This morning I read a Washington Post op-ed that provided an especially prescient analysis of the nuclear agreement the Obama administration is seeking with Iran. The author said in the final two paragraphs of this piece:
“The much-discussed terms of the impending agreement with Iran thus offer the theocracy all that it wants. The accord would concede a vast enrichment capacity, as well as accepting both a heavy water plant and a well-fortified underground enrichment facility that the United States once vowed to shutter. It would permit an elaborate research and development program and would likely rely on an inspection regime that falls short of indispensable “anytime, anywhere” access. In the meantime, the sanctions architecture will be diminished, and the notion of ever “snapping back” sanctions into place once they are lifted is delusional. And because the agreement itself would be term-limited, there would be no practical limits on Iran’s nuclear ambitions upon its expiration.
However, as disturbing as all this may be, the most important legacy of the prospective agreement many not even lie in the nuclear realm. The massive financial gains from the deal would enable the Islamic Republic’s imperial surge while allowing a repressive regime that was on the brink of collapse in 2009 to consolidate power. This would be no small achievement for Iran’s emboldened rulers.”
Who wrote this devastating assessment? Joe Lieberman? John Bolton? Frank Gaffney? No, it was written by Ray Takeyh who covered Iran on President Obama’s National Security Council and authored the president’s letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader. He is now a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Takeyh was cautiously supportive of the nuclear talks at the outset and has been part of a bipartisan effort to get good deal with Iran by pressing the Obama administration to take a harder line and stop making concessions to Tehran. My view is that the nuclear talks were lost before they began since the Obama administration conceded uranium enrichment to get Iran to the negotiating table. But I agree with Takeyh that this will be a bad deal that will not only fail to halt or slow Iran’s nuclear program, it will also bolster the Iranian regime at a time when it is increasing its meddling in regional states and sponsorship of terrorism.
Takeyh’s op-ed followed last week’s critical (but somewhat milquetoast) bipartisan letter organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that included as signatories five former members of President Obama’s inner circle: Dennis Ross, David Petraeus, Robert Einhorn, Gary Samore and General James Cartright. The letter said the nuclear deal “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement,” “will not prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons capability” and “will not require the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure.”
Conservative experts have long warned that the Obama administration is seeking a dangerous nuclear agreement with Iran. This agreement is now so bad that liberal foreign policy experts and former Obama officials have turned against it.
Congress must listen to growing bipartisan concern about President Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran and take decisive action. This means rejecting any agreement that the nuclear talks produce and passing new sanctions against Iran until it complies with all UN Security Council resolutions on its nuclear program.
The House of Representatives is reportedly poised to vote on so-called Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, also known as Fast-Track Authority), a bill recently passed by the Senate that would effectively reduce the Congress to a rubber-stamp on trade deals for the next five years and, most immediately, assure approval of the one President Obama has nearly finished negotiating with Asian nations: the TransPacific Partnership (TPP). Senator Jeff Sessions has, characteristically, done what every legislator should do — he has performed a rigorous and critical analysis of the emerging “trade” accord and found it to be seriously defective. A particularly useful critique can be found here (http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=955DBDEC-E383-4401-AC3C-4E5EE06E99D1)
In a column last week (http://www.wsj.com/articles/barack-obama-re-founding-father-1433373010), Wall Street Journal editorial board member Daniel Henninger described the context in which Congress is considering this action — a pattern of abdications of its constitutional authorities that is functionally remaking our government. While Mr. Henninger does not specifically cite TPA or TPP, they certainly fit the pattern, and make it effectively irreversible. Indeed, adoption of Fast-Track Authority would virtually assure approval of what amounts to a sweeping, sovereignty-sapping charter for world government that is masquerading as a trade deal. Consequently, In his Secure Freedom Minute (http://securefreedomminute.podbean.com/e/just-say-no-to-fast-track-for-obama/) today, Center President Frank Gaffney urges Congress to withhold Fast Track Authority from President Obama.
