[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19357-19361]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ETERNAL VIGILANCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  There is so much going on these days, and we have to trust the United 
States, the Federal entities of the executive branch to keep us 
protected. That's why our hearing last week with the Attorney General 
of the United States, Eric Holder, before the Judiciary Committee of 
the House was very disturbing. We had Attorney General Holder before 
our committee back on May 3 of this year; and at that time, the 
Attorney General said, with regard to this horrible project, this 
undertaking called Fast and Furious, the Attorney General said he had 
only known about it ``a few weeks.'' To most of us, ``a few weeks'' 
means about 3 weeks. However, in testifying under penalty of perjury 
last week, the Attorney General said in essence, Look, 3 weeks, 3 
months--a few weeks is 3 months; there's not really any difference. 
When you have the highest-ranking person in the United States 
Department of Justice who plays so fast and loose while testifying 
under oath, who plays so fast and loose with the facts, it is quite 
disturbing, and it's time for a change.
  Our Attorney General testified that there were a certain number of 
guns, 94,000 firearms, submitted for tracing and that 64,000 of those 
firearms were sourced to the United States. The further we get into 
that, the more inaccurate we find out those figures are; and of course 
we recall--and it's understandable that with a boss like the United 
States President who has previously said, 90, 95 percent of the guns 
seized at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States, it's 
understandable that if the boss is making those kinds of glaring errors 
on numbers, then perhaps the head of the Department of Justice would 
make substantial mistakes in numbers.
  But, fortunately, the Department of Justice is not the only source of 
information regarding those types of matters. The Congressional 
Research Service is a bipartisan group. They do an extraordinary job. 
I've gotten the impression that potentially the majority may be 
Democrat, but it doesn't matter to those folks. They do a very good job 
of researching thoroughly whatever project they're given.
  And the information that we were able to get back from the 
Congressional Research Service indicates that there are maybe only 25 
percent of the weapons that Mexico has seized that are capable of being 
traced back to their original source and that most of the weapons that 
Mexico seizes are never offered for the process of tracing because they 
know there's no way to trace them. So if only 25 percent of those that 
are seized in Mexico are asked to have tracing done, then it is very 
clear that not 95, not 90, not even 70 percent of the weapons seized 
can be traced to an American owner first.

