What happened at the FBI? 75

Yesterday we wrote about the corruption of the leadership of the CIA.

Now here’s a summary of just some of the instances when the FBI failed the nation in recent years – under corrupt leadership. (James Comey’s leadership is not discussed, but a good brief overview of his failures and deceptions can be found here.)

Many murders were committed because the Left in power favored Islam.

Lloyd Billingsley writes at Front Page:

After Nikolas Cruz gunned down 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, FBI special agent Robert Lasky, head of the bureau’s Miami division, said he “truly regrets” the pain caused by the FBI’s failure to act on a tip about the shooter.

The FBI said it had no way to trace the tip …

An obvious lie …

… then FBI boss Christopher Wray said the message was never passed on to the FBI’s Miami field office, as official protocol required. Relatives of the victims might have noted the passive verb construction. In typical style, Wray failed to name the person who never passed on the tip, and offered no explanation why that person might have done so.

Wray did say “we deeply regret the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy”. In response to that admission Florida governor Rick Scott called for Wray to resign. Across the country Americans could make a case that Wray and many others in the FBI deserved much sterner measures.

In 2013 Omar Mateen lost his job as security guard at Florida’s St. Lucie County courthouse. Mateen had made “inflammatory comments about women, Jews and the mass shooting at Ft. Hood.” The FBI twice questioned Mateen after he touted ties to terrorists, but FBI special agent Ronald Hopper told reporters “we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed.” On June 12, 2016, Mateen gunned down 49 people and wounded 58 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Mateen was born in the United States of Afghan parents but the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, [Sufi] Muslims from the Caucuses region, entered the United States on tourist visas then claimed asylum. Russian intelligence warned the FBI the Tsarnaev brothers were dangerous but the FBI’s investigation found no links to terrorism.  On April 15, 2013, the brothers planted bombs at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and wounded at least 264.

In 2008, the FBI had picked up emails between U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan and Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a terrorist with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. In these emails, Hasan was asking for religious sanction to kill American soldiersThe FBI failed to interview Hasan or even make a phone call to his superiors, and no government agency took any steps to stop him. On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood Texas, Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including private Francheska Velez, 21, who was pregnant, and wounded more than 30 others.

Senator Joseph Lieberman sought to make the Hasan-Awlaki emails public but the FBI blocked their release, and military prosecutors forbade their presentation in the trial.

During those proceedings, reporters asked Robert Mueller, FBI boss from 2001-2013, if the bureau had dropped the ball by failing to act. “No,” Mueller responded, “I think, given the context of the discussions and the situation that the agents and the analysts were looking at, they took appropriate steps.” No word about any “regrets,” deep or otherwise, about Hasan’s victims.

For POTUS 44 [Obama], the Fort Hood attack was not terrorism or even “gun violence”. The mass murder was “workplace violence” and Mueller had no problem with that. POTUS 44, who as Barry Soetoro attended a Muslim school in Indonesia, proclaimed that the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. He also ordered that the FBI must not consider any links between Islam and terrorist attacks against the United States.

Mueller duly purged hundreds of counter-terrorism training materials of any hint that Islamic terrorists might pose a security problem. CAIR boss Nihad Awad thanked Mueller for his “pledge” to review FBI counterterrorism training.  So Mueller slavishly put political correctness above the safety of the American people, and that doubtless explains why the FBI looked the other way as the Tsarnaevs, Omar Mateen and others plotted their deadly actions.

Mueller’s politically correct compliance also explains why deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who has problems of his own, tapped the former FBI boss to head up the Russia investigation. Mueller duly bulked up his team with big-time Clinton supporters but his probe has turned up no collusion with the Trump campaign, as the 2016 presidential loser and her media fan club charged.

If Mueller wants to show some integrity, he should shut down the probe immediately.

But where would he suddenly get integrity from?

The former FBI boss’s preference for politics over safety, abetted by incompetence, has trickled down into similar inaction against walking red flags such as Nikolas Cruz. After his mass shooting Christopher Wray admitted the FBI failed and expressed deep regrets. President Trump and Congress need to lean on this guy more than a little bit.

