Does anybody know has a fifth person died of his
wounds in Benghazi? What's going on? What's happening to those people
who were wounded? Who can tell us what really happened?
What difference does it make? So we can avoid Americans being killed
like that in the future.
What if we'd have had an adequate investigation about security at our
Embassy back when Susan Rice was involved back in the nineties? Did
they ask for extra security? Did you deny them that security? Did we
have enough security? What happened to allow our Embassy to be bombed
and Americans to be killed?
{time} 1330
What difference does it make? Because if we'd known in the nineties
what went wrong, maybe we could have avoided Chris Stevens, our SEALS,
those four Americans that we know of being killed.
What difference does it make? It makes a difference to their families
if they're alive today or dead because we were not properly secured.
What difference does it make? It makes a difference to future
families who lose loved ones in the service of their country because
people stonewalled and would not give us the information as to what
went wrong, what happened. Just tell us.
We're supposed to trust the administration? Not only with a
bureaucratic decision by one person that he think he's got enough
information to go kill an American citizen without a trial, now we have
to say, oh, well, we will trust them to make sure that nobody gets
killed again, but it has already happened. And then by the
stonewalling, we don't know enough about where the weapons came from.
We don't know enough about what went wrong to know how those weapons
that we may have provided in a country where we provided the
revolutionary help, now has resulted in Americans and others being
killed in Algeria.
What difference does it make? I'm sure the people who died in Algeria
would like to have their family members back. That makes a difference.
What difference does it make? It doesn't make any difference if you
don't care who lives or dies. But if you want to protect Americans in
the service of their country, it makes a real difference. And it's our
duty to try to protect them.
The New York Times had an article by Gregory Johnsen back in November
titled ``The Wrong Man for the CIA.'' He said:
With the resignation of David H. Petraeus, President Obama
now has a chance to appoint a new CIA director.
Unfortunately, one of the leading candidates for the job is
John O. Brennan, who is largely responsible for America's
current flawed counterterrorism strategy, which relies too
heavy on drone strikes that frequently kills civilians and
provide al Qaeda with countless new recruits. Rather than
keeping us safe, this strategy is putting the United States
at greater risk.
For all of the Obama administration's foreign policy
successes--from ending the war in Iraq to killing Osama bin
Laden--the most enduring policy legacy of the past 4 years
may well turn out to be an approach to counterterrorism that
American officials call the Yemen model, a mixture of drone
strikes and Special Forces raids targeting al Qaeda leaders.
Mr. Brennan is the President's chief counterterrorism
adviser and the architect of this model. In a recent speech,
he claimed that there was ``little evidence that these
actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or
recruits for AQAP,'' referring to al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula.
Perhaps the initials ought to be, instead of AQAP, the initials the
administration, the government likes to use, instead of AQAP, maybe it
ought to be MBCH, the Muslim Brotherhood on Capitol Hill, where al
Awlaki that this administration killed with a drone strike led prayers.
Back to the article:
Mr. Brennan's assertion was either shockingly naive or
deliberately misleading. Testimonies from al Qaeda fighters
and interviews I and local journalists have conducted across
Yemen attest to the centrality of civilian casualties in
explaining al Qaeda's rapid growth there.
Rapid growth there needs to be noted. People that have actually done
an objective analysis have found al Qaeda is not diminished. Radicals
are growing to the point that Secretary Clinton would note the jihadist
threat as she leaves.
The article says:
The United States is killing women, children and members of
key tribes. ``Each time they kill a tribesman, they create
more fighters for al Qaeda,'' one Yemeni explained to me over
tea in Sana, the capital, last month. Another told CNN, after
a failed strike, ``I would not be surprised if 100 tribesmen
joined al Qaeda as a result of the latest drone mistake.''
Rather than promote the author of a failing strategy, we
need a CIA director who will halt the agency's creeping
militarization and restore it to what it does best:
collecting human intelligence. It is an intelligence agency,
not a lightweight version of Joint Special Operations
Command. And until America wins the intelligence war,
missiles will continue to hit the wrong targets, kill too
many civilians and drive young men into the waiting arms of
our enemies.
Without accurate on-the-ground intelligence, our policies
will fail. George W. Bush launched two major ground
invasions, and Mr. Obama has tried several smaller wars.