Last night, the House of Representatives approved unanimously H.R. 3410, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA). This legislation marks a breakthrough: For the first time in four years, Congress has acted to begin to protect the nation’s most critical of critical infrastructures: the U.S. electrical grid. It now falls to the Senate and to President Obama to ensure that the House-passed bill becomes the law of the land.
CIPA’s lead sponsors were Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and co-chairman of the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Caucus, and Pete Sessions (R-TX), the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee. The measure enjoyed strong bipartisan support including from the House Homeland Security Committee’s Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), and the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, Reps. Patrick Meehan (R-PA) and Yvette Clark (D-NY).
The CIPA legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to:
include in national planning scenarios the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which would entail the education of the owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as well as emergency planners and emergency responders at all levels of government of the threat of EMP events;
engage in research and development aimed at mitigating the consequences of naturally occurring or man-caused EMP events; and
produce a comprehensive plan to protect and prepare the critical infrastructure of the American homeland against EMP events.
Representative Franks observed:
The U.S. electric grid is fundamental to our continued way of life and practical steps must be taken to protect those critical elements that serve the United States from all threats. The negative impacts on U.S. financial, agricultural, medical and other critical societal infrastructure are potentially catastrophic in a severe electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or severe space weather event.
By some estimates, nine out of ten Americans would perish if the power were to go off and remain off for a year’s time.
The Secure the Grid Coalition is committed to ensuring that does not happen. The Coalition is a group of national leaders in matters of defense, homeland security, solar weather, infrastructure protection and other experts who have joined forces for the purpose of achieving urgently the protection of power grid upon which the nation, its people, economy and the Department of Defense depend.
Under the honorary co-chairmanship of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Clinton Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, the Secure the Grid Coalition has been active in educating lawmakers and their constituents about the nature of the various threats to the nation’s bulk power distribution system, including but not limited to EMP. Among other efforts in that regard was influential testimony provided before the House Homeland Security Committee earlier this year by two members of the Coalition: Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, of the Congressional Task Force on National and Homeland Security, and Dr. Chris Beck, Vice President of the Electric Infrastructure Protection Council.
The Center for Security Policy sponsors the Secure the Grid and its President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. applauded the passage of H.R. 3410 last night, saying:
Yesterday, the House of Representatives took an important first step towards protecting America’s electrical grid – and millions of its people whose lives critically depend upon it – from attack or naturally induced destruction. That planning will hopefully make clear the necessity of taking steps to secure the grid before these things happen, rather than try to cope with the consequences afterwards.
Secure the Grid Coalition members are available for comment on the passage of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act in the House of Representatives and about the considerable work still to be done to harden the electrical grid against all hazards. More information can be found at www.securethegrid.com.
The Center for Security Policy released today its 2013-2014 Congressional National Security Scorecard for the 113th Congress. The scorecard– which scores all Representatives and Senators on key national security votes in their respective chambers over the past two years– is available as a single document [PDF].
The Center scored a total of 27 votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, and 15 votes in the U.S. Senate. Topics covered included nuclear deterrence, terrorist detainee policy, border security, Russia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq and funding to Syrian rebel groups.
The Center has identified 16 Champions of National Security in the House, and 5 in the Senate, each of whom scored 100%.
This week, the House Armed Services Committee is poised to set in train a legislative process that could well translate into the suicide of the Republican Party.
The committee will consider – and, all other things being equal, may actually adopt – a controversial amendment to be offered by Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It would allow illegal aliens brought here as minors – so-called “Dreamers” – to serve in the U.S. military and, thereby, obtain American citizenship.
Should that happen, proponents of a broader amnesty for those here illegally would likely try use the House-Senate conference on this “must-pass” legislation to secure as much as possible of the “comprehensive immigration” bill adopted last year by the upper chamber.
Sixteen retired flag and general officers have just written the Armed Services Committee’s chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, urging him not to permit his panel’s principal legislation to be misused in this fashion.
They warned:
As longtime members and leaders of the armed forces, we believe it a serious mistake to open military service to those known to have violated the laws of the United States. Whether they have done so by coming to this country illegally and living here in violation of immigration statutes, either at their own initiative or as a result of the actions of family members, they have acted in a manner inconsistent with the oath to support and defend the Constitution that they will be required to swear upon enlisting. Until now, such conduct has been deemed disqualifying and we believe it should continue to be so.