Peter Strzok worked three shifts exonerating Hillary Clinton and framing Donald Trump. That doesn’t sound much like the job description of the FBI’s chief of counterintelligence. So why is this partisan bigot still employed by the FBI in any capacity?

Who are the FBI agents, and their bosses, who looked the other way in the Fort Hood, Boston Marathon and Orlando terrorist attacks? What, exactly, are they doing now?

Answer: Continuing to work hard at undermining the Donald Trump presidency. Is there any reasonable doubt about it?

Republicans’ stupidity v. Democrats’ evil 169

The “reply” to President Obama’s State of the Union address could have been a contradiction of his false claims and a denunciation of his idle boasts.

But South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, speaking for the Republican opposition, preferred to use the platform she had, from which she could reach multitudes of voters, to denounce her own party’s front runner, Donald Trump.

Mark Steyn, commenting on Hayley’s speech at some length and particularly noting her attack on Trump and other Republican presidential candidates, points out how foolish it was for the Republican Party …

… to use what’s meant to be a rebuttal to the President as a rebuttal to their own leading candidates and the two-thirds of their voters who support them. Truly this is the dumbest political party on the planet.

Seems so.

Yet, what the Democratic Party did on the occasion of Obama’s last State of the Union address was surely even more stupid. It acted in extreme contempt for the opinion of an even greater part of the electorate, a majority of the American people.

Stupid is bad. But there’s worse. What the Democrats did was evil.

Democrat reps Zoe Lofgren (CA) and Alcee Hastings (FL) hosted two representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) at the president’s State of the Union address.

Lofgren brought Sameena Usman from the San Francisco CAIR office, and Hastings brought Nezar Hamze from the Florida branch.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

Normally, suspected terrorists wouldn’t get within 100 feet of Capitol security. But Democrats asked police to stand down and let operatives from a Hamas front group to attend, of all things, the State of the Union.

Two representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations were invited as guests of honor at the urging of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — and with the consent of the White House.

In a letter to lawmakers, Wasserman explained that inviting these and two dozen other Muslim guests to the president’s speech would show “the world that we will not be intimidated by fear into discrimination” against Muslims in the wake of last month’s massacre by Muslim terroristsin San Bernardino.

CAIR, which represented the family of the terrorists, gloated over its invitation in a press release.

The statement was posted one day after CAIR called for the release of 100 terrorist prisoners from Gitmo to protect them “from the abuses of indefinite detention”.

Such terrorist appeasement in the middle of a war on Islamic terrorists is beyond outrageous. It’s downright treasonous.

It’s tantamount to inviting the Nazi diplomatic corps to House chambers as guests of FDR’s State of the Union during the height of WWII.

Make no mistake: terror-tied CAIR is considered so dangerous that the FBI has formally banned it from agency outreach.

In a 2007-2008 terrorism trial against a Muslim charity, FBI agents testified that CAIR was a “Hamas front”, and U.S. prosecutors subsequently designated CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. It remains on that Justice Department list today, despite CAIR protests.

As a result of evidence that emerged from the case, the FBI headquarters issued a directive to all 56 of its field offices to cut off ties to CAIR until it can resolve questions regarding its own ties to the Hamas terrorist group.

In a letter to Congress — the same body that invited CAIR officials into House chambers — an associate FBI director warned: “Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

CAIR is a turnstile for terrorist suspects and convicts, including a senior communications officer from its Washington headquarters who is now serving time in federal prison. The officer, Ismail Royer, and more than a dozen other CAIR officials have been convicted or deported on terrorism-related charges.

According to recently declassified FBI documents, longtime CAIR national board member Nabil Sadoun was deported in 2010 because of his “connections to Hamas, Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, and Hamas front organizations”. 

The case files also connect CAIR’s co-founders, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, directly to the Palestinian terrorist group’s U.S. wing, the Palestine Committee, and its parent — the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.