Neither strategy has worked. In Yemen, which has been the
laboratory for Mr. Obama's shadow wars, AQAP has more than
tripled in size after 3 years of drone strikes. When the
United States started bombing Yemen in 2009, AQAP had just
200 to 300 fighters. Today, the State Department estimates it
has a few thousand. Since 2009, the group has attempted to
attack America on three occasions, coming closest on December
25, 2009, when a would-be suicide bomber narrowly failed to
bring down an airliner over Detroit. When it tries again--and
it will--the organization will be available to draw upon much
deeper ranks.
Not surprisingly, American officials reject the claim that
current policy is exacerbating the problem. In June 2011, Mr.
Brennan declared that ``there hasn't been a single collateral
death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of
the capabilities we've been able to develop.'' This came
almost exactly a year after a botched drone attack in Yemen
killed a deputy governor and four of his bodyguards instead
of the intended target.
Under Mr. Brennan's guidance, the United States has also
adopted a controversial method for determining how many
civilians it has killed, counting all military-age males in a
strike zone as combatants. This means that Abdulrahman al
Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen killed by a drone in
October, was classified as a militant despite evidence that
he was simply a shy teenager whose father happened to be
Anwar al Awlaki, who had been killed by American missiles 2
weeks earlier.
The strikes Mr. Brennan asks the President to approve
frequently lead to civilian casualties. Indeed, the first
strike Mr. Obama ordered on Yemen, in December 2009,
destroyed a Bedouin village that was mistaken for a terrorist
training camp. American missiles killed more than 50 people,
including 35 women and children. Watching that strike live on
a grainy feed the military calls Kill TV, Jeh Johnson, the
Pentagon's top lawyer, later admitted, ``if I were Catholic,
I'd have to go to confession.''
Mr. Petraeus's departure presents Mr. Obama with an
opportunity to halt the CIA's drift toward becoming a
paramilitary organization and put it back on course. For all
of the technological advances America has made in a decade of
fighting al Qaeda, it still needs all of the old tricks it
learned in the days before spy satellites and drones.
More and better intelligence from sources on the ground
would result in more accurate targeting and fewer civilian
casualties. That would be a Yemen model that actually worked
and a lasting and effective counterterrorism legacy for Mr.
Obama's second term.
That's Gregory Johnson from The New York Times.
Another good article by Patrick Poole on June 6 of 2012, ``Meet John
Brennan, Obama's Assassination Czar.''
A relatively unnoticed article by Associated Press reporter
Kimberly Dozier 2 weeks ago outlined new Obama administration
policy changes which consolidated power for authorizing drone
attacks and assassinations
[[Page H404]]
under political appointees within the White House.
The article identifies White House Counterterrorism Chief
John Brennan as the official assuming the role of Obama's de
facto assassination czar, raising concerns even within the
Obama administration that the White House is increasingly
turning into ``a pseudo-military headquarters'' under the
direction of just a few senior Obama administration
officials.
Adding to these concerns are serious questions about
Brennan's qualification for this role.
Even before the 2008 election, eyebrows were raised over
Brennan's role in the Obama campaign. An employee of The
Analysis Corporation, of which Brennan was CEO, had
improperly accessed passport information for Hillary Clinton,
Obama's Democratic primary challenger at the time, and GOP
nominee John McCain. At the time, Brennan was a top adviser
to the Obama campaign, and Brennan's employee was not fired.
One of the key witnesses in the case was found murdered in
his car outside his church while the investigation was still
ongoing.
Brennan was involved in administration intrigue related to
the release of convicted Libyan Pan Am Flight 103 bomber from
a Scottish jail in August 2009. At the time of Megrahi's
release, when he returned to Libya to a national hero's
welcome, Brennan described the release as ``unfortunate,
inappropriate, and wrong'' and called for his reimprisonment.
However, Obama administration documents obtained by The
Sunday Times revealed that the White House had secretly
informed Scottish authorities that they found compassionate
release more palatable than the reimprisonment of Megrahi in
Libya.
Brennan also came under fire after would-be underwear
bomber Umar Farouk--and I won't try that last name--nearly
brought down a U.S.-bound Northwest Airlines flight on
Christmas Day 2009. British intelligence authorities had
notified their U.S. counterparts of an ``Umar Farouk''
meeting with al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen, and
Umar Farouk's father had warned of his son's increasing
extremism to CIA officials at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.
However, Umar Farouk was never added to the U.S. no-fly list,
nor was his U.S. visa revoked.
{time} 1340
And but for, as I understand it, him sweating too much around his
posterior that helped defuse the bomb and then the work of some heroic
passengers to stop him once he tried, the crew was--the passengers were
saved. But it was certainly no thanks to the Obama administration or
Mr. Brennan.