A further argument against such an amendment is that it is being advanced at the very moment that the armed forces are being forced by misbegotten budget cuts to terminate the service of thousands of American citizens currently in uniform.
It will be hard to portray what is afoot as other than insinuating illegal aliens into the military to do jobs U.S. citizens are not only willing to do; they are willing to die to do. The impact on morale within the ranks, to say nothing of possible problems with the loyalties of such aliens, cannot be underestimated.
If the merits of the case were not compelling enough to warrant resisting the Coffman amendment, there’s this reality: If House Republicans, led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, join Democrats in adopting – either in whole or in part – amnesty in the present election cycle, they will surely imperil their widely expected success at the polls this Fall.
That’s right. A GOP base that has been given little cause for enthusiasm by their party in Congress will almost certainly respond to a perceived betrayal on a central plank – no amnesty before the border is secure – the way many did when presented with Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2012: By staying home on Election Day.
To be sure, Republican politicians are being seduced by the campaign contributions of big donors and even Democrats to adopt amnesty legislation this year. The pressure has only intensified as such proponents claim to be worried that prospective GOP gains, particularly in the Senate, may foreclose future opportunities for immigration reform.
Similarly, despite abundant evidence to the contrary – notably, a persuasive study recently published by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum – Republican leaders have been persuaded of a preposterous idea: By agreeing to amnesty, they will win the hearts, minds and loyalties of enough Hispanics to assure their party’s future electoral success with a demographic that has overwhelmingly voted Democratic in most recent presidential elections.
The truth is that, even if Hispanic voters prove in some significant number to be other than “undocumented Democrats,” such new recruits are unlikely to offset the losses among alienated Republicans – an electorate that won’t be able to bring itself to vote for politicians so indifferent to the security, economic and other negative repercussions of burgeoning illegal immigration, fueled by unsecured borders and the promise of amnesty.
So, if Eric Cantor, Mike Coffman, Speaker John Boehner and other like-minded Republicans actually succeed in transforming the annual National Defense Authorization Bill into a vehicle for conferring an amnesty on illegal aliens, they will not only wind up harming the U.S. military and the nation as a whole. They risk achieving in the process the astonishing feat of political suicide for their party.
Over the last week, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees held their annual unclassified hearings on worldwide threats facing the United States. Testifying to the hearings were Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The news media’s treatment of the hearings was predictably poor and superficial. Here is what the Center believes are the top six take-aways that you need to know from these hearings.
1. A Growing Worldwide Terrorist Threat
All five witnesses stressed the increasing threat from a reconstituted and decentralized al-Qaeda organization which is expanding its influence, especially in Syria and North Africa. CIA Director Brennan warned about al-Qaeda activity in Iraq and Syria, telling the House Intelligence Committee: “We are concerned about the use of Syrian territory by the Al Qaeda organization to recruit individuals and develop the capability to be able not just to carry out attacks inside of Syria, but also to use Syria as a launching pad. There are camps inside of both Iraq and Syria that are used by Al Qaeda to develop capabilities that are applicable, both in the theater, as well as beyond.”
2. Sharply Increased Risk of Cyber Attacks by State and Non-State Actors
The U.S. intelligence community sees growing risks from cyberwarfare because government and personal functions are increasingly tied to the Internet and potential offensive cyber operations by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, terrorist organizations, and cyber criminal organizations. U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia continues to target U.S. and allied personnel with access to sensitive computer network information. China is trying to weaken U.S. dominance of Internet governance while continuing an expansive worldwide program of network exploitation and intellectual property theft.
3. The Snowden Leaks Will Result in the Loss of American Lives
In response to questions by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI), DIA Director Flynn discussed a recent damage assessment by his agency on the leaks of classified information by former NSA technician Edward Snowden. According to Flynn, the Snowden leaks will make it harder to detect IEDs threatening U.S. troops in Afghanistan, will put all U.S. servicemen at risk, and provided America’s adversaries important insights into U.S. military vulnerabilities. Director Clapper added that the vast majority of Snowden’s leaks probably had nothing to do with NSA programs.
