[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 182 (Tuesday, December 15, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H9324-H9326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 COCONSPIRATORS IN SUPPORTING TERRORISM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as we consider this week what Congress will 
fund through September 30 of next year and what we will not fund, the 
San Bernardino shooting, the radical Islamist terrorist attack there, 
has awakened a lot of people across the country.
  There is an article from December 2, 2015, by Ashley Pratte. The 
question is: Is ISIS contained or covered up? That is the title.
  ``With the recent terrorist attacks in Paris carried out by ISIS, 
Americans are on high alert--and rightfully so. Just hours prior to the 
attacks Obama said that ISIS was `contained.' Americans everywhere are 
baffled by Obama's continued ignorance and lack of strategy when it 
comes to destroying the Islamic State.
  ``Yesterday, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense 
Intelligence Agency, stated on The Lead with Jake Tapper that the White 
House knowingly ignored a 2012 report about the rise of ISIS because 
they didn't mesh well with the re-election `narrative.'
  ``Now it is all starting to make sense. Of course the President 
believes ISIS is contained, he has been willingly and knowingly 
ignoring reports about the serious threats that ISIS poses to America 
and to the world since it wouldn't help him get re-elected.
  ``The scary thing is that these aren't the first reports we have 
heard from former Obama intelligence officials regarding the White 
House ignoring their reports on ISIS. This September The Daily Beast 
published an exclusive story by Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef, 
claiming that over 50 spies say ISIS intelligence was cooked. These 50 
intelligence analysts formally filed a complaint that their reports on 
ISIS were being `inappropriately' altered by senior officials.
  ``These are very powerful words. If there truly is a `cancer' at the 
highest level of command, Americans have a lot to be concerned about 
when it comes to national defense and security. According to the Daily 
Beast, the accusations being made suggest that a significant amount of 
people tracking the inner workings of ISIS think that their reports are 
being altered to fit a public narrative--echoing the sentiments of Lt. 
Gen. Michael Flynn.
  ``It is disturbing to think that our military and intelligence 
officials aren't being listened to by the Obama administration simply 
because it doesn't fit their narrative. Just yesterday lawmakers on 
Capitol Hill heard from the chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, that ISIS is not contained, 
contradicting President Obama's statements. We now have to question 
whether or not intelligence reports are still being ignored because of 
their inconvenience to the administration and because of the looming 
election year.
  ``Sadly, these reports from top military and intelligence officials 
aren't surprising. Americans have noticed for a while that Obama's 
statements on ISIS show how little he knows about the threat they pose 
or that he is deliberately ignoring the facts. A new CBS poll indicates 
that only 23% of Americans think Obama has a clear strategy for 
defeating ISIS, which shows just how little confidence Americans have 
in their commander-in-chief.
  ``On Monday, just weeks after the Paris attacks, Obama made mind-
boggling remarks at a climate change summit in Paris, where he made it 
a point to mention that he will beat ISIS by fighting climate change.
  ``Let's be honest, ISIS was never a `jayvee' team, it was never 
`contained,' and it certainly won't be defeated by resolving to end 
climate change, but it was a good narrative for the Obama 
administration spin to quell the fear of the American public. However, 
this narrative stands in stark contrast with the real narrative, the 
one being told by military and senior intelligence officials--the one 
being ignored.''

  And we have from the Center for Immigration Studies, Mr. Speaker, an 
``Analysis of the `Visa Waiver Program Improvement Act of 2015,' '' 
this out December 14, 2015.
  It reviews the House bill drafted to tighten up the Visa Waiver 
Program, and it has been reported that this may be included in the 
omnibus--we will find out tonight--2016 spending bill as a kind of 
political replacement for the bill passed in November to tighten up the 
refugee screening.
  This article goes on from the Center for Immigration Studies that:
  ``One key provision makes it out-of-bounds for people who have 
visited--or who are natives of--Syria or Iraq, or state sponsors of 
terror to use the VWP. Another major provision tightens up requirements 
and certifications by countries to live by the conditions of the 
participation--including use of fraud-resistant passports and strict 
timeframes for reporting of lost or stolen documents.
  ``Dan Cadman, a Center fellow and author of the analysis, said, 
`Congress has at least decided to tackle many of the gaps and problems 
with the VWP, which has represented for some time the `soft underbelly 
of homeland security'; but there can be no doubt that the U.S. vetting 
for refugees and asylum seekers still represents a major national 
security risk, and remains an unaddressed problem.'
  ``One major problem with the bill is the exception to several 
requirements that has been carved out for countries in the Schengen 
visa-free zone, which covers nearly all of northern, western, and 
central Europe, including hotbeds of terrorist activities in France and 
Belgium. Cadman writes that `this exception is the caveat that undoes 
the intent of the rule.' ''
  So, Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that we have got a lot more 
work to do here to prevent this President's administration from 
continuing to allow people into this country without our ability to 
actually vet them and check them.
  There are indications that members of the Visa Waiver Program may 
only check one in three documents that are provided to them because 
they just don't have time.
  Well, just when Americans thought we were unsafe, unsecure, that this 
administration won't face up to the threat that radical Islam is, that 
most all of the country understands we are up against except the 
administration--they won't mention the words radical Islam--and just 
when people think they are starting to maybe make the point and get the 
point across to this administration, we have the Secretary of the 
Department of Homeland Security who stands up for the terrorists.