Now, back to the article. Patrick Poole says:
Following this stunning and nearly fatal intelligence
failure which prompted members of both the House and Senate
Intelligence oversight committees to call for his
resignation, Brennan lashed out at the Obama administration's
critics in a USA Today editorial. He claimed that the
``politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-
mongering only serve the goals of al Qaeda.''
Let me insert here, if he thinks, Mr. Brennan thinks that questioning
failures of the Obama administration is contributing to al Qaeda, what
must bombing innocent people with drones be doing for al Qaeda?
Back to the article. It says:
Brennan also defended treating Umar Farouk as a criminal by
having his rights read to him upon arrest and trying him in
civilian court, rather than transferring the would-be bomber
to military custody as an enemy combatant.
Just days later, Brennan gave a speech to Islamic law
students at New York University, where he was introduced by
Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North
America, at that time. Mattson, who had been involved with
the Obama inaugural prayer service, had come under fire then
for her organization's longstanding terrorist support.
During his New York University speech, Brennan defended the
administration's highly unpopular move to try al Qaeda
operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Federal court,
which the administration eventually backed away from. He
claimed that terrorists are the real victims of ``political,
economic and social forces.''
Mr. Speaker, it's important people understand. John Brennan claimed
that the terrorists killing Americans, over 3,000 on 9/11, were the
real victims of a political, economic, and social force.
Brennan said that Islamic terrorists are not jihadists,
referenced ``Al-Quds'' instead of Jerusalem, and described
the 20 percent of former Guantanamo detainees returning to
terrorist activities as ``not that bad'' when compared to
ordinary criminal recidivism.
The thousands of people that have likely been killed by the 20
percent of our detainees being returned to terrorist activities
probably would not consider Mr. Brennan's assessment as not that bad.
They wouldn't consider that all that accurate.
Patrick writes a great article. He has another one January 7, 2013,
entitled, ``Revisiting 'Jihad' John Brennan.''
Another, by my friend, Andrew McCarthy, on February 4, opposed
Brennan for CIA Director. I will include these articles in the Record.
It is time we took a real objective look at people who say their goal
is civilization jihad and the elimination of our freedom to choose as
we please and to choose our public servants.
[From the PJ Tatler, Jan. 7, 2013]
Revisiting ``Jihad'' John Brennan
(By Patrick Poole)
This afternoon at a White House ceremony, Obama announced
that his nominee for CIA Director will be `Jihad' John
Brennan, his current counterterrorism adviser.
Back in June, I profiled Brennan here at PJ Media. Some of
`Jihad' John's recent highlights include:
March 2008: John McCain's passport information leaked from
John Brennan's company during presidential campaign (key
witness murdered during investigation)
April 2008: Brennan tells the New York Times that US
government official must stop ``Iran-bashing''
Feb 2010: Brennan attacks critics of Obama Admin's handling
of ``underwear bomber'' Abdulmutallab as a criminal, not a
terrorist, saying that critics are ``serving the goals of Al-
Qaeda''
May 2010: Brennan says he wants to build up ``Hezbollah
moderates''
May 2010: Brennan defends `Jihad' as a `legitimate tenet of
Islam'
June 2010: Washington Times editorial slams Brennan,
saying, ``President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser
knows very little about terrorism, and that's scary for
America.''
Aug 2010: Brennan storms out of meeting with Washington
Times editorial staff after he claims he was misquoted by
newspaper and editor begins reading Brennan's own quotes back
to him out loud
Sept 2010: Known HAMAS operative given escorted tour of
National Counterterrorism Center
May 2012: Brennan implicated in major White House
intelligence breach involving UK/Saudi Al-Qaeda infiltrator
Aug 2012: Brennan attacks critics of politically-driven
White House intelligence leaks
Sept 2012: House Intel Committee Chairman Mike Rogers says
changes in CIA's Benghazi attack talking points blaming
Mohammed video happened under deputies committee chaired by
Brennan
Again, these are just some of John Brennan's highlights. We
could also add his laughable claims of no collateral
casualties from his drone assassination program or his
defense of trying Al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed in federal court or his role in the White House
back-door dealing with the UK on the release of Libyan Pan Am
Flight 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi or his reference to
Jerusalem as ``Al-Quds'' in a NYU speech or his claims that
the 20 percent recidivism rate for GITMO detainees (those who
returned to terrorism) was ``not that bad''. But that would
be piling on.