These findings are important because they put the lie to claims by Snowden and his supporters that he only leaked information about NSA programs and was careful not to release information that would cost lives or endanger U.S. security.
4. Senator Rockefeller Comes Out Against Obama NSA Reform Proposal
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), a liberal senator with whom the Center has rarely seen eye-to-eye on national security matters, surprised everyone at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing by supporting the NSA metadata program in its current form and opposing President Obama’s proposal to move the metadata database to private parties. Rockefeller said the metadata program, an NSA collection effort to gather telephone records, is an important counterterrorism tool and is already subject to numerous laws and regulations to ensure that it does not violate the privacy of Americans. Rockefeller said he opposes the president’s proposal to take the metadata database away from NSA and giving it to private parties because such a move would put this information in the hands of personnel subject to significantly less stringent security clearance rules than NSA personnel, resulting in serious privacy and security risks. The Center for Security Policy commends Senator Rockefeller for stating his strongly held views on the metadata program which are identical to a recent Center study. (Click HERE to read the Center’s January 27, 2014 study, New Center Study Warns President Obama’s NSA Reforms Jeopardize National Security.)
5. Senate Intelligence Committee Leftists Tried to Hijack Threat Hearing
With three exceptions, the members at both intelligence hearings were civil, professional and took seriously witness testimony about increased threats from terrorism, cyberwarfare, and leaks of U.S. intelligence. The three exceptions were Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senator Mark Udall (D-UT) and Senator Mark Heinrich (D-NM).
Instead of listening to the testimony about dire foreign threats facing this country, Wyden, Udall, and Heinrich took the nonsensical position that U.S. intelligence agencies are the main threat to American liberty. Wyden accused top intelligence leaders of lying to the American people and a “reckless reliance on secret interpretations of the law.” Udall and Heinrich attacked the CIA for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s investigation of the Bush-era enhanced interrogation program. (Why is the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2014 still investigating the Bush administration?) Heinrich accused the CIA of making inaccurate public statements about a secret CIA study on enhanced interrogations, claiming that the agency has tried to “intimidate, deflect and thwart legitimate oversight.”
The witnesses mostly ignored questions posed by Wyden, Udall, and Heinrich, noting that they were not germane to a hearing on global threats. To her credit, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) stated that she agreed with this response.
Not surprisingly, the scaremongering and histrionics of Wyden, Udall, and Heinrich received significant press play. This is unfortunate since their views were not shared by other Senate or House Intelligence Committee members. The three senators represent a small minority who tried to exploit an open hearing because a bipartisan majority has repeatedly refused to support them in committee votes.
6. Intelligence Officials Feigned Ignorance on Possible Belarussian Cyber Compromise of Obamacare Website, Americans’ Personal Information and Government Databases
During the February 4th House Intelligence Committee threat hearing, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann read aloud most of a February 3 Washington Free Beacon article by Bill Gertz that said U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check the Obamacare website (healthcare.gov) for malicious software after learning that web developers linked to the authoritarian Belarus government helped developed the site. Mr. Gertz wrote that there have been cyber attacks against the United States originating from Belarus in the past and said an NSC spokeswoman recently commented on an intelligence report about involvement of Belarus programmers in constructing the Obamacare website.
Bachmann was so perplexed that all of the witnesses claimed to be unaware of this issue and the Free Beacon article that she individually polled each witness. The Center shares Congresswoman Bachmann’s concern. It is impossible to believe that the DNI, CIA, DIA and FBI Directors knew nothing about the Gertz article given their large support staffs, the fact that this article was 24 hours old and comments made about this issue by an NSC spokeswoman. What is more, Mr. Gertz reported that the Obama administration also directed the intelligence community to withdraw its report.
The most charitable explanation is that the witnesses feigned ignorance so they could avoid commenting on the controversial issue of the Obamacare website’s security vulnerabilities.
In response to the Free Beacon piece, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and Congresswoman Bachmann demanded an independent security evaluation of the Obamacare website.
