Stonewall U

King: Obama's 'Iron Curtain' [Robert Costa]

Rep. Peter King of New York, the leading Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, tells National Review Online that the Obama White House has built an “iron curtain” around national-security information in order to block Congress from investigating Northwest Airlines Flight 253. “This administration is not cooperating,” says King. “They have a stonewalling mentality.”

The Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas Day terror plot has been “schizophrenic” says King. “It’s reflective of their handling of other incidents. They still haven’t given us any information on Fort Hood. Even with the gate crashers, they’ve refused to give us on information on communications between the White House social secretary and the Secret Service. They’re giving us nothing and Democrats in Congress are very reluctant to have any meaningful investigations.” Politics, not national security, is driving these decisions, says King. “They’re holding back because they don’t want to share embarrassing material.”

Obama, says King, “can’t seem to find a balance” on national security. “He’s done a good job on Afghanistan and the Patriot Act yet on the other hand he’s wrong to close Guantanamo Bay, wrong to try 9/11 cases in civilian courts, and certainly wrong to send Gitmo detainees to Yemen.”

Political correctness, adds King, is at the root of the administration’s homeland-security problems. “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was an Islamic terrorist, not an isolated extremist,” he says. “I could see how a mistake could be made with the Nigerian authorities, but Janet Napolitano still hasn’t said it was a mistake and that’s worrying. When a man turns in his own son, and all we do is put his name on a list with half-a-million others, there need to be major red flags. Why didn’t he at least get a pat down or put through a full-body scanner? Not acknowledging these mistakes is very revealing of Napolitano’s mindset. She sees this as a criminal matter, not as an act of terrorism.”

“Some people call it profiling, but I call it common-sense screening, and that’s what we need to do,” says King. “When the FBI went after the mafia, they investigated Italian groups. When they investigated the IRA, they went to Irish bars. If you’re looking for the Ku Klux Klan, you don’t go to Harlem. When you know that nearly 100 percent of the terrorists coming after us are Muslims, you need to put aside political correctness and focus on young males from Middle Eastern countries. Israel does it and it makes sense. Otherwise, we’re wasting time by grilling the Scandinavian grandmother. The overwhelming majority of Muslims are good people, but we have to be frank. The terrorists are Muslims. We need the president to come out and admit that we’re at war with Islamic terrorism.”