What should be clear is that John Brennan's role in Barack
Obama's disastrous first term should preclude him from any
further service in the second term, let alone a promotion.
____
[From PJ Media, June 6, 2012]
Meet John Brennan, Obama's Assassination Czar
(By Patrick Poole)
A relatively unnoticed article by Associated Press reporter
Kimberly Dozier two weeks ago outlined new Obama
administration policy changes which consolidated power for
authorizing drone attacks and assassinations under political
appointees within the White House.
The article identifies White House counterterrorism chief
John Brennan as the official assuming the role of Obama's de
facto assassination czar, raising concerns even within the
Obama administration that the White House is increasingly
turning into ``a pseudo-military headquarters'' under the
direction of just a few senior Obama administration
officials.
Adding to these concerns are serious questions about
Brennan's qualifications for this role.
Even before the 2008 election, eyebrows were raised over
Brennan's role in the Obama campaign. An employee of The
Analysis Corporation, of which Brennan was CEO, had
improperly accessed passport information for Hillary Clinton,
Obama's Democratic primary challenger at the time, and GOP
nominee John McCain. At the time, Brennan was a top adviser
to the Obama campaign, and Brennan's employee was not fired.
(One of the key witnesses in the case was found murdered in
his car outside his church while the investigation was still
ongoing.)
Brennan was involved in administration intrigue related to
the release of convicted Libyan Pan Am Flight 103 bomber
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from a Scottish jail in August 2009. At
the time of Megrahi's release--when he returned to Libya to a
national hero's welcome--Brennan described the release as
``unfortunate, inappropriate,
[[Page H405]]
and wrong'' and called for his reimprisonment. However, Obama
administration documents obtained by The Sunday Times
revealed that the White House had secretly informed Scottish
authorities that they found compassionate release more
palatable than the reimprisonment of Megrahi in Libya.
Brennan also came under fire after would-be underwear
bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a U.S.-
bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009.
British intelligence authorities had notified their U.S.
counterparts of an ``Umar Farouk'' meeting with al-Qaeda
cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, and Abdulmutallab's father
had warned of his son's increasing extremism to CIA officials
at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. However, Abdulmutallab was
never added to the U.S. no-fly list, nor was his U.S. visa
revoked.
Following this stunning and nearly fatal intelligence
failure which prompted members of both the House and Senate
Intelligence oversight committees to call for his
resignation, Brennan lashed out at the Obama administration's
critics in a USA Today editorial. He claimed that the
``politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-
mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.''
Brennan also defended treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal
by having his rights read to him upon arrest and trying him
in civilian court, rather than transferring the would-be
bomber to military custody as an enemy combatant.
Just days later, Brennan gave a speech to Islamic law
students at New York University, where he was introduced by
Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North
America. Mattson, who had been involved with the Obama
inaugural prayer service, had come under fire then for her
organization's longstanding terrorist support.
During his NYU speech, Brennan defended the
administration's highly unpopular move to try al-Qaeda
operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court
(which the administration eventually backed away from). He
claimed that terrorists are the real victims of ``political,
economic and social forces,'' said that Islamic terrorists
were not jihadists, referenced ``Al-Quds'' instead of
Jerusalem, and described the 20 percent of former Guantanamo
detainees returning to terrorist activities as ``not that
bad'' when compared to ordinary criminal recidivism.
During a talk at the Nixon Center in May 2010, Brennan said
that the administration was looking for ways to build up
``moderate elements'' of the Lebanese terrorist organization
Hezbollah. Two weeks later, at a speech at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Brennan defended
the Islamic doctrines of jihad as ``a holy struggle'' and ``a
legitimate tenet of Islam.''
These missteps and misstatements by Brennan prompted the
Washington Times to editorialize in June 2010 that
``President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser knows very
little about terrorism, and that's scary for America,'' and
to warn that ``Mr. Brennan's curious views may be part of a
larger move by the O Force to redefine terrorism''.
Rep. Peter King, then-House Homeland Security Committee
ranking member (now committee chairman), called for Brennan's
firing, saying:
Here's the problem . . . and this is from people from the
intelligence community too. John Brennan is running
intelligence policy from the White House. He is getting in
the weeds in different intelligence organizations that are
out there. He's doing this from the White House. Obviously,
he is not subject to Congressional scrutiny, because he's on
the White House staff, and it's a very dangerous situation,
where you have a homeland security advisor who is beyond the
reach of Congress actually making, running, and carrying on
intelligence policy. It's wrong. I'm not aware of it
happening before.