And one much favored by Obama, who has members of it as advisers in the White House. (See our post Man with a mission, February 9, 2011.)

What’s more, the NSA recently monitored CAIR’s executive director for terrorist communications.

Why in the world would Congress host this clear threat to homeland security? …

These are among the worst people possible to put in seats of national honor.

Shout for freedom 154

In our post below, An unanswered (and unanswerable?) question, we ask what the Western world can do to win the war Islam is waging against it.

The very tolerance and freedom that characterize the West provide advantage to the enemy, but if the only way to defeat the aggressor is to become intolerant and unfree, there would be nothing worth defending.

We don’t think the question is unanswerable, and we don’t think tolerance and freedom have to be lost. On the contrary, they have to be insisted upon.

If Muslims take advantage, as they do, of our freedom of speech to advocate their system which prohibits it, we must argue them down, loudly, publicly, and persistently.

That is what the West is not doing. European governments are doing the opposite, prosecuting critics of Islam.

In America, government policy since 9/11 has been to appease Muslims rather than hold them to account. Great effort is put into propitiating those who claim to be aggrieved, with the result that the jihadists in our midst have become ever more powerful.

In a PajamasMedia column, N.M. Guariglia discusses the policy and suggests how better to deal with the internal and international threat:

There is one silver lining to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: it will eventually force the United States to adopt an international policy on Islam itself. Given his Cairo speech in 2009, littered with historical inaccuracies and undue politically correct praise of Islam, we shouldn’t expect President Obama to take upon himself this task. Perhaps another statesman will. But that it must be done …  is no longer a matter of debate.

The national discourse is petty. Policymakers talk as though the problem were merely 500 terrorists cave-hopping around Waziristan. This is not so. The issue is societal. Europe is on the precipice of cultural implosion. The issue is also imminent. The entire Persian Gulf and Arab Levant is up for grabs. Atomic bombs are in question. Radical Islamists have entrenched themselves in the West’s political mainstream — even into the U.S. government. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has had more power within the United States than in Egypt.

Take Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a former advisor to President Clinton and the State Department. Amoudi also ingratiated himself to then-Governor George W. Bush. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, Amoudi was one of the Muslim “moderates” championed by the administration. He spoke at the Washington National Cathedral honoring the victims. Three years later, Amoudi was arrested for conspiring to work with al-Qaeda and Moammar Gaddafi of Libya in an assassination attempt on the Saudi king.

There’s Omar Ahmad, founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim organization in the United States. CAIR was involved with the Holy Land Foundation, an operation that guised charity funds as subsidies to terrorist groups. And then there’s Nihad Awad, the co-founder of CAIR. Awad is an operative of Hamas and yet served on Vice President Gore’s commission for aviation safety and security — the irony! — and was invited to stand alongside President Bush after 9/11. Ismail Elbarasse worked with Amoudi and was involved with the Holy Land Foundation. He also conspired with Hamas leader Mousa Marzook and the “Virginia Network,” a cell of Pakistani terrorists.

In 2004, Elbarasse was arrested. Documents seized in his basement revealed the Muslim Brotherhood’s archives for the United States. CAIR is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Students Association (MSA) is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood spawned Egyptian Islamic Jihad and subsequently al-Qaeda.

These are just a few of the men running the Islamic mosques, schools, campus organizations, and charities in the United States. They are all avowed jihadists and see no distinction between Palestinian “resistance” and al-Qaeda terrorism. The entire apparatus of U.S.-Muslim dialogue is controlled by our enemies. And we have accepted this — so much so that to acknowledge this reality is political suicide.