                              {time}  1950

  We also know from the testimony and the information about this Fast 
and Furious project of the ATF Department of Justice, because the ATF 
is a subsidiary of the Department of Justice, but we know that gun 
dealers were pushed into making sales to people they didn't believe 
should be sold the weapons; and our own Federal Government, our own 
Justice Department, urged them to go ahead and make the sales on behalf 
of their country anyway. Then some in this administration have the 
nerve to say this, too, was Bush's fault, and they point to programs in 
the Bush administration as being the source.
  Andrew McCarthy, back November 8, had a great article in National 
Review Online, ``Fast & Furious Was . . . Bush's Fault.'' He goes on to 
point out that Fast and Furious did not begin until 2009, months after 
the end of the Bush administration, and he also goes on to point out a 
number of things.
  For example, Wide Receiver, which was a project under the Bush 
administration, involved what were considered controlled deliveries. As 
a former judge, we'd hear constantly about controlled deliveries where 
the government would have people--find out people were inquiring about 
making drug sales, and they would set up a delivery. There would be 
plenty of agents there to intervene as soon as the transaction had 
actually been made. The controlled delivery meant not only do you have 
people watching, you may even have some way to follow what is being 
transferred in that controlled delivery. That's what was anticipated 
with Wide Receiver, the project under the Bush administration.
  Unfortunately, there was an incident where Wide Receiver, apparently 
that project had a controlled delivery setup of weapons, the intent 
never ever to allow them to actually leave this country or to actually 
have the individuals involved get away with those weapons, but actually 
to have them have an interdiction, have them arrested. And also, one 
other thing, they had homing devices on the weapons. Well, 
unfortunately, everything went wrong. The homing devices were detected, 
they were removed, the controlled delivery went bad, and folks got 
away.
  That is a far sight different from this administration deciding we're 
going to see that massive number, at least a couple of thousand 
weapons, are put in the hands of criminals who will likely take them 
across the border. They will certainly end up in the deaths of 
Mexicans, and there's a good chance will result in the deaths of 
Americans. Anyone in any administration who thinks such an idea is a 
good one needs to go from that administration. Anyone from any 
administration who allows something so insane to take place does not 
need to be in that administration. Anybody who has such lax control 
over his department that though those directly under him know about it, 
they leave him plausible deniability to come in and say: I didn't know 
anything about it. Maybe Lanny Breuer; yeah, apparently he knew all 
about. Yeah, I see Lanny quite a bit, but I didn't know anything about 
it. Anybody that sets up a structure to allow themselves that kind of 
plausible deniability--so-called plausible--and would allow something 
that results in a foreseen death, much less hundreds of deaths, does 
not need to be head of that department.
  Now, this should not be a partisan issue. Back when President Bush, 
George W. Bush was President, we had been told in our Judiciary 
Committee in the House by the Attorney General at that time that there 
were no known abuses of the national security letters. The national 
security letter powers bother me greatly. I'm extremely concerned about 
them. I've been very concerned about them, and we had the report from 
the Attorney General, no, there are no known abuses. Well, that is an 
awfully powerful weapon, but we were assured under the PATRIOT Act it 
is only allowable that those letters be used to gain information about 
foreign nationals--not American citizens--or people who are associated 
with known foreign terrorist organizations. It would never be used 
against American citizens. We were assured of that.
  So some of us wanted to make sure that there were no abuses, no 
American citizens were being pursued internationally or nationally. We 
were assured they weren't. The Attorney General in July had testified 
before--this was, I guess, 2007; I believe it was July--that there were 
no known abuses by Federal agents of the national security letter where 
they demand information, documentation, all that's in the possession of 
the person to whom the letter is sent. It turns out, three days before 
the Attorney General testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
there had been a report that was placed on his desk. The Attorney 
General's defense was: I never read it before I testified before the 
Senate, so I was certainly testifying honestly; I just didn't know. 
That was enough, though, to have people on both sides of the aisle, 
Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, agree we need to change 
something, and we got it changed within about six weeks.
  This administration is so used to obfuscating, hiding the ball, 
preventing documentation that is requested from

[[Page 19358]]

coming to light, this administration thinks that it can keep protecting 
people who need to go for the good of the country.
  Then we find out there's emails in the documents that were provided 
by the Justice Department. There are emails indicating that, gee, maybe 
it would be a good idea if we could use Fast and Furious numbers to get 
more regulation. Sharyl Attkisson has an article--this was part of 
CBSnews.com--where she indicates:

       ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own 
     role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but 
     emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales 
     encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called 
     ``Demand Letter 3''. That would require some U.S. gun shops 
     to report the sale of multiple rifles or ``long guns.'' 
     Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third 
     ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
       On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. 
     received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops 
     Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's 
     Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
       ``Bill--can you see if these guns were all purchased from 
     the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are 
     looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long 
     gun multiple sales. Thanks.''

