Rep. Chris Stewart Sits Down with SFR

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Frank Gaffney: A man I’ve come to admire greatly for his service in a number of different incarnations in the war for the free world is our first guest. He is Congressman Chris Stewart. He represents the people of the second district of Utah in the United States House of Representatives. He serves on the House Appropriations Committee, including its Homeland Security Subcommittee and State Foreign Operations Subcommittee; also he is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In a previous life he served for fourteen years as a command pilot in the United States Air Force setting world records, among other things. He is also the author of seventeen books including several national bestsellers among them, “The Miracle of Freedom: 7 Tipping Points that Saved the World”. Congressman Stewart, welcome back as always it’s great to have you with us sir.

Rep. Chris Stewart: It something I look forward to thank you so much.

FG: Well tipping point seems to be where we find ourselves at the moment with respect to the ObamaBomb deal. There been high drama up on Capitol Hill since you all returned the past couple of days. If you could maybe just quickly calibrate for us, Congressman Stewart, how you as a distinguished military officer, a member of the Oversight Committee on the Intelligence Committee, a sense the merits of the case; specifically the kinds of arguments that we’re being told that we’ve closed off all pathways to the Iranian bomb, we’ve got the most comprehensive verification arrangements ever negotiated, we have, according the Secretary of State, perfect knowledge of the Iranian nuclear program. Give us a read on all of that.

CS: Well it’s insane, but you’ve heard me say that what going on hundreds of times now. It’s insane some of the things that the President and the Secretary say. You just shake your head and you think what in the world are you thinking, and look lets put the nuclear issue aside for just a moment then I’ll come back to that. Why in the world would we allow them to lift the arms embargo in five years? Why would we lift the prohibitions on ICBMs, on ballistic missiles technology, in eight years? Why in the world would we release a great of part $153 billion dollars to them immediately rather than as they comply? I mean if you talk about negotiations where we’ve seen to accommodate in nearly every way, that’s exactly the description of this agreement, and now coming to the primary point, and that is it doesn’t in any way preclude them from getting nuclear weapons it simply delays it. In the very best case it delays it for ten years, and the reality is I believe they’re going to cheat. They’ve been cheating all along. Why do we think they would suddenly be honest and forthright with us? I don’t believe they will be, and I believe ultimately what we are looking at is the nuclearization of the entire Middle East within in something like five to seven years, and we’re simply unprepared for that.

FG: You’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world and you understand probably better than just about anybody in Congress the implications of such a cascading proliferation problem. This really does seem to me to constitute national security fraud. It’s not that it’s just insane or madness, as former Vice President Cheney has called it, but a fraud on the American people. If that’s the case, Congressman, can we at this point do much about it? I know members of Congress have been pushing, toing and froing, in the past twenty-four hours about this. Where does that stand legislatively at the moment as you see it and what should we be doing?

CS: Well, first what should we be doing is everything that we can to stop this deal and convince the American people that this is dangerous for our national security, and it’s extraordinarily dangerous for the security of all of our friends and allies in the region. We need to continue to make that case, but the reality is it’s like he has done in other instances i.e. Obama Care, i.e. Executive Amnesty, and many others, I believe the President is going to go forward regardless of what the American people think. By more than 2 to 1 margin polls show that the American people don’t support this agreement. You’re going to have a bipartisan opposition in the House and the Senate, and the President is simply going to thumb his nose to all us and say ‘I don’t care what you think, I don’t care if you make your informed decision, I don’t care if I represent more than 700,000 people’. He’s simply going to go forward with it. I wish I knew a way to stop him, but right now I don’t know that we do.

FG: In the latest permutation of the House Plan there are three pieces of business that I understand are going to be pursued. They will not represent, as I understand it, an approach laid out in this so-called Corker-Cardin legislation. Could you talk a little bit about why it’s important that the House express itself is some manner other than through that mechanism?

CS: Because the President has not complied with Corker-Cardin. I mean it’s very simple. He has simply not complied with it. Part of that in the preamble and the very first (inaudible), and it’s not a complicated piece of legislation by the way, this is very easy to analyze. This says he will make all necessary agreements, including side agreements, available to Congress for us to be able to read those and for us to understand and evaluate those, and he hasn’t done that, and we’ve been vocal on this. We were hoping, as you know, through August has developed and as this became obvious that he has not made all these agreements available to us, we were hopefully be able to persuade him to, because we need to understand what’s in there. For example there are reports saying that one of them will allow Iran to conduct some of their own inspections on their previous weapons technology and programs, which they haven’t been honest with us about in the past. Why we would we think that’s a good idea? So many of us in Congress think we shouldn’t recognize Corker-Cardin at this point because he hasn’t complied as we’re trying to find a way to express our disagreement with this proposal, while at the same time not complying with those elements because he hasn’t complied with them in order to let us to go forward.

FG: I couldn’t agree more with that approach Congressman. I wish you well in fashioning it and hope, pray that the Senate will find a way to follow suit. You have been one of the leaders in the Congress, and again our guest is Representative Chris Stewart of Utah, member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the threat from cyber attack, and one of the reasons why this Iran deal is so worrying is, as you know so well, the Iranians have been pursuing, in a number of ways, including by hacking into the computers that actually control the electric grid of this country, among others. Give us just very quick appreciation of how dangerous it might be were the Iranian, quite apart form you know a nuclear attack or electro magnetic pulse or so on, just to use cyber to take down our grid as a prime example of the threat they pose.

CS: Well in fact I’m on the way to an intel briefing and hearing on cyber security threat, and most people are surprised if you ask people that I meet back in home or people around the city here, who are the greatest threats regarding cyber? Almost all of them will say China, that’s not a surprise, many will say Russia, but very very few recognize that Iran is in top three, and in some ways more aggressive than any of the other partners or any of the other parties that threaten us in this area, and one of the books I wrote, though it’s been many years now but it certainly applies, and that is what our world looks like if we lose the electrical grid. I mean we’re back to 1880, and how many people can feed themselves? How many people can take care of themselves? Imagine not being able to access money in your bank, imagine not being able to put gas in your car, we lose refrigeration. I mean it changes our world.

FG: Speaking of changing our world, one of the things that’s happening as a result of the meltdown in Syria is a refugee flow into Europe. This is increasing pressure on the United States to take large numbers of so called Syrian refugees. Are there reasons to be concerned that what we might wind up with is refugees yes, perhaps, but jihadists in the mix?

CS: Well there’s no question that that’s a possibility, and in fact it’s a great concern, and I would say two points. Number one is we should call these individuals Obama refugees, because I believe what we are seeing is the direct result of his failure of policy in the Middle East, a very critical part of the world. In fact, frankly, it’s an extension of his failure policies throughout the world, but I was in Afghanistan last week and the second day I was there was a purple-on-blue attack and two Americans were killed by those who we thought have been vetted and we thought they were on our side, and I think that’s the challenge we have. If we have innocent individuals who are targeted particularly because of their Christian beliefs, I think we want to help them but in doing that we have to recognize it’s not extraordinary difficult, it’s impossible in many instances, to adequately vet those individuals that know who they are, and recognize that ISIS and al-Qaeda, and other associates are going to use the refugee tragedy as a vehicle to plant terrorists in our own country.

FG: I fear this is well under way in Europe at the moment and probably in cards for us too if we’re not careful. I know you will be careful Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah. We appreciate very much your time today and your service to our country both in uniform and the rendering of it your doing now in the Congress. Keep it up come back to us again very soon.