Washington, D.C.: Concerned with the many, as-yet-unanswered questions about the attack on U.S. facilities and personnel in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 – including, notably, the failure to provide any military response, a group of conservative leaders representing more than a century of military, intelligence and government service today sent a strongly worded letter [PDF] to the House and Senate leadership. They expressed profound concern about the utter inadequacy of congressional investigations into the attack to date and demanded the immediate launch of a bicameral investigative committee to “prepare a truly authoritative and independent report.”
Key excerpts of the letter follow:
The focus of most after-action assessments and congressional testimony has, to date, centered more on altered talking points provided by the CIA and why Secretary Clinton and others ignored warnings from Ambassador Stevens regarding the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi. Relatively little light has been shed on the details of the decision-making process that resulted in the loss of four Americans without any real-time effort being made to bring forces to bear to protect our countrymen and secure their corpses.
We must get to the bottom of whatever prevented the U.S. military from attempting a rescue and ensure that, whether it was a matter of inadequate military readiness or resources, dysfunctional interactions between various elements of the executive branch or other reasons, we take steps to ensure that this monumental failure is not repeated in the future….
The multiple standing House and Senate committees with their stove-piped jurisdictions have actually impeded the needed, comprehensive determination of the facts. Therefore, we respectfully request that you immediately take steps to establish a bicameral investigative committee with subpoena and deposition powers and with the requisite staff needed to conduct such hearing as are necessary to prepare a truly authoritative and independent report as soon as possible.
The letter was released in conjunction with the posting of a video constituting a virtual press conference concerning the Benghazigate scandal, the nomination of John Brennan to be the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the need for fact-based intelligence – not intelligence skewed or otherwise influenced by political considerations.
The video was sponsored by the Center for Security Policy and features comments by, among others: former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, Andrew C. McCarthy, the federal prosecutor who secured the conviction of those responsible for attacking the World Trade Center the first time, twenty years ago today, and a former commander of the storied Special Operations unit known as Delta Force, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin. The video is available at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSIc_q1d8_o].
Signatories on the letter to the congressional leadership include:
Hon. Allen West, former Member of Congress
Hon. Sue Myrick, former Member of Congress and Co-Chairman of the House Counterterrorism Caucus
Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Hon. Kenneth Blackwell, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Human Rights
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring
Andrew C. McCarthy, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney
Admiral James A. Lyons, former Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet
Hon. Thomas W. O’Connell, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict
The full text of the letter is below:
27 February 2013
Hon. John Boehner
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Hon. Harry Reid
Majority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Hon. Eric Cantor
Majority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D. C. 20515
Hon. Mitch McConnell
Minority Leader
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Hon. Nancy Pelosi
Minority Leader
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D. C. 20515
Dear Congressional Leaders:
We are writing to express our deep concern regarding the as-yet-unexplained failure of the U.S. military to respond to the terrorist attack on the so-called “Special Mission Compound” and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on the night of September 11, 2012. As you know, this incident involved the first assassination of a US ambassador in over thirty years and constituted the most egregious attack on American diplomats since the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Yet, the focus of most after-action assessments and congressional testimony has, to date, centered more on altered talking points provided by the CIA and why Secretary Clinton and others ignored warnings from Ambassador Stevens regarding the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi. Relatively little light has been shed on the details of the decision-making process that resulted in the loss of four Americans without any real-time effort being made to bring forces to bear to protect our countrymen and secure their corpses.
In our professional judgment, a fundamental American precept was ignored during the Benghazi attack: We strive to ensure that our comrades never fall into enemy hands and that the fallen are not left behind. This honor-bound commitment was captured in a memorable letter to Major General Ulysses S. Grant on March 4th, 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote, “ I knew wherever I was that you thought of me and that if I got in a tight spot, you would come – if alive.”
Sherman’s sentiment is one that has been central to the character of our nation and its military throughout our history. To cite but one example: The 1993 “Blackhawk Down” event in Mogadishu, Somalia was an eighteen-hour fight over the bodies of two Americans who were killed in a helicopter crash. Similarly, our nation has been engaged in a decades-long effort to locate dead and missing Americans lost in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. Preserving this critical ethos is a matter of fulfilling the pledge that we make to those we send into harm’s way when required by our national interest and security.