                              {time}  2000

  Amazing. The ATF, the Justice Department, creates this horrible 
program that would get people killed and then wants to use that as a 
basis for further regulation and further elimination of our Second 
Amendment rights to the United States Constitution. Unbelievable. They 
have Senator Feinstein down the Hall when questioning Lanny Breuer, who 
apparently indications are was not truthful with regard to Fast and 
Furious, and Senator Feinstein says, ``We have very lax laws when it 
comes to guns. I think this, to some extent, influences the ATF and how 
they approach the problem as to whether they have political support or 
not. But I think these numbers are shocking. And I think when you know 
the numbers of deaths these guns have caused used by cartels against 
victims, it's literally up in the tens of thousands. So the question 
comes as what we can do, and I would really rather concentrate on the 
constructive rather than other things. And so the question comes, do 
you believe that if there were some form of registration when you 
purchase these firearms that that would make a difference?''
  Again, a deadly program that would kill innocent people is put in 
place by the Justice Department's ATF, people are killed, and then 
people around this town want to use this horrible program's results to 
justify taking away Second Amendment rights. It's staggering. 
Staggering. It's bad enough that anybody would think this type of 
program, Fast and Furious, was a good idea, but then to turn around and 
use it to try to destroy Second Amendment rights under the Constitution 
is simply unconscionable.
  Well, the Attorney General also, when asked about his testimony last 
week, he said, yes, he had ordered in February an Inspector General 
study, an inspection of the Fast and Furious program. It was pointed 
out to the Attorney General that in the big document dump that they 
had--and it was clearly a document dump intended to mask and hide 
anything therein. A good piece of evidence of that is the fact that 92 
pages, at least, of the documents were Senator Grassley's own request 
for information about Fast and Furious. Those were just duplicated 
dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and that was part of the 
document dump just to hide what little bit of information was in there.
  And yet despite all those documents produced and despite information 
that was inquired about at the hearing, the Attorney General does use 
government email, he does use private email, he does sign things, not 
one email of the Attorney General, not one letter, not one order of any 
kind by this Attorney General was part of that record.
  If we have an Attorney General who believes in playing so fast and 
loose with the laws that it really is more about who you know in this 
administration rather than what the law says, it's time for another 
Attorney General. Nothing was produced. When I asked about his 
testimony that an IG inspection was ordered, our Attorney General 
indicated basically that he had such a great relationship with the 
Inspector General he could just pick up the phone and ask her to do an 
inspection, a study.
  If that's the way this Attorney General operates, which he testified 
under oath that it was, we need a new Attorney General. Those kinds of 
things are so serious they require something signed.
  And as far as being so chummy with the Inspector General, it also 
makes clear this is no way to run a Justice Department, because it 
makes clear that the Justice Department is run by a man who is so 
chummy with the one person that may be able to do an independent study 
that there really is no independent study done.
  That also became clear, and Darrell Issa who has been pursuing this--
and I'm thankful for it. He has been relentless. But the information 
has not been forthcoming. But from what information has been gleaned, 
we find out that this Inspector General, the very, very, very close 
chum of our Attorney General, had found out that there was a gun dealer 
who became so concerned about this egregious thing being done where he 
was being forced to sell guns to people to whom he did not want to sell 
guns, that he began recording conversations, things that were told him 
by Federal agents so that he would have some protection. When the 
Inspector General found out, she got the recorded conversations.
  Now, a good Inspector General who is not extremely chummy with the 
person heading up the Department she is supposed to independently study 
and inspect would go forward, talk to witnesses and see if they said 
anything inconsistent in their statements to the Inspector General so 
that the Inspector General could determine if these people were being 
honest.
  Instead, what this very close ally and chum of the person whose 
Department she is supposed to be inspecting, she apparently took the 
recorded statement, gave it to the Federal agent and said, hey, you 
better listen to this before you give any statements so you can make 
sure your statements are consistent.
  Inspectors General aren't supposed to do that. They're supposed to 
conduct a thorough, independent investigation. All the indications are 
that this Inspector General is, just as Attorney General Holder 
testified, so chummy, so close, that she doesn't need a written order. 
It works out better if we can just say, we just talked about it over 
the phone. And, in fact, wouldn't that be great, too, if we could do 
that here in Congress? Do you know what? We passed a law, but we just 
talked about it, and you don't get to find out what it is, but we'll 
come after you if you violate it.
  You can't run a government that way. There needs to be documentation 
for decisions that are made so we know who made them. And that brings 
us to one of the more egregious factors in the poor management of the 
Justice Department. When the Attorney General was asked who it was by 
my friend, Judge Poe from Texas, now in Congress, who it was that made 
the decision to go forward with Fast and Furious after lo these many, 
many months, the Attorney General said he just really didn't know, and 
he didn't know if he was going to be able to find out.
  Since we have an Attorney General that has no way of knowing who is 
making the decisions in his Department that are getting innocent people 
in the United States and Mexico killed, it's time to have an Attorney 
General who does.