                              {time}  1930

  He stands up for people who want to come into this country and do us 
harm.
  This is an article from Politico, of all places, and the title reads: 
``DHS chief: `Legal limits' on scrutinizing immigrants' Web postings.''
  The article reads:
  `` `We are dealing with private communications and things for which 
there is an expectation of privacy,' Jeh Johnson says in an 
interview.''
  Mr. Speaker, that is very interesting. I am glad that the Secretary 
of Homeland Security understands that the Supreme Court says there is a 
right to privacy somewhere within the shadow of the penumbra of the 
Constitution--that is, the Bill of Rights. Yet he doesn't understand 
those constitutional protections are not afforded to people who want to 
come into the United States. They are in another country. I can't 
imagine this in anybody's definition of our U.S. Constitution. No 
Americans in other countries

[[Page H9325]]

are entitled to U.S. constitutional protections over there, and they 
are people who are applying to come in.
  There is social media out there, and there are really sharp folks in 
Homeland Security and in the Justice Department who are not under the 
direct thumb of the administration who know how to access it; they know 
how to check things; they can use search engines and can check to see 
what contacts and what pictures are out there. Are they pictured with a 
terrorist somewhere? Of course, that might get our friend Senator 
McCain in trouble; but, nonetheless, there is a lot of social media 
that can be checked.
  Here we have an article today, December 15, by Seung Min Kim:
  ``Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday there are 
`certain legal limits' that constrain federal officials from 
scrutinizing the social media histories of foreigners trying to enter 
the United States--a new debate that has flared in the aftermath of the 
San Bernardino, California terrorist attack.
  ``His comments, in an interview with POLITICO, mark the first time 
the Homeland Security chief weighed in on the merits of reviewing 
social media in immigration cases. According to recent news reports, 
Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter in the California massacre, had 
posted extremist views yet still obtained a visa to the United States.
  `` `You have to keep in mind--and this is again, not a comment on any 
particular case--that social media, Facebook, and the like can involve 
public statements, public postings, it can involve friending, and it 
can involve private communications,' Johnson said from his office at 
the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in northwest 
Washington.
  `` `We are dealing with private communications and things for which 
there is an expectation of privacy, and you're dealing with U.S. 
persons,' Johnson continued. `There are certain legal limits to what we 
can do.' ''
  Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that people who are trying to 
come into this country are not U.S. persons and that social media ought 
to be used by Homeland Security to find out what kind of lengths people 
will take who want to come into this country.
  If they had not marginalized one of the best people working for 
Homeland Security and had not gone after him and attacked him, they 
would have learned--and I am talking about my friend Phil Haney, who 
was very adept at using social media to see if they had questions about 
somebody--what kind of contacts are out there on the Internet? What 
pictures were made with whom? What is posted where about this person? 
It is also important to have somebody like him who has spent time in 
the Middle East, who knows the language, who knows and understands 
moderate Islam, who understands radical Islam, who understands who the 
players are and who the imams are who are teaching radical Islam, who 
knows the groups that are teaching radical Islam.
  If Phil Haney had been allowed to continue the investigation into 
Tablighi Jamaat, then he would have seen the ties that these shooters 
had. He would have found Ms. Malik's social posting. One of the things 
he says would have tipped him off right away is that ``Tashfeen Malik'' 
is a boy's name, and he is a bit of a hero in radical Islamic circles. 
If you know that, which I didn't and he does, then you pull that person 
aside for additional screening. You pull that application and ask, 
``Why do you have a boy's name? You certainly weren't given that.'' His 
example is it would be like a woman from America who was trying to get 
into another country with the name ``George Washington.'' Really? That 
is your real name? It would raise flags and questions and would cause 
you to do further checking.
  People at Homeland Security have seen, if you become a whistleblower 
and if you blow the whistle on the Obama administration's and Homeland 
Security's deleting of documents and on their refusing to investigate 
radical Islam, then they will convene a grand jury to make your life a 
living hell until you retire, and that is only if they can't find some 
little ``something'' to indict you of after they have looked everywhere 
and through everything.
  The people at Homeland Security have seen what happens to people who 
are honest, who are honorable, who are trying to warn of contacts this 
administration has with people who have ties to radical Islam. I know 
there are people out there who say, ``I wish you would use names.'' Why 
doesn't somebody in the mainstream media go get the pleadings from the 
Holy Land Foundation trial in the Federal court of the Northern 
District of Texas, and you will see a list of names. If there were 
somebody who were worthy of a Pulitzer anymore, he would take those 
names and compare them against the people who have access to the White 
House and the groups that have access to the White House and to the 
State Department and to the Justice Department and to intelligence 
agencies.
  They would find that CAIR, just blocks away from here--I can see 
their building from my window, and they can see mine--is on the list. 
Yet, it is CAIR that has--I don't know if they have got a red phone or 
what they have got over to the White House; but when they get bothered 
or when, maybe, they don't like a Koranic scripture or something that 
is being quoted in training material, they can just call the White 
House and tell them to get rid of it, and they do. They can call the 
Justice Department, for, after all, CAIR and the FBI were outreach 
partners. Finally, in 2009, after they were implicated as partners, 
coconspirators in funding terrorism, the FBI finally, in 2009, had to 
send them a letter, saying, basically, We had better suspend our 
relationship as partners, because there was all this evidence at the 
Holy Land Foundation trial that, actually, you are a supporter, and you 
are a coconspirator; so we are going to have to put that on hold for a 
bit. But this administration picked right back up. CAIR was certainly 
heard from out in California immediately after the shootings.