Instead, we have had a series of unconvincing excuses for official inaction. Defense Secretary Panetta blamed the paucity of intelligence at the time. The Joint Chiefs Chairman, General Martin Dempsey, has said no forces could be brought to bear in time. It is difficult to square these two claims: If there were little intelligence from the scene of the attack, how could military commanders determine the intentions of the attackers – or the length of time that it would take them to overrun the Special Mission Compound, kill Ambassador Stevens and assault the CIA Annex? Equally germane is the question of why there was no effort to protect the bodies of our fallen personnel and to prevent them from falling under Libyan control, including that of their murderers.
For its part, the State Department’s protracted Accountability Review Board (ARB) also failed adequately to address the lack of a military response. Perhaps that was the predictable result of the lack of actual independence it had, given the longstanding institutional ties and loyalties of its co-chairmen.
The absence of the necessary accountability is all the more distressing in light of the very considerable and potentially relevant military capabilities of which we are aware, including:
The U.S. Army created the Delta Force in 1977 to respond globally to terrorist attacks, including those similar to the Benghazi attack.
SEAL Team Six was created in 1980 to provide a global maritime counterpart to the Delta Force.
CINC In-Extremis Forces were created after passage of the Nunn-Cohen amendment to the Defense Authorization in 1986. (Nunn-Cohen authorized the creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command.) These forces were strategically positioned to provide rescue capabilities for all theaters.
The Marines maintain Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Teams (FAST) in forward locations. It is probable that one of the FAST elements was located in Rota, Spain or Sigonella, Italy at the time of the attack in Benghazi.
As to the lack of detailed intelligence precluding the use of such forces, special operations and other counterterrorist forces often have to operate without detailed situational awareness – and are trained to do so – as their mission is to save lives. Consequently, they are accustomed to accepting greater risk than conventional units, and do so willingly.
In addition, the Navy and Air Force generally have aviation assets that almost certainly could have been brought to bear – at a minimum as a show of force – early in this seven-hour-long series of attacks.
In short, the rationales provided to date for the abject failure to come to the help of Americans under fire simply do not withstand even the sort of scrutiny possible with open-source material. We believe that would fare even worse if examined closely by those with access to all-source classified information.
Mr. Speaker, a full accounting of the events of September 11, 2012 is critical for various reasons. Not least, what message does this debacle send to other diplomats or military personnel who may be deployed today or in the future into hazardous areas? We must get to the bottom of whatever prevented the U.S. military from attempting a rescue and ensure that, whether it was a matter of inadequate military readiness or resources, dysfunctional interactions between various elements of the executive branch or other reasons, we take steps to ensure that this monumental failure is not repeated in the future.
It seems clear that the current congressional committee structure is inadequate to undertake the necessary accounting that cuts across the various command structures, operational responsibilities and the conduct of numerous agencies, both civilian and military. Indeed, the multiple standing House and Senate committees with their stove-piped jurisdictions have actually impeded the needed, comprehensive determination of the facts.
Therefore, we respectfully request that you immediately take steps to establish a bicameral investigative committee with subpoena and deposition powers and with the requisite staff needed to conduct such hearings as are necessary to prepare a truly authoritative and independent report as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Hon. Allen West
Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, USA (Ret.)
Andrew C. McCarthy
Hon. Kenneth Blackwell
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Admiral James A. Lyons, USN (Ret.)
Hon. Thomas O’Connell
Dan Bongino
Hon. Henry Cooper
Hon. Jim Nicholson
Hon. Sue Myrick
John M. Dowd
Ginni Thomas
Major General Paul E. Vallely, USA (Ret.)
Carole L. Dowd
February 12 2013, WASHINGTON DC: The Center for Security Policy today urged Senators to reject President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense—and endorsed the use of a filibuster to prevent a vote to ratify the highly problematic and manifestly unqualified former Senator’s appointment.
The Center stressed that, in addition to an up-or-down vote on Hagel’s nomination, it plans to evaluate and score each Senator’s potential cloture vote on any filibuster in its Congressional Scorecard.