                              {time}  2010

  We cannot survive as a country when the Federal Government plays so 
fast and loose with orders that mean the difference between people 
being killed and not killed.
  It's time for a change. America deserves better. Mexico deserves 
better. And you can't help but wonder what kind of pressure was put on 
Mexico's

[[Page 19359]]

government not to raise holy Cain about having all these illegal 
weapons forcibly sold that were going into Mexico. We had no 
intention--or this Justice Department had no intention of following 
them, no method of getting them back, no method of finding out where 
they were. And in fact, it appears the whole goal was to wait and see 
when they showed up at crime scenes--which normally meant somebody had 
been killed--then check the serial numbers against those the ATF had 
forcibly required the sale of, And if they matched, then we could blame 
American gun dealers. It's understandable a gun dealer in the U.S. 
could become concerned, that maybe he ought to start taping Federal 
agents giving him instructions. Things are not going well in this 
Justice Department.
  One other area of concern--has been for some time--is the fact that 
there are organizations in the United States that are raising money and 
then funding terrorist organizations abroad. Hamas is one specifically. 
And since this government continues to send money to the Palestinian 
Authority, which has now got an agreement with Hamas, our own 
government is in cahoots in funding terrorism. At some point the 
insanity has got to stop.
  We know that this kind of thing has gone on by organizations in the 
United States because in November of 2008 the Bush administration 
obtained five convictions, 105 counts of funding terrorism. Most people 
refer to the litigation as the Holy Land Foundation trial. And there 
were over 200 named coconspirators with the Holy Land Foundation and 
the individuals named, and those coconspirators, many of them were 
implicated through evidence that was introduced at trial in the Holy 
Land Foundation trial.
  Now, they were named coconspirators, but the others were not actually 
indicted. My understanding is that the Bush administration intended to 
try to get those first convictions--the first time the case was tried 
to a hung jury, an 11-1 split, as I understood it, for guilt. The 
second time they got the 105 counts of conviction against the five 
individuals. And their intent was, if they could get those 
prosecutions, get those judgments, get those findings of guilt, then it 
would proceed on with others of the 200-plus named coconspirators. And 
in fact, some of the named coconspirators, like CAIR, ISNA, had filed a 
motion with the Federal court in Dallas that ended up at the Fifth 
Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. They wanted their names struck 
from the pleadings, but the Fifth Circuit in essence said there is a 
prima facie case. There is sufficient evidence here to show that these 
named coconspirators were coconspirators and therefore, no, they're not 
going to have their names struck from the pleadings; they're part of 
the evidence. It's clear, or there is evidence to support their being 
coconspirators with the Holy Land Foundation. Some folks have been 
trying to get documentation from the Holy Land Foundation trial. We've 
gotten some, but there were a massive amount of documents that were 
turned over to the five defendants, the Holy Land Foundation people. 
And since we know beyond a reasonable doubt they were funding 
terrorism, there is not really any doubt in most thinking peoples' 
minds that those documents all found their way back to Hamas, the 
terrorists.
  But this administration, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, has 
decided they're not going to prosecute any of those people. Even after 
the Fifth Circuit said there is prima facie evidence, there is 
sufficient evidence to go forward and to keep their names because they 
are coconspirators, according to the evidence produced, this 
administration has chosen to protect those individuals by not 
prosecuting them, much like this administration did in failing to 
prosecute the individuals involved in the new Black Panther movement--
who one African American involved in the civil rights movement of the 
sixties said was the worst case of voting rights abuses that he had 
ever seen. And yet this Attorney General, who could have gotten a 
judgment and prevented at least these two individuals from ever 
appearing at a voting place like this and intimidating voters, chose to 
water down the judgment with one so that he just didn't go back to that 
same voting place in the next election. And with the other, who was 
certainly, from the videotape, involved in violating people's civil 
rights, didn't even take the judgment against him. And then to turn 
around and refuse to prosecute people who there is sufficient evidence 
to show that they are funding terrorism is horrendous.
  There is an article, December 7, ``Holy Land Foundation Hamas Support 
Convictions Affirmed.'' And this is from Andrew McCarthy, who was the 
prosecutor in the first World Trade Center prosecution, 1993, when the 
attempt was made to blow up the World Trade Center the first time, 
successfully prosecuted. And at the time, America didn't realize we 
were in a war. We were in a war, but only one side knew that they were 
in a war, and that was the radical Islamists.
  As Mr. McCarthy indicates, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, 
upheld the convictions of five jihadists behind the Holy Land 
Foundation, the piggybank set up by the Brotherhood in the U.S. under 
the guise of charity to fund Hamas to the tune of tens of millions of 
dollars during the deadly Intifada. The three-judge panel's unanimous 
170-page opinion recounts that Hamas was created by Brotherhood 
operatives--that's Muslim Brotherhood--in 1987 as the Brotherhood's 
``Palestinian branch.'' Thereafter, ``the Muslim Brotherhood directed 
its worldwide chapters to establish so-called `Palestinian committees' 
to support Hamas from abroad.''
  McCarthy continues:

