FBI: Yup, Chattanooga Killer Was Inspired by Foreign Terror Group
That was pretty fast, wasn't it? In mid-November, FBI Director James Comey and investigators were telling the public we may never know what motivated a 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez to kill four Marines and a sailor in an attack on Chattanooga's U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center in July . . . Now: The Department of the Navy will posthumously award Purple Heart medals to four Marines and a sailor killed by a lone terrorist at the Navy Operational Support Center Chattanooga in July, according to a statement from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. Another Marine wounded in the shooting will also be awarded the Purple Heart. "Following an extensive investigation, the FBI and NCIS have determined that this attack was inspired by a foreign terrorist group, the final criteria required for the awarding of the Purple Heart to this sailor and these Marines," Mabus said in a statement. "This determination allows the Department of the Navy to move forward immediately with the award of the Purple Heart to the families of the five heroes who were victims of this terrorist attack, as well as to the surviving hero." "We've investigated Chattanooga as a terror attack from the beginning," Director James Comey said, according to a report from Fox News. "The Chattanooga killer was inspired by a foreign terror organization. It's hard to entangle which particular source . . . there are lots of competing poisons out there." Thank you for the clarity, Mr. Director . . . but why did this seem so inscrutable just a month ago? DHS Whistleblower: Civil-Rights Division Shut Down Investigation of Jihadists We need big, live-televised hearings on these allegations: The two San Bernardino jihadists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, may have benefited from the administration's closure of an investigation I initiated on numerous groups infiltrating radicalized individuals into this country. While working for the Department of Homeland Security for 13 years, I identified individuals affiliated with large, but less well-known groups such as Tablighi Jamaat and the larger Deobandi movement freely transiting the United States. At the National Targeting Center, one of the premier organizations formed to "connect the dots," I played a major role in an investigation into this trans-national Islamist network. We created records of individuals, mosques, Islamic Centers and schools across the United States that were involved in this radicalization effort. The Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque in San Bernardino was affiliated with this network and we had identified a member of it in our investigation. Farook frequented that mosque and was well-known to the congregation and mosque leadership. Another focus of my investigation was the Pakistani women's Islamist group al-Huda, which counted Farook's wife, Tashfeen Malik, as a student. While the al-Huda International Welfare Foundation distanced themselves from the actions of their former pupil, Malik's classmates told the Daily Mail she changed significantly while studying at al-Huda, gradually becoming "more serious and strict." More ominously, the group's presence in the U.S. and Canada is not without its other ties to ISIS and terrorism. In 2014, three recent former students at al-Huda's affiliate school in Canada, aged 15 to 18, left their homes to join the Islamic State in Syria. We had these two groups in our sights; if the investigation had continued and additional links been identified and dots connected, we might have given advance warning of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The combination of Farook's involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik's attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. It could also have led to denial of Malik's K-1 visa or possibly gotten Farook placed on the No Fly list. But after more than six months of research and tracking; over 1,200 law enforcement actions and more than 300 terrorists identified; and a commendation for our efforts; DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the Department of State and DHS' own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers' civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens? Does Ted Cruz's Slipperiness Matter? There is an easy way to conclude Ted Cruz didn't lie on the debate stage Tuesday night; conclude that he lied throughout the spring of 2013. The problem with posing as a bill supporter in an effort to insert a poison bill -- and performing the role with great passion, at great length, in front of many audiences -- is that afterwards, people may not be so convinced that it was all an act. Professor Robert George: The disagreement is about whether they should be granted citizenship, through some mechanism, through some process, not whether they should be moved from illegal status to legal status? Cruz: The amendment I introduced affected only citizenship; it did not affect the underlying legalization in the Gang of Eight bill. George: Would your bill pass the House, or would it be killed because it was proposing 'amnesty'? Cruz: I believe that if my amendments were adopted, the bill would pass. My effort in introducing them was to find solution that reflected common ground and fixed the problem." Now, both then and now, Cruz is one notch to the restrictionist side of Marco Rubio. Rubio supported a Gang of Eight bill that included a path to citizenship; Cruz wanted a path to legalization. Now Rubio wants an eventual path to legalization; Cruz opposes it. (One of the arguments against a path to legalization is that once it's enacted, the goalposts will move; the Left will claim that the 11 million new legal permanent residents are second-class citizens and denied the rights of their "fellow Americans." Legal status is just