Stung by these criticisms, Brennan demanded to meet with
the editorial staff of the Washington Times. During the June
2010 meeting, Brennan claimed that the newspaper had
misrepresented his views, even as the editors read his
statements directly from his speeches posted on the White
House website.
When Brennan was cornered by senior editorial writer Jim
Robbins about his views on jihad being a legitimate tenet of
Islam, Brennan abruptly ended the interview and stormed out
of their offices.
In September 2010, after I broke the story that a known top
U.S. Hamas official had been given a guided tour of the top-
secret National Counterterrorism Center and FBI Academy at
Quantico under Brennan's watch, several former top
intelligence and defense officials again called for his
resignation.
Last month, it was revealed that Brennan was implicated in
a serious intelligence breach detailing an ongoing
counterterrorism operation led by British and Saudi
intelligence agencies that had placed an operative deep
inside the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
organization. The White House leak forced the termination of
the operation and the immediate withdrawal of the double
agent, infuriating our foreign intelligence allies.
Just two weeks ago, internal White House documents obtained
by Judicial Watch through a FOIA request revealed that
Brennan and other White House officials had met twice with
Hollywood filmmakers preparing a movie about the killing of
Osama bin Laden, providing them unparalleled access including
the identity of a SEAL Team 6 operator and commander along
with other classified information. Amazingly, these high-
level White House meetings between * * *
____
[From Ordered Liberty, Feb. 4, 2013]
Oppose Brennan for CIA Director
(By Andrew C. McCarthy)
To cut to the chase, a country that was serious about its
national security would never put John Brennan in charge of
its premier intelligence service.
Of course, it is by no means clear that the United States
is any longer a serious country in this regard. Serious
countries do not fund, arm and ``partner with'' hostile
regimes. They do not recruit enemy sympathizers to fill key
governmental policy positions. They do not erect barriers
impeding their intelligence services from understanding an
enemy's threat doctrine--in conscious indifference to Sun
Tzu's maxim that defending oneself requires knowing one's
enemies. All of these malfeasances have become staples of
Obama policy, under the guidance of Brennan, the president's
counterterrorism guru.
Still, the installation of a Beltway operator whose metier
is misinformation as director of central intelligence would
be an epic mismatch of man and mission. It would expand
unseriousness to new frontiers of self-inflicted peril.
The reason is as elementary as it gets: The purpose of
intelligence is to see what your enemy is trying to hide, to
grasp how your enemy thinks, and how he cleverly camouflages
what he thinks. That, to be certain, is the only security
against stealthy foes who specialize in sabotage, in
exploiting the liberties that make free societies as
vulnerable as they are worth defending.
Mr. Brennan, to the contrary, is the incarnation of willful
blindness. His tenure as Obama's top national security
advisor has been about helping our enemies throw sand in our
eyes and thus enabling the sabotage.
As I detail in The Grand Jihad, which recounts the Muslim
Brotherhood's history, ideology, and self-proclaimed
``civilization jihad'' against the West, sabotage is the
Brotherhood's defining practice. Indeed, ``sabotage'' is the
word the Brothers themselves use to describe their work. It
appears in an internal memorandum, which elaborates that the
organization sees its mission in the United States as
``eliminating and destroying Western civilization from
within.'' Besides that long-term goal, the Brotherhood's
network of American affiliates have pursued the more
immediate aim of materially supporting Hamas, a formally
designated terrorist organization to which the provision of
material support is a felony under federal law.
None of that is new. It was not merely well known but had
been proved in court by the Justice Department a year before
Obama took office. I refer to the Justice Department's 2008
Hamas financing prosecution, the Holy Land Foundation case.
Yet, counterterrorism czar Brennan remains undeterred, a
driving force of the Obama administration's ``Islamic
outreach''--a campaign to give Islamist organizations
influence over U.S. policy. That several of those
organizations were proved in the HLF case to be members of
the Muslim Brotherhood's American network is clearly of no
moment.
Two such organizations are the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA). They were among a slew of Islamist groups who wrote
to Brennan in October 2011 to demand a purge of information
about Islamist ideology that was being used to train U.S.
intelligence and law-enforcement agents. Much of that
information was developed in federal investigations that have
led to the convictions of violent jihadists. Nevertheless,
the Obama administration has slavishly complied (see, e.g.,
here and here).