       In the U.S., the ``Palestine Committee'' was led by Mousa 
     Abu Marzook (who for a time in the early nineties actually 
     ran Hamas from his home in Virginia). The Palestine Committee 
     created not only the Holy Land Foundation but a number of 
     other Islamist entities in the U.S. The leaders of one of 
     those entities, the Islamic Association for Palestine, 
     subsequently created CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic 
     Relations, which was cited as an unindicted coconspirator in 
     the case.

  Mr. McCarthy goes on to point out that documents recovered by the FBI 
at the home of a Brotherhood operative established the Brotherhood's 
overarching role in the Hamas support scheme, including bylaws showing 
the Brotherhood had directed the collection of donations for the 
Islamic Resistance Movement, which is Hamas.

                              {time}  2020

  Also recovered at the time was the internal memorandum in which the 
Brotherhood's American leadership asserted:

       The Ikhwan [i.e., the Brotherhood] must understand that 
     their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating 
     and destroying the Western civilization from within and 
     `sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands 
     of the believers, so that it is eliminated and God's religion 
     is made victorious over all other religions.

  And, in fact, you get a copy of the Fifth Circuit's opinion, there 
are a number of interesting things addressed by the Fifth Circuit with 
regard to the Holy Land Foundation. The Fifth Circuit said:

       We are satisfied that independent evidence also established 
     the existence of a joint venture or combination among the 
     declarants and the defendants to support Hamas through the 
     Holy Land Foundation and the zakat committees. For example, 
     participants at the Philadelphia meeting discussed Hamas and 
     its control of the zakat committees. The participants 
     referenced the importance of the Holy Land Foundation in the 
     Committee's goals, and they identified as ``ours'' various 
     zakat committees to which Holy Land Foundation donated funds. 
     The Government also introduced evidence of numerous financial 
     transactions and personal contact between the defendants and 
     Hamas leader Marzook, who was listed in the Elbarasse and 
     Ashqar documents as chairman of the Palestine Committee. 
     Marzook also had in his personal phone book the contact 
     information for Baker, Elashi, El-Mezain and Elbarasse. 
     Further, Hamas leader Mishal spoke at a meeting attended by 
     Baker, Elashi, El-Mezain and Ashqar about supporting Hamas. 
     According to Shorbagi, who was present, El-Mezain led a 
     break-out group at that meeting to discuss the financial 
     issue of raising money. Moreover, Shorbagi specifically 
     testified from personal knowledge that the Holy Land 
     Foundation was part of Hamas.

  Well, the Fifth Circuit, talking about the Holy Land Foundation 
trial, said

[[Page 19360]]

the evidence at issue was offered to show the defendant's connection to 
terrorists and his predisposition to terrorist activities.
  It goes on to cite much of the evidence. And the Court says:

       The evidence in this case does show a relationship between 
     the defendants and Elbarasse and Ashqar, as well as their 
     connections to Hamas leaders.

  It goes on to say:

       The record here showed the defendants' joint participation 
     in a shared undertaking involving the Committee--that's the 
     Palestine Committee--and the documents were properly 
     admitted.

