Former Amb. on State Dept. Report on Hezb: “Borders on a Lie”

Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, is blasting a recently released State Department report, which claims that there are no “known operational cells of either al-Qa’ida or Hizballah” in the Western Hemisphere.

“Quite frankly, to be very blunt about it, I think this [report] borders on a lie. This report has become a diplomatic report, formulated not to offend anybody. But in terms of shedding any real operational, tactical light on the very real threat that we face in this hemisphere…it just falls well short of that.”

In an interview airing Tuesday on Frank Gaffney’s radio show, Noriega lays part of the blame for the mincing of words in the State Department’s report on the same “fear of offending” that led to the much-criticized Benghazi talking points—in this instance, fear of offending Mexico.

To this shortcoming, Noriega has some blunt advice. “The Mexicans are grownups. They don’t want a terrorist threat to happen in their territory or along our mutual border worse than any of us. We just have to shoot straight with them.”

Additionally, because of the Obama administration’s desire to see organized terrorism as obsolete, he argues, it seemingly has “set the bar so high that they don’t have to acknowledge any kind of threat, so they have an instantaneous excuse not to formulate an effective policy for responding to that threat.“

“This administration is very fond of saying how they’ve shattered the leadership of international terrorism and that we only have to worry about these lone wolves,” Noriega says.  “Then they flip it around and say, ‘Well, there may be lone wolves, but there’s no operational control.’ Well, really, they can’t have it both ways.”

Noriega contends that there are substantial threats posed by Hezbollah and Iranian operatives in the region, including Mohsen Rabbani, who is wanted in connection to the 1994 terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and Ghazi Atef Nassereddine Abu Ali. According to Noriega, the latter is “Hezbollah’s representative to the petro-rich state of Venezuela, which is essentially a sponsor of Hezbollah and Iran’s best friend in the Western hemisphere.”

Those two men and their allies are not “lone-wolves,” but experts working with extensive financial backing, Noriega says, that are part of a wider threat. “What we see here is really a synergy, a collaborative threat of narco-traffickers, money launderers, radical political movements, terrorist organizations, Iran and Venezuela, all operating—maybe not in a coordinated or integrated way, but definitely in a collaborative way.”