The Center for Security Policy’s Congressional Scorecard has been published for every Congress since 1994, to inform voters, policymakers and the media of where their legislators stand on the most important national security issues America faces. The Center’s pick of the highest scorers earns the title “Champion of National Security.”
The Center’s emphasis on this nomination underscores the great potential harm for this country’s national security interests that a Hagel tenure at the Defense Department could create.
The letter is below:
Dear Senator:
I am writing to inform you that the Center for Security Policy intends to score both the potential cloture vote on any filibuster of the nomination of Sen. Chuck Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, as well as any vote on confirmation of Sen. Hagel. Sen. Hagel has a highly troubling record on critical matters of national security which we believe should disqualify him from serving as Secretary of Defense, including 1) his support for U.S. nuclear disarmament, demonstrated by his co-authorship of the 2012 “Global Zero” report; 2) his assertion after passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which already cut defense spending by $487 billion over ten years, that the Department of Defense is “bloated” and needs to be “paired down”; 3) his demonstrated hostility towards the State of Israel, our most reliable ally in the Middle East; and 4) his failure to appreciate the threat posed by Iran, as demonstrated by his past lack of support for sanctions and his public statement that military action against Iran was not a “viable, feasible, or responsible option.”
We will be scoring negatively those Senators who vote in favor of cloture as well as those who vote in favor of confirming Sen. Hagel.
The Center has been scoring national security votes through its National Security Scorecard since 1994. Scorecards can be viewed at: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/type/congressional-scorecards. Senator Inhofe, now the Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, when referring previously to his prior designation on our scorecard as a “Champion of National Defense”, identified the Center for Security Policy as “one of the leading national security policy organizations”.
Thank you,
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
President and CEO
Center for Security Policy
(Washington, D.C.): Two of the leaders in the House of Representatives whom Newt Gingrich has properly called “the National Security Five” weighed in today against the nomination of John Brennan as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Representatives Trent Franks of Arizona and Louie Gohmert of Texas, warned that Mr. Brennan has gotten wrong the central menace of our time – what outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two weeks ago called “a global jihadist threat.”
The Congressmen spoke on the House floor on the eve of confirmation hearings on the Brennan nomination that promise to make those Chuck Hagel underwent last week look like a love-fest. On the one hand, some Democrats are furious over the nominee’s past involvement with enhanced interrogation techniques and his present role in the use of drones to neutralize American jihadists seeking to attack the United States. On the other, Republicans have been outraged by the Brennan record on not only prohibiting the use of the term “jihad” in U.S. enemy threat analysis but his serial contempt of congressional overseers, lies and leaks that have damaged national security.
Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. commended Messrs. Franks and Gohmert, who are, respectively, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee and the Vice Chairman of that Committee’s Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations Subcommittee:
Trent Franks and Louie Gohmert have distinguished themselves as true and courageous leaders within the Congress by dint of their grasp of the nature of our enemy and the repressive, anti-constitutional doctrine they seek to impose on all of us – Muslim and non-Muslim, alike: shariah. They are absolutely right to warn against entrusting the CIA to a man who is, at best, witless and at worst mendacious about the true nature of jihad, of both the violent and the stealthy, pre-violent kind. We strongly urge their colleagues on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to arrive at the same conclusion and vote to reject this nomination.
Rep. Franks’s remarks included the following observations:
“I believe the success of the [Muslim Brotherhood’s] ‘stealth jihad’ has been significantly enhanced by remarks and public statements made by John Brennan over the past four years. He should, therefore, not be allowed anywhere near– let alone be given the responsibility for running– America’s premier intelligence agency.”
Rep. Gohmert’s remarks included the following observations:
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…We have got to have someone directing intelligence who understands the threat against us and will insure that we are protected and understands the Global Jihadist threat. It would be a great mistake for our Senate to confirm John Brennan as the chief architect that he has been for the failure to understand and comprehend the “Global Jihadist Threat,” as Secretary Clinton has noted going out.