  The Court goes on, makes numerous findings, discusses the law, but 
also says:

       The defendants here ``are wrong to suggest that it is 
     necessary to know the precise identity of'' the declarants in 
     the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents.

  They go on to conclude:

       It's ``inescapable'' that the declarants were joint 
     venturers with the defendants in support of Hamas through the 
     Palestine Committee.

  It goes on to cite some examples there. The Fifth Circuit did an 
excellent job of going through reciting the evidence, and they said 
this:

       They were also consistent with security ``guidelines'' 
     found among Holy Land Foundation's materials stored at 
     Infocom, which directed that there should be cover stories 
     agreed upon to explain things like meetings and travel.

  Now, if this group that worked through the Holy Land Foundation to 
send money to Hamas were perfectly innocent, then it seems interesting 
that the Foundation's policies and guidelines that were found in 
Virginia in a sub-basement which contained much of the Muslim 
Brotherhood's archives would say the following--and this is from a 
footnote on page 84 of the Fifth Circuit's decision. They said:

       The document, which was labeled ``The Foundation's Policies 
     & Guidelines,'' included comprehensive policies for ensuring 
     the secrecy of the organization's activity. For example, the 
     policies directed that documents should be arranged at 
     meetings so that they could be easily gotten rid of in an 
     emergency; that measures should be taken before a meeting to 
     be sure there is no hidden surveillance equipment; that an 
     alert signal should be given if the location is monitored or 
     if a member of the committee is followed; and that documents 
     should be hidden when traveling and a pretext should be 
     devised in case they are discovered in a search. The 
     possession of such a document by a purportedly charitable 
     organization was clearly suspicious.

  And the Fifth Circuit there is a master of understatement.
  It is amazing what was found in the documentation in Virginia, and 
that's after a couple were arrested as they went across the Chesapeake 
Bay Bridge, photographing construction columns of the bridge. And on 
further search of their home in Virginia, sub-basement, they found the 
Muslim Brotherhood archives that gave us so much information.
  The trouble is, there were massive numbers of boxes of information. 
And as we understand it, much of that was provided to the defendants in 
the Holy Land Foundation trial.
  I made the request of the Attorney General last week that, since 
those documents were provided to defendants who were convicted of 
funding terrorism, funneling money to Hamas, that surely the Justice 
Department would now allow Congress to see those boxes of documents. 
The Attorney General, once again, didn't know what was furnished. He 
would look into it.
  We need an Attorney General that knows what's going on when there are 
organizations in America who are financing, by millions and millions of 
dollars, people who are conducting terrorism efforts around the world. 
Well, the Attorney General said he'd look into it. An official request 
was made at the hearing. And yet, we're waiting to hear from the 
Justice Department.
  It just seems to make sense to me that if this Justice Department 
will provide documentation to people who are part of a terrorist 
network, then surely they'll provide it to Congress. But then again, 
that remains to be seen.
  We had an article here from Fox News on December 7. It reports that 
Susan Collins, Senator Susan Collins, on Wednesday blasted the Defense 
Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace 
violence, and suggested political correctness is being placed above the 
security of the Nation's Armed Forces at home.