It’s time to address this. Embassies have been burned, diplomats and newspaper editors have cowered, cartoonists have been hunted down, film directors have been hacked, operas have been canceled, and books have been taken off the shelf. We are losing the Enlightenment out of fear of offending others. …

In the United States, there were terrorist attempts on Penn Station, at a military recruitment center in Arkansas, on a federal building in Illinois, against other landmarks in Manhattan, and on a Dallas skyscraper. Then there was the Christmas Day plot against Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which would have killed more than 300 people had the al-Qaeda operative been more competent; the Times Square plot, which would have been worse than the Oklahoma City bombing had the operative been more competent; and the Fort Hood massacre, which could have been avoided had we been less afraid to appear intolerant of intolerance. And all this happened in just the past year and a half. They’re here.

There is the prevalent argument that this is not representative of real Islam. Fine. Then let’s at least have a discussion as to what “real Islam” actually is. Surely it makes little sense to define all the good things as real Islam and all the bad things as a perversion of real Islam, no? Can we no longer think objectively? Have we become that terrified into silence?

The truth is this: Islam is not merely a religion. Islam is a complete way of life: theological, political, social, and legal. Islamic law is the literal word of the Koran, which is supposed to be the direct word of God. It claims to be unalterable. …

Even amongst the disparate schools of Islam, there are no distinctions of Islamic law. All of these interpretative matters have been addressed long ago. It is what it is and it cannot be anything else.

“Jihad” is not a yoga-like exercise for internal spiritual discovery. It is the killing of non-Muslims and the enforcement of Islamic rule throughout the world. “Peace” is not coexistence. It is Islamic dominion over the planet. “Freedom” is not individual liberty. It is submission to the supernatural.

Where is the United States to go from here? We ought to shut down the internal jihadist infrastructure controlling the American-Muslim community. We ought to challenge the ten-year plan of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference to stifle freedom of speech, thought, and expression in the West. We ought to more passionately defend the superiority of democratic and liberal values — in ethics, in philosophy, and in practice. We ought to call for explanations on behalf of the Islamic world. What is it they actually believe? What actions are they willing to take on behalf of these beliefs? Rather than tell them what they want to hear, we ought to begin insisting they tell us what we want to hear.

And finally, we ought to devise a foreign policy whereby we officially oppose the inclusion of fascist theocratic movements in new democratic governments — whether Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt [or the elected government in Iraq – JB]— and proclaim our support for true freedom.

To our great detriment 289

Great speeches were made at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this February 2010. We particularly liked John Bolton‘s address, and Dick Cheney’s, and George Will’s [see our post A prescription for pleasure, February 20.]

We questioned the wisdom of conservatives accepting the co-sponsorship of the John Birch Society [More harm than help, February 20.] But that is far less objectionable than the convening of a CPAC panel by terrorist sympathizers.

Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugged, who convened an anti-terrorist event,  tells what happened in an interview with Jamie Glazov at Front Page:

Geller: Last Friday, Robert Spencer and I hosted a standing-room-only event at CPAC. …

Our conference was designed to speak the truths that others will not speak. First to speak was Wafa Sultan, the ex-Muslim who shot to international fame after she stood up for human rights against Sharia on Al-Jazeera in a debate with an Islamic cleric on a famous viral video, and the author of A God Who Hates. She spoke of Islam’s war against the West. Then Steve Coughlin, the former Pentagon Islamic law specialist who was making his first public appearance after being fired from the Defense Department after pressure from those who didn’t like his truth-of-the-matter stance on jihad. He gave a bit of his controversial presentation to the Pentagon, showing how the Defense Department is ignoring the true nature of the jihad threat, to our great detriment – which is the title of his lengthy thesis on this problem.

Then in the second hour our speakers showed the next phases of the advance of jihad and Sharia. While Coughlin was fired for telling the truth about Islam and jihad, human rights activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is being prosecuted for “hate speech” in Austria for the same truth telling. After her came Anders Gravers of Stop the Islamisation of Europe, who has been physically assaulted for standing up for freedom in Denmark. Then Simon Deng, a former slave in Sudan and a leading human rights activist against jihad and Islamic supremacism, showed what life is like for the subjugated, enslaved Christians of southern Sudan – the fourth phase of Sharia encroachment. Finally, the war hero and Congressional candidate Lt. Colonel Allen West gave a stirring speech calling us all to the defense of freedom.