  Anyway, this article goes on. It reads:
  ``Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have seized on reports that Malik passed 
a trio of background checks during her fiancee visa application process 
in 2014 despite publishing social media posts that were openly 
supportive of violent jihadism.''
  Anyway, congratulations to the Secretary of Homeland Security. 
Americans can sleep well because Secretary Johnson is setting us up to 
have another Tashfeen Malik shoot more people because we are not going 
to, under this administration, check their social media to see if they 
have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
  This is from Todd Bensman, December 10, PJ Media: ``America is 
Talking About the Wrong Refugee Problem.''
  I would submit it is a legitimate problem we have been talking about, 
but this article points out a problem that, certainly, I and many of my 
Republican friends have been pointing to.
  The article reads:
  ``A few weeks ago, the fangs came out when news broke that the Paris 
attackers were `refugees' who had entered the European continent among 
thousands of immigrants. Elected Republicans and conservative pundits 
challenged the American plan to resettle Syrian refugees, and still 
are.
  ``But their bite is off mark.
  ``As many as six of the Paris attackers and their leader were not 
resettled refugees of the sort President Obama wants to import into the 
country (three attackers still have not been publicly identified).
  ``These terrorists entered Europe with illegal immigrant asylum 
seekers, of the sort who routinely show up at the U.S.-Mexico border.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am still hearing from friends on the U.S.-Mexico 
border who know and who say we are continuing to have people from 
countries where radical Islam is a major problem--in the Middle East 
and in North Africa--show up at the U.S.-Mexico border. Some of them 
are caught.
  The article points out:
  ``Illegal immigrant asylum seekers don't give the host nation a 
choice. They show up uninvited, smuggled, and often unknowable. They 
insist on being taken in anyway, pointing to our generous laws and 
traditions.
  ``At least three of the Paris terrorists--including main attack 
planner Abdelhamid Abaaoud--were what we would call Special Interest 
Aliens (SIAs). They infiltrated over the common European external . . . 
border at

[[Page H9326]]

Greece, just like Syrians show up at the U.S.-Mexico border, 
camouflaged among many other illegal immigrants. Europe's SIAs from 
Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, and many other Islamic nations are moved 
along their land and sea routes with the ubiquitous aid of human 
smugglers, just as they are to the U.S.-Mexico border.
  ``This is perhaps the world's deadliest known case of terrorist 
border infiltration by SIAs. Abaaoud was a Belgium citizen before he 
went to Syria and became a notorious Islamic State operative. He knew 
he was on the radar of intelligence services, and couldn't come home 
the legal way unnoticed. So he traveled home as an illegal migrant 
under the cover of thousands of legitimate ones.''
  Mr. Speaker, I know I have got people out there who have belittled me 
in the past when I have quoted from the FBI Director that we have 
people from radical Islamic areas who have camouflaged themselves. He 
had said that some of them actually changed their names to have 
Hispanic-sounding names and that they tried to blend in. That is what 
the FBI Director says. People can belittle me all day long, but when 
the FBI Director--in this case, the former FBI Director--said that 
while he was Director, then, when those points are made, somebody needs 
to talk about them whether the country is going to make fun of one or 
not.