                              {time}  2030

  During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security 
Committee on Wednesday, the main Republican referenced a letter from 
the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace 
violence. She criticized the Obama Administration for failing to 
identify the threat as radical Islam. Thirteen people were killed and 
dozens more were wounded at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of 
alleged plots targeting the military has grown significantly since 
then.
  Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against the U.S. military 
since September 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have been 
since mid-2009, during this administration.
  Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist who is being held for 
the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar 
al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late 
September and who parenthetically was leading a prayer session of 
Capitol Hill Muslim staffers just years before here in our Capitol 
complex.
  Continuing with the article, the two men exchanged as many as 20 
emails, according to U.S. officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero. 
Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Connecticut 
Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, said the military has become a 
direct target of violent Islamic extremism within the United States. 
Senator Lieberman's words: ``The stark reality is that the American 
servicemember is increasingly in the terrorist scope and not just 
overseas in a traditional war setting,'' Lieberman told Fox News before 
the start of Wednesday hearings.
  In June, two men allegedly plotted to attack a Seattle, Washington, 
military installation using guns and grenades. In July, Army Private 
Nasar Abdo was accused of planning a second attack at Fort Hood.
  With regard to Private Nasar Abdo, it's worth noting that we have 
people who have been banned now from briefing our justice officials, 
intelligence officials, State Department officials on the threat of 
radical Islam. There was even a memo put together provided in this 
administration which by name pointed to Army Private Nasar Abdo and 
said this guy has been in uniform on Al-Jazeera basically saying he's 
going to do what Major Hasan did at Fort Hood. He's going to do it at 
Fort Hood.
  This administration is so interested in protecting radical Islam and 
not offending radical Islam that that memo was trash-canned, never went 
anywhere. And the only way this private was stopped was not by our 
intelligence community, not by our Justice Department, not by our State 
Department, and not with all of the information they could have. It was 
stopped by a gun dealer who just believed something was wrong, and he 
notified law enforcement.
  Now we know from the 9/11 Commission, I mean, we've known since the 
Commission came out with their report, there are hundreds of mentions 
of things like ``jihad,'' ``Islam,'' not that there is any war on 
Islam. There is not. Thank God that the vast majority of Muslims know 
that we're not at war with them and they are not at war with us. But it 
is insanity not to protect ourselves and educate ourselves on that 
small group, that small percentage--it's a large group--of radical 
Islamists who have declared war on us.
  Now this administration, though originally after 9/11 the Bush 
administration, the independent 9/11 Commission that was appointed, 
came out saying this is a result of radical Islam. Now the Justice 
Department, the intelligence community, the new lexicon will not allow 
the usage in training of words like ``Islam,'' ``jihad,'' the very 
things that led to over 3,000 Americans being killed and brought about 
wars that killed thousands more.
  The war goes on; but as one individual who is fighting for us said, 
this

[[Page 19361]]

administration is making us blind ourselves so we cannot see the people 
we are fighting.
  There was a conference at Langley, CIA headquarters, that was 
canceled by this administration. Why? Because CAIR complained to the 
White House, and the report is that that's how the conference was 
stopped. CAIR complained to the administration, and they stopped it; 
and now the administration has gone through and come out with a new 
methodology of selecting people who will be allowed to brief our 
intelligence officials, will be allowed to brief our justice officials, 
will be allowed to brief our military; and they will not be allowed to 
use terms like ``radical Islam,'' that those are, in this 
administration's mind, hateful terminology rather than helping us 
classify and figure out who it is that is on our side and who it is 
that is against us.
  There's even a report out that this administration now in the last 
week is going to create a new category on the terrorist watch list 
which would be called ``former military detainees.'' If that ended up 
being true, makes you wonder why they'd create a new category now. Are 
they about to release military detainees and so when they come into the 
country, or they're in our country trying to fly, we'll know who it is 
trying to kill us here?
  This administration has blinded the people that are trying to fight 
the war against radical Islam, which is at war with us. We've seen to 
it that it looks like a procedure in both Libya and in Egypt are going 
to likely result in radical Islamists controlling those countries. The 
Middle East has become a powder keg far more so than it ever has. And 
if you go back and look at the President's speech, back I believe it 
was in May, recently looked at a transcript where our own President 
said Israel is going to have to defend itself by itself.
  Now, thankfully, as we saw when Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke here 
in this body, we had both sides of the aisle repeatedly stand in 
support of the things Prime Minister Netanyahu was saying.
  Israel has been our friend; they've been our ally. Muslims are 
allowed to worship Islam in Israel just as Muslims are allowed to do 
here in the U.S. It would be nice if Christians were allowed to worship 
in Muslim countries, but their definition of freedom does not allow 
people to freely worship whom they wish. It only allows them the 
freedom to worship under Islam.
  Even in Afghanistan, the last Christian church has now closed. The 
kind of freedom that American lives and treasure brought to Afghanistan 
now means you can't have an open Christian church in Afghanistan.
  Then we find out this administration was indirectly negotiating with 
terrorists, with the Taliban, with regard to Afghanistan about a year 
and a half ago. There were a few of us that met with leaders of the 
Northern Alliance a year and a half or so ago, and they're the first 
ones that told us your administration is indirectly meeting and 
negotiating with terrorists, with the Taliban, the people we fought 
with you to defeat.