Understand: CAIR and ISNA, though never indicted, were
proved to be conspirators in the Brotherhood's Holy Land
Foundation scheme to promote and finance Hamas. In fact, the
FBI formally cut ties with CAIR as a result of the HLF case
(although why they had ties with CAIR in the first place
remains baffling). The training materials the Islamist groups
insisted be removed include documentation of the fact that
terrorism committed by Muslims is driven by an ideology
rooted in Islamic scripture.
That this irrefutable fact makes us uncomfortable renders
it no less a fact. Maybe the State Department and the White
House press office have the luxury of trading in convenient
fictions in order to reduce international tensions. Not
intelligence agencies. The point of intelligence--a bedrock
of national security--is to see the world as it is, not as we
wish it to be.
Here is how it is: Islamic supremacism, the sharia-based
ideology of Islamists, is an interpretation of Muslim
doctrine that is entirely mainstream among the world's
Muslims. That is why Islamists are winning elections in the
Middle East even as they are found aligning with violent
jihadists. Islamic supremacism is, in fact, widely promoted
by the Brotherhood, and by such tentacles of its American
network as CAIR and ISNA, when they are not otherwise
deceptively disavowing its existence.
This Islamist ideology is incorrigibly anti-Western and
anti-Semitic. It is deeply hostile to principles of equality
and individual liberty (free speech, freedom of conscience,
privacy, economic freedom, etc.) that undergird our
Constitution, the American conception of civil rights, and
the West's conception of human rights. Understand Islamist
[[Page H406]]
ideology and you will readily understand the ferocity of
Islamic resistance to American efforts to promote democracy
in the Middle East--not merely jihadist resistance but broad
Islamic resistance.
Yet, in a propaganda campaign reminiscent of those waged by
the Nazis and the Soviets, Islamists and their fellow
travelers (Brennan-types who might be thought of as ``ant-
ianti-Islamists'') purport to be champions of human rights.
When it suits them, they even feign reverence for individual
liberties (particularly when it comes to the rights of Muslim
in America . . . but don't you dare ask them how non-Muslims
fare in, say, Saudi Arabia).
The counter to such a propaganda campaign is a job for
intelligence agencies. The point of having a sprawling
intelligence community on which American taxpayers annually
lavish $55 billion--far more than the vast majority of
countries spend on national defense--is precisely to see
through the deceptions of those who mean us harm, to perceive
the threats against us for what they are. That the competent
performance of this essential function may be fraught with
political complications is supposed to be a challenge for our
politicians, not our intelligence agents. The latter's
mission of unearthing hidden and often excruciating truths is
hard enough.
Brennan's agenda is the antithesis of the intelligence
mission. His goal has been to portray our enemies as a small,
unthreatening fringe of charlatan ``violent extremists,'' who
kill wantonly and are unconnected to any ``legitimate''
Islam. Thus, he maintains for example that the only
``legitimate'' interpretation of the ``tenet of Islam'' known
as jihad is: a ``holy struggle . . . to purify oneself or
one's community.''
Even taken at face value, Brennan's assertion is absurd.
There is between Islam and the West no common understanding
of the good, and thus no consensus about ``purity.'' In
Islam, to ``purify'' something means to make it more
compliant with sharia, Islam's legal code and societal
framework. Sharia is anti-freedom and anti-equality, so to
purify oneself in an Islamic sense would necessarily mean
something very different from what we in the West would think
of as struggling to become a better person.
But there is an even more fundamental reason not to take
Brennan's remarks at face value: they run afoul of what
mainstream Islam itself says about jihad. Have a look at
Reliance of the Traveller, the popular sharia manual (it is
available on Amazon). It is quite straightforward on the
matter: ``Jihad means to war against non-Muslims.'' Reliance,
you should know, has been expressly endorsed by al-Azhar
University in Egypt (Islam's center of learning since the
tenth century) and the International Institute of Islamic
Thought (the Brotherhood's America-based Islamist think-
tank). It is a lot more authoritative than John Brennan's
wishful meanderings. Maybe the president actually thinks
Brennan knows more about Islam than do these scholars who
have spent their lives steeped in Islamic doctrine and
jurisprudence. I have my doubts . . . and, judging from the
profound influence of these scholars, so do many millions of
Muslims.
In Brennan's world we're to believe that holy war is not
much different from the struggle to remember to brush after
every meal. In Brennan's world, there is also no need to fret
over * * *
Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________