a technicality in their minds; Obama declared the DREAMers "are American by any other name except for their legal papers." Cruz proved his point about the Democrats' real priorities with his amendment. They see immigration reform as a way to find a big box of 11 million new voters under the Winter Solstice tree.) But Rubio can fairly point out that Cruz ripping him over a path to legalization is like Obama ripping gay-marriage critics. You're denouncing people for holding the same opinion you held just a few years ago. Here's Cruz, explaining himself to Fox News Channel's Bret Baier last night: BAIER: One of the big back-and-forth moments between you and Senator Marco Rubio was on immigration. Many people said you scored some points against Marco Rubio there. You also said though, and it has been checked today, at the debate, that you denied that you've ever supported legal status for undocumented immigrants. You said quote, I've never supported illegal immigration. But back in 2013 you did support an amendment and back when you were making the case, this is what you said. (video) CRUZ: I don't want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass. And so I would urge people of good faith on both sides of the aisle, if the objective is, to pass common-sense immigration reform, that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration and that allows those illegally to come in out of the shadows, then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromise to come together. BAIER: Now that amendment would have allowed undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. permanently and obtain legal status. So how do you square that circle? CRUZ: Actually, Brett, it wouldn't have. What was happening there is that was the battle over the Gang of Eight, the Rubio/Schumer amnesty bill, which was a massive amnesty bill proposed by Senator Rubio, by Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and I was leading the fight against amnesty. I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jeff Sessions, I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve King. Leading the fight to secure the borders and what I did in that amendment was an amendment I introduced to remove citizenship to say those who are here illegally shall be permanently ineligible for citizenship. Now the fact that I introduced an amendment to remove part of the Gang of Eight bill doesn't mean I support the rest of the Gang of Eight bills. The Gang of Eight bills was a mess. It was a terrible bill -- BAIER: That's not what you said -- CRUZ: The Rubio campaign is trying to claim, 'gosh -- BAIER: That's not what you said at the time. Yahoo dug up these quotes, saying 'if this amendment were to pass, the chance of this bill passing into law would increase dramatically.' A few weeks later during a debate on the Senate floor Cruz repeated his belief that 'this amendment is the compromise that can pass.' And you repeated later in Princeton that 'if my amendment were adopted, this bill would pass.' It sounds like you wanted the bill to pass. CRUZ: Of course, I wanted the bill to pass, my amendment to pass. What my amendment did- BAIER: You said the bill. CRUZ: What my amendment did is take citizenship off the table. What it doesn't mean, what it doesn't mean is that that I supported the other aspects of the bill, which was a terrible bill and Brett, you've been around Washington long enough, you know how to defeat bad legislation, which is what that amendment did, is it revealed the hypocrisy of Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats and the establishment Republicans who were supporting it because they all voted against it. And listen I'll give you the simplest proof why this notion that my fighting amnesty, somehow made me a supporter of amnesty -- Jeff Sessions voted with me on my amendment to eliminate citizenship. Now is anyone remotely suggesting that Jeff Sessions support amnesty? BAIER: Of course not. The problem, though, Senator-- CRUZ: We were fighting side by side to defeat Marco Rubio's amnesty and we succeeded, we defeated it. BAIER: The problem is at the time you were telling people like Byron York with the Washington Examiner that this was not a poison pill. You said 'my objective is not to kill immigration reform.' You said you wanted it to pass at the time. So my question to you is, looking back at what you said then and what oar saying now, which one should people believe? CRUZ: What the amendments I introduced, I introduced five amendments, a whole series of amendments, what they did is they illustrated the hypocrisy of the Democrats. They showed it was a partisan effort and they succeeded in defeating the Rubio/Schumer amnesty bill. Some are asking why make a big deal about Cruz's slipperiness here; surely no one thinks he's a closet amnesty supporter. Surely, Rubio offered a bigger and more consequential lie while defending the Gang of Eight bill in April 2013: "What I said throughout my campaign was that I was against a blanket amnesty. And I was, and this is not blanket amnesty," (No, he didn't add the 'blanket' qualifier at any point in his 2010 Senate campaign.) It's like "I didn't have an involvement with Mannatech . . . It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of a relationship with them," or "I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down . . . It was on television. I saw it," or touting "the power and value of the Constitution" while giving a "Liberty medal" to Hillary Clinton. ADDENDA: Observed over at Ace, an old essay summarizing the hardest foreign policy lesson for the Left of the Obama era: "It turns out that soft power cannot replace hard power. On the contrary, soft power is merely a complementary foreign policy tool that can yield results only when it is backed up by real might and the political will to employ it if necessary." | 
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