                              {time}  2040

  After we defeated them in 3 or 4 months, then we started putting in 
tens of thousands of soldiers--military--into Afghanistan. We went from 
being embedded to being occupiers, and we oversaw the creation of a 
constitution in Afghanistan that says sharia law will reign, which 
means there will be no Christian churches in Afghanistan when true 
sharia law is in charge.
  One of the things that was found in the archives of the Muslim 
Brotherhood is a 10-year goal that began in 2005. For one thing, 
anybody who raises any issue about the small, tiny percentage of 
Muslims who are at war with us, the radical Islamists, is to be called 
an ``Islamaphobe.'' That term originated with the Organization of the 
Islamic Conference, composed of 57 states. They're the ones who came up 
with that. They came up with the notion of branding anyone an 
Islamaphobe who says anything negative about radical Islam's trying to 
destroy America.
  So any time people see the term Islamaphobe or Islamaphobia, they 
should know exactly where it originated. It originated with the OIC, 
the 57 states of the OIC, which are also helping fund through other 
entities and individuals courses at some of our Nation's formerly best 
schools that have shown they're for sale, that their souls are for 
sale, in that if someone will give them enough money, then they will 
put on seminars and put on classes that will also call people 
Islamaphobes and talk about Islamaphobia--about anyone who raises any 
issue about radical Islam's trying to destroy our way of life.
  The goal mentioned from 2005 is part of a 10-year goal, by 2015, to 
have subverted our U.S. Constitution to sharia law; and the method for 
doing that--we've been seeing it take place--is to subvert America's 
First Amendment rights to sharia.
  One of the ways that that is being effectuated is when some nut burns 
a Koran in Florida, then people get killed in some riot in Afghanistan. 
Then even fine, upstanding Americans say, See, we probably need a law 
that prohibits the burning of a Koran, that prohibits saying anything 
bad about the Koran or radical Islam because that's going to get 
Americans killed. So let's have a law banning people from saying 
anything negative or from burning a Koran.
  Never mind the fact that, in our country's history, we find out it's 
not against the Constitution to burn an American flag, that it's not 
against the Constitution to burn a Bible, that it's not against the 
Constitution to take a cross, symbolizing that thing on which Jesus was 
crucified, and put it in a beaker of urine. In fact, the Federal 
Government will even give money to have that done. But if anybody says 
anything negative about the Koran, let's make that a crime.
  There are well-intentioned people in this Capitol who are thinking 
maybe we need a law like that; and when people push that kind of law, 
they are moving to subvert our United States First Amendment rights 
under the Constitution to sharia law. Once that happens, then that goal 
can be checked off of the goals that were established by the Muslim 
Brotherhood in 2005. They're hoping to get that done by 2015.
  A great way to do that is to brand people like me or people in the 
Justice Department or trainers who would teach people about the ideas 
of radical Islam as Islamaphobes and continue to have courses they fund 
to encourage laws to prevent Islamaphobia so that they have laws that 
prevent anybody from saying anything negative about sharia.
  Never mind, even on a television program today, an atheist called 
Christianity a hate religion. He said it's hateful, basically, in 
effect, because Jesus, he said, created a hell and that that's why we 
shouldn't admire Christmas. Well, some of us know that Jesus was not 
likely born in December, but more likely in the springtime, when 
shepherds are on the hills.
  But to declare what our Founders knew would be an important core 
building block of this country, when they knew that the best things 
that ever happened to this country would come as a result of the 
reliance on the teachings of Jesus and the teachings in the Bible, you 
had comments like George Washington in his resignation, saying--and 
I'll close with this:
  He prayed that Americans would follow the teaching of the Divine 
Author of our blessed religion without a humble limitation of whose 
example in these things we can never hope to be a happy Nation.
  He was right.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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