FP: It’s a great sign that CPAC hosted an event like this, right?

Geller: Well Jamie, it’s not really what happened. The truth of the matter is that our event was at CPAC, but it was an independent event, not a CPAC event. And the truths that our speakers told were not aired at any other event at CPAC.

FP: Ok, just a second, let me get something straight: we are facing a deadly enemy in this current terror war, and that enemy is Islamic jihad — based on Islamic theology. CPAC had how many panels about it?

Geller: One. And it was an exercise in misinformation.

FP: Are you kidding me?

Geller: Not at all. The single panel was:

“You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives are Against the War on Terror

Sponsored by Campaign for Liberty

Speakers: Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Karen Kwiatkowski and Jacob Hornberger, President of FFF [The Future of Freedom Foundation]

The message there was that “real conservatives” don’t support the war on terror because it is a creation of the “Israeli lobby” — which coalesces with the left-wing’s new anti-Semitism against neoconservatives. Karen Kwiatkowski is a darling of both the leftist Huffington Post and the anti-Semitic paleocon site Antiwar.com.

FP: Tell us some more about Kwiatkowski.

Geller: Well, let’s put it this way: in a 2006 article, she described John Bolton as “that blubbering bundle of self-righteousness.” She also wrote:

“Many in America oppose the U.S. knee-jerk, unquestioning support for Israel. Many more worry that the Israeli lobby is unusually influential in Washington, while remaining hidden and unaccountable to average Americans. Still others are alarmed that Israel’s constant war mentality has become our new American model, and that Iraq and our own borders have become our own occupied territories, teeming with terror and constituting a never-ending threat to our lives, prosperity and value system.” …

That panel was, of course, a reflection of Ron Paul’s perspective. There were no counter-jihadists, no Robert Spencer, no Ibn Warraq on any CPAC panel, but they had room for this well-funded “Campaign for Liberty” presentation. …

Nothing was said about the Islamic doctrine that shows that jihadists would be waging war against the U.S. even if we did end all actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The panel agreed with Obama, that Muslims are angry with us because of our actions, and will stop being angry with us if we change our foreign policy. This view is naïve and reflects ignorance of Islamic doctrine…

FP: This is mind-boggling. This is a conservative conference and one would think conservatives are interested in national security and protecting our liberties and American lives. Why do you think this happened?

Geller: I think CPAC’s agenda in 2010, as well as 2009 and before that, reflects the influence of Grover Norquist, the conservative powerhouse and kingmaker. He is a board member of the ACU [American Conservative Union]. … Norquist and his ally Suhail Khan seem to be in charge at CPAC

FP: Expand a bit on what perspective Norquist represents.

Geller:  Grover Norquist’s troubling ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes … are very active in “Muslim outreach.”

Geller: In December 2003, David Horowitz wrote that Norquist “has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities….

Frank Gaffney here in Frontpage [wrote] how Norquist had given Muslims with jihad terror links access to the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Grover Norquist was on the jihad payroll before and after the carnage and death of September 11. Gaffney revealed Norquist’s close ties to Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving twenty-three years in prison for financing jihad activity. In 2000, Alamoudi said at a rally, “I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here?…Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wished they added that I am also a supporter of Hizballah.” …

Norquist also introduced Nihad Awad, cofounder and executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations, to President Bush. CAIR is one of the foremost Islamic supremacist hate sponsors in the U.S. Terror expert Steve Emerson wrote that “CAIR, which touts itself as America’s premier Muslim civil rights organization, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land [Foundation] terror trial.” …

Emerson also reveals that according to the testimony of an FBI agent, “CAIR was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.” The Palestine Committee is dedicated to jihad for the destruction of Israel

Robert Spencer added this about CAIR: “CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror…”

These are Grover Norquist’s bedfellows. Abusing his power and access, he introduced Islamic supremacists who advocate the overthrow of the government to those who have an oath to protect and defend the Constitution…