RUTHFULLY YOURS

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, 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, Termalan and Dzokhar, 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 off 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 soldiers. The 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.

The Trump administration’s new National Vetting Center, housed within the Department of Homeland Security, could provide a needed boost to our defenses if it streamlines and coordinates the information collection and sharing processes between relevant immigration and national security agencies, rather than adding to the bureaucratic thicket.

While it is critical to get the mechanism for keeping harmful actors such as jihadists out of the U.S. right, equally if not more important is that we get right the vetting process itself. On this, the executive memorandum is silent.

What does the administration believe about vetting? The first iteration of President Trump’s terror entry executive order, inaccurately maligned as a “travel ban,” sheds light on his thinking.

The purpose of that executive order was to

…ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

The executive order echoed a statement President Trump made while on the stump in a pivotal August 2016 speech on fighting Islamic terrorism. Emphasizing the ideological nature of this struggle, then-candidate Trump stated:

In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.

In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.

Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country.

In that same speech, the president declared that one of his first acts if elected would be to establish a “Commission on Radical Islam,” the express purpose of which would be two-fold: (i) To “identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of Radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization;” and (ii) To “develop new protocols for local police officers, federal investigators, and immigration screeners.”

The lack of such a top-down analysis has plagued America since before 9/11. One wonders, how could our national security and foreign policy apparatus not study what President Obama himself termed the “one organizing principle” among the jihadist enemies facing us, of Islam? Moreover, how could U.S. government officials, notably including former FBI Director Robert Mueller, possibly purge the lexicon intrinsic to and trainers steeped in the theopolitical, Sharia-based threat doctrine motivating Islamic supremacists? You must understand your enemy’s animating ideology if you wish to defeat him. Conducting an honest study of Islamic supremacism, and the goals, tactics and strategies of its adherents would seem to be the essential first step to developing a strategy to comprehensively counter them.

When it comes to vetting to prevent Islamic supremacists from entering the homeland, third-party analyses based in such an understanding of the enemy – dishonest and determined though he may be — provide promising recommendations for keeping us safe.

The Trump National Security Strategy itself rightfully recognizes the importance of understanding Sharia supremacism in fighting jihad. CONTINUE AT SITE

Last Thursday, Sam Brownback was sworn in as the State Department’s new ambassador for religious liberty.

Today — in his first official speech as ambassador — Brownback openly embraced a hardline Islamic cleric who authorized a fatwa in 2004 justifying the killing of Americans in Iraq, and another fatwa in 2012 calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s past is no mystery to the State Department. For example, the Obama administration’s State Department had to repeatedly apologize in May 2014 for promoting Bin Bayyah as a moderate. However, the Obama administration then implemented a full-court press with the U.S. media and the D.C. foreign policy “Smart Set” to rehabilitate the image of the Mauritanian cleric.

The presence of multiple senior Trump State Department officials at an “interfaith” event in Washington, D.C. in support of Bin Bayyah’s efforts appears to confirm there will be no change. The Trump administration is continuing the engagement with Bin Bayyah they inherited from Obama — despite the fact that Bin Bayyah’s views on Israel are directly contrary to those of President Trump.

There is also an inherent contradiction in the Trump State Department embracing the interfaith efforts of an Islamic cleric who openly states on his website that Christians are going to hell. Bin Bayyah has also said that interfaith outreach to Jews in Arab lands should only be done with extreme caution — and only with Jews who oppose Israel.

The State Department is promoting Brownback’s speech at Bin Bayyah’s event earlier today:The Obama administration’s attempts to rehabilitate Bin Bayyah were not without controversy. Most embarrassing for the Obama White House was Bin Bayyah’s approval of a 2004 fatwa authorizing the killing of Americans in Iraq and endorsing the Iraqi “resistance.” This information was raised in June 2013 after it was reported Bin Bayyah had been escorted into the White House to meet with senior members of Obama’s National Security Council. CONTINUE AT SITE

A new ISIS video shows a wheelchair-bound jihadist being loaded into a bomb-outfitted pickup before he drives off and detonates the vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

ISIS also shows what it claims to be women jihadists fighting alongside men in battle and claims their fight in Syria is now “the battle to avenge chaste women” as the “deceitful, atheist Kurds” have women commanders on the front lines defeating the terror group.

The film from ISIS’ official al-Hayat Media Center is the seventh part of the terror groups’s “Inside the Khilafah” series released in Arabic and English; the familiar English-language narrator has a North American accent.

“The chaste mujahid woman journeying to her Lord with the garments of purity and faith, seeking revenge for her religion and for the honor of her sisters imprisoned by the apostate Kurds,” the narrator says as a pickup is shown with a trio of purported female fighters in the bed.

None of the head-to-toe black-clad women speak in the video, and it’s unclear if they’re actually women. At one point, as a chador-clad fighter runs in slow-motion along with male fighters, the women’s garment flips up enough to show what appear to be men’s sneakers and pants beneath.

The video describes “coordinated, multi-pronged” attacks south of the Euphrates river and shows various purported captures and tortures of Kurds before wrapping up with a jihadist referred to as Abu Abdillah Ash-Shami bidding farewell to his crying daughter and nephew. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/02/11/glazov-gang-fbi-leaders-aiding-and-abetting-terrorists/

This new edition of The Glazov Gang features John Guandolo, a former FBI agent, combat veteran Marine, and now the president of Understanding the Threat.

John focused on FBI Leaders Aiding and Abetting Terrorists,revealing how the FBI praised a Jihadi Imam for teaching peace — when he is clearly doing the opposite.

Don’t miss it!

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Defense Department, per direction of Secretary James Mattis, is reviewing whether to ban cell phones or other electronic devices from the Pentagon and other U.S. military installations after reports that apps were revealing sensitive locations of U.S. service members.

Data from users of fitness trackers such as Fitbit was published in a global heat map by Strava, on which fellow runners can share routes. This also ended up highlighting locations of covert military installations and intelligence outposts, as the only runners using the fitness apps in many remote locations are foreigners.

The November 2017 map highlighted routes accumulated from more than 3 trillion individual GPS data points, according to the Guardian report. As U.S. personnel turn on their fitness apps for daily runs, this has ended up clearly identifying mappable outposts from Syria to Djibouti to Afghanistan.

Today at the Pentagon, spokeswoman Dana White confirmed that a review is underway to determine whether smart phones will be allowed in the building.

“It’s important to know that the secretary’s primary focus is the protection of civilians, of service members and their families,” she said. “So the Strava heat maps provided an opportunity for us to see a possible vulnerability. So he’s thinking about the totality of the DoD enterprise, so not just this building. We always are thinking about how do we enhance and adapt our security procedures. And that’s what’s happening now.”

On concerns that Pentagon staffers wouldn’t be able to stay in touch with families without a mobile phone, White clarified “it’s not just about cell phones.”

“This is a comprehensive look at technology. Technology’s very dynamic. It is important that we always adapt our security procedures,” she said.

“With respect to the workforce, the secretary’s primary interest is to ensure that we are all safe and we are all secure. Operational security is his priority. This recent incident, and others, has allowed him to take a bigger look at, what are we doing and how are we doing it?”

White said that “all of those things will be considered in his calculus, but you have to understand that the secretary sees everything within that prism of, how do I protect the civilians, the service members, their families? And so that’s how he will make his decision.”

The review is also “not just about the Pentagon,” but will take into account electronics rules “across the DoD enterprise.” CONTINUE AT SITE