On her way out the door, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the unsayable. Literally. Until last month, when she repeatedly warned in congressional testimony concerning the Benghazi debacle that we confront a “global jihadist threat,” the Obama administration did not allow the use of the words jihad and threat in the same sentence.
How ironic that the principal architect of this “see-no-jihad” policy is John Brennan, President Obama’s current Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor and his choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Setting aside the obvious questions about why Mrs. Clinton chose her swan song on Capitol Hill to state the obvious but impermissible truth, if she’s right, why on earth would the Senate want to entrust critical collection and analysis of intelligence to the very person who has epitomized and enforced a policy of willful blindness towards the central threat of our time: the supremacist Islamic ideology of shariah and the holy war, or jihad, its adherents are obliged to wage?
Brennan has repeatedly insisted that jihad is not about holy war. Rather, as he put it in a speech in May, 2010, “Jihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.” According to him, to use the term the way the jihadists do, would as Fox News reported at the time, “‘play into the false perception’ that the ‘murderers’ leading war against the West are doing so in the name of a ‘holy cause.’”
For Brennan, “Describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism – that the United States is somehow at war against Islam.” It is one thing for a policy-maker who is a consumer of intelligence to cherish such illusions. It is another thing altogether for them to be nurtured by a leader of the intelligence community, whose biases may skew whether factual information is collected and objectively analyzed. The latter can put the nation in mortal peril.
This danger is all the more worrying because, even before John Brennan was nominated for the CIA job, he sought to circumscribe what its personnel – and their counterparts elsewhere in other intelligence agencies, the military, homeland security and law enforcement – could know about the Islamist enemies we confront. He officiated over the purging of files and training materials and the termination of trainers whose failure to toe his willfully blind policy was deemed “offensive” to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and other, so-called Muslim “activists.”
Worse yet, during John Brennan’s tenure at the White House, the Obama administration actually promulgated guidelines ensuring that, henceforth, “countering violent extremism” training materials and trainers paid for by the Homeland Security Department and used by any government agency – federal, state or local – must effectively be approved by these “community partners.” That means we are now allowing agents of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization sworn to our destruction, to determine our understanding and awareness of the threat they and their fellow Islamists pose to the rest of us.
Under the circumstances in which even Hillary Clinton says we are facing a jihadist threat, Senators considering Brennan’s nomination must answer a critical question: Is John Brennan so invested in the narrative promoted by America’s jihadist enemies that he will further compound, rather than correct, the politicization of intelligence he has promoted over the past four years from the White House.
Specifically, legislators need to assess John Brennan’s situational awareness with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood and what it calls “civilization jihad” – a pursuit through stealth and subversion of the goals the Brothers share with other jihadists: the triumph of shariah worldwide and the reconstitution of a caliphate to govern according to that Islamic supremacist and totalitarian doctrine. If he doesn’t get it, he shouldn’t get the job. He must be considered ineligible for the sensitive post of CIA director.
As it happens, there are a lot of other folks who don’t think Brennan should get the job, either. The radical Left is up in arms over his central role in “enhanced interrogation techniques” during the Bush administration and drone strikes during the Obama presidency. Unless Code Pink’s histrionics actually translate into the loss of Democratic votes, a cynic might be forgiven for thinking it is a gambit designed to induce Republican senators to rally behind a man associated with such aggressive – and necessary – tools for defeating the jihadists.
The Senate is consumed at the moment with another of President Obama’s utterly unacceptable nominations: Chuck Hagel’s appointment as Secretary of Defense. Hagel’s appalling appearance last week was an affront to the men and women in uniform and to the American people they defend. Combined with his history of poor judgment on issues ranging from hollowing out the military and its nuclear deterrent, engaging and emboldening our enemies and undermining our friends like Israel, Hagel’s palpable contempt for the Senate on that occasion should ensure that he is not confirmed.
John Brennan is equally undeserving of the Senate’s approval. His malfeasance and incompetence on the central challenge of our time is compounded by his arrogance, his disdain for Congress and its oversight responsibilities, his serial and damaging leaks of sensitive national security secrets and his history of mendacity. No one should be under any illusion: Such behavior will only intensify if, in response to that appalling record, the Senate confirms his promotion.