                              {time}  1945

  In an article, dated December 10, 2015, by Andrew McCarthy, titled, 
``After Jihadist Mass Murder, the CAIR's Sharia Agenda Rolls On,'' he 
points out just how CAIR continues with their agenda and what those who 
have studied CAIR, its contacts, its relations, what they intend is 
civilization jihad. That is our civilization they care to take over.
  Now, my friend from the Department of Homeland Security, now retired 
so he can talk about things that aren't classified, discussed some of 
these things on Megan Kelly's show. He was actually investigating 
Tablighi Jamaat, which is one of many organizations that are under the 
overall radical Islamic movement. As he has pointed out, Tablighi 
Jamaat means ``society for spreading faith.'' It is an Islamic global 
proselytizing movement with followers in over 200 countries.
  Now, not everybody in Tablighi Jamaat is a terrorist. Not everybody 
in Tablighi Jamaat is a radical Islamist, but it should set off bells 
and whistles to wake people up when a relationship is seen.
  From the Middle East Quarterly in 2005, it states: ``After joining 
Tablighi Jamaat, groups at a local mosque or Islamic center and doing a 
few local dawa (proselytism) missions, Tablighi officials invite star 
recruits to the Tablighi center in Raiwind, Pakistan, for four months 
of additional missionary training. Representatives of terrorist 
organizations approach the students at the Raiwind center and invite 
them to undertake military training.''
  Tablighi Jamaat links to terror include: 1995, Benazir Bhutto coup 
attempt; 2001, John Walker Lindh; 2001, Richard Reid, the shoe bomber; 
2002, Jose Padilla; 2002, Portland Seven; 2002, Lackawanna Six; 2005, 
London Underground Bombing; 2006, airline bombing plot; 2008, Barcelona 
plot.
  Those are just some of the ties that Tablighi Jamaat has had with 
terrorism.
  Now, the al-Huda Institute is a global network of Islamist religious 
schools, with branches in Pakistan, Canada, and the United States. USA 
Today reported on December 12, 2015: ``Nosheen Ali Irfan, 54, who lives 
in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, said she sent both of her 
daughters to study in Al-Huda during summer 2014 but within five weeks 
became disgruntled by the teachings and discontinued the lessons.
  ``Irfan said her family has a religious background but the teachings 
at Al-Huda were `too radical' even for them . . . `If there is an 
environment Jihadis (Islamic warriors) would come to recruit, it would 
be these kinds of institutions,' she said.''
  Al-Huda links to terror include Ali Asad Chandia, an al-Huda teacher 
in College Park, Maryland, who provided material support to a Pakistani 
terror group; 2012, four former students join ISIS in Syria; and in 
2015, Tashfeen Malik, who was engaged in the San Bernardino attack.
  In San Bernardino, the investigation into groups affiliated with the 
Deobandi Islamic movement was stopped before it could have connected 
the dots, and that is where Phil Haney was going in. He was finding all 
these ties that Tablighi Jamaat individuals had with other known 
terrorists. In fact, he got a letter of commendation before Homeland 
Security realized, wow, he is finding people that have ties to this 
administration so we have got to stop him cold.
  Before they realized that, June 8, 2012, he was given a letter that 
said: ``On behalf of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), I 
commend your outstanding contributions while assigned to the National 
Training Center-Passenger (NTC-P). Your display of dedication and 
effort in the fight against terrorism has been exemplary.
  ``Your talents and professionalism have contributed to the continued 
achievements of the NTC-P. You played a key role by providing support 
to the CBP mission and the NTC-P lead role in defending and protecting 
our nation's borders.''
  On further down, it says: ``Additionally, your expertise and 
experience has been invaluable while assigned to the Advanced Targeting 
Team (ATT). Your research on the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative has 
assisted in the identification of over 300 persons with possible 
connections to terrorism. The assistance you have provided in the 
development of this initiative has been key to the future success of 
the project.''
  See, that was before they pulled him off and said no more looking 
into Tablighi Jamaat. You can't do it because you are messing with 
people you can't be messing with. Apparently, ties would come back to 
this administration. It is not hard to figure out. Just look at the 
Holy Land Foundation pleadings, look at who are listed as 
coconspirators in supporting terrorism, and look at whom this 
administration takes advice from.
  Tommy Nelson, a minister back in Denton, Texas, I have never met 
once, said: Yeah, God is in control, but just because he is in control 
doesn't mean he wants us to lean on our shovel and pray for a hole.
  Well, when this headline came out, Mr. Speaker, God isn't fixing 
this, despite prayers that God would fix it. I feel sure God is saying: 
Use what I have given you, and you can stop it yourself.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________