Prioritizing Grid Security, SFR is with Sen. James Lankford

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. A man very much in the forefront of that war at the moment in the United States senate, serving on the senate intelligence committee, the senate homeland security committee, and the senate appropriations committee is our first guest. He is Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. His portfolio is vast as those committee assignments suggests. And his interest, particularly, in the national security portfolio is greatly appreciate by those of us associated with this program and it’s always a delight to have him back. Welcome, Senator, it’s good to have you with us, sir.

JAMES LANKFORD:

Glad to be back with you again.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

I know today, the — as we speak, it’s in the future, as this broadcast airs it will be in the past, but there is a hearing in your homeland security committee, chaired by Senator Ron Johnson, on a subject that I know is of great concern to him and I think of you as well as to me, and that is the resiliency of our critical infrastructure to the sorts of attacks that we’ve seen, in some cases including against our electric grid. As well as what may be in prospect. I know you’re going to be there at least briefly because you do have another assignment this morning, but tell us a little bit about the importance you attach to getting this sorted and the need to do so on the part of the United States congress.

JAMES LANKFORD:

No, it’s essential that we deal with critical infrastructure. Obviously, all of us depend, whether it is turning your phone on in the morning or whether it’s flipping on the lights in your home or water coming to your home or whatever it may be, we realise how incredibly vulnerable we are based on infrastructure. So what Chairman Ron Johnson is leading today is a hearing in homeland security government affairs. That particular focus is going to be on defensive, what needs to be done, what is still missing. And how can we pay attention to some of the obvious threats that are out there, both militarily and asymmetric. Quite frankly, most of the countries around the world realise fully and they’re fully aware they cannot keep up with us militarily. And so they look for ways asymmetrically to be able to compete against us, whether that be cyber-attacks or finding ways to do an inexpensive terrorist attack that would take down a large chunk of our infrastructure. And so looking for redundancies in our system, looking for the basic circuit breaker, if you want to use a loose term on that, looking for military defences, that are all essential, as well as you and I have spoken about before, EMPs, electromagnetic pulse weapons that would be so devastating to our electrical system and our basic infrastructure. So those – these are key areas of being proactive in trying to think in advance, what would our vulnerabilities be and how can we prepare for those. It’ll be a good hearing.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me turn to another subject which I know you’re also very engaged on, Senator James Lankford, and that is the Iran nuclear deal, so-called. We had, really, a stunning revelation, recently, I guess for those of us who’ve been following it, it’s not altogether surprising, but the admission was stunning nonetheless by Ben Rhodes about lying to the congress about this. What do you make of that and where we are as a result?

JAMES LANKFORD:

Yeah, the admission of it is what was stunning. And I agree with that. There was no great surprise, there were many of us that were absolutely beating our head against the wall during that time period, competing with the White House that continued to say, you know, Iran is a new actor, we’ve made this deal because they’re a new moderate force. We’ve got to reinforce that. You’re working out of an old paradigm in Iran and look at these new moderate leaders. And what we find out now is that Ben Rhodes was creating what he called the echo chamber and he had a whole group of people in the media world that he would basically tweet it out or he would send it to them directly. They would repeat it and just constantly be able to create this narrative that was false. But Ben Rhodes apparently didn’t care that it was a false narrative. It was promoting to be able to convince certain Democratic members of the senate to be able to go along with this new role. And everyone seemed to just fall in line with the White House spin. And now we have a White House – White House-led nuclear agreement with Iran where they have billions of dollars and access to greater research for the limitation of having a few inspectors come in and out, but they really have what they need.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

When Ben Rhodes refused to come up to the House oversight committee, the governmental reform store yesterday, I was kind of surprised that Democrats were either not concerned or objecting or holding him accountable, but rather were taking to task Republican witnesses and so on. Is this just the state of affairs in the United States congress these days, Senator? Shouldn’t they all, really, all of you be concerned about people lying to the congress in government offices?

JAMES LANKFORD:

Oh, no, it should all be. And you go back to – it wasn’t that long ago that a White House could not snow their own party and their own party wouldn’t try to fall in line, but everyone held everyone to account. But when you go back to the 1970s and Republicans holding Richard Nixon to account to say enough is enough. It’s time to step down, Mr. President. And this is not appropriate. We’re not going to protect you. Or whether it be Robert Byrd, in previous presidents, as that senator confronted Democrat presidents to say, you’ve overstepped your constitutional boundaries and stepped into the role of what is congress. Now it seems to be a pulling back from that. I would hope in the days ahead that the Republicans would not fall into line in that same area. If we have a Republican president in the days ahead, which I hope we do obviously, for the policy sake of it, that they would continue to hold him to account.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me ask you, sir, we’re now watching with great interest the back and forth with the president and with the Saudis about legislation that was adopted last night unanimously. You voted for this bill that would enable suits against the Saudi government over there possible involvement in 9-11. Talk a little bit about that, both as a member of the intelligence committee, to the extent you can, and certainly as a member of the United States senate.

JAMES LANKFORD:

Sure. It’s actually not targeted directly at the Saudis. It’s targeted at any nation, whether it be Saudis or whoever it may be, that actually engaged in promoting terrorism, equipping terrorism, training towards terrorism, out of their official setting. Now this isn’t just a citizen of that country. Obviously, an American citizen can go anywhere in the world and can commit some act of terrorism, the American government is not involved. A Saudi could go anywhere in the world and also commit some act of terrorism and the Saudi government is not necessarily involved in that. This is focused in on when it is discovered that a nation is actually involved in helping equip, send, train, whatever it may be, individuals do acts of terrorism, that nation is also held to account because they were personally involved in that as well. So we tried to be able to make an environment where it protected all nations and all people. They don’t have to live in fear of constant lawsuits from Americans because one of their citizens they did, in effect, did something. But also hold to account any nation that tries to prepare or harbour or train terrorists to be able to leave and to be able to do acts of terror on Americans anywhere that we may be. That nation should be held to account not only in our security apparatus but also through the court systems as well. As we have done before, you think about this for the nation of Iran, when Iran held hostages and everything else, we have held the nation of Iran to account in the past. We should do that to any nation.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

In your judgment, Senator Lankford, is there grounds for such a suit in the case of the Saudis at this point?

JAMES LANKFORD:

I do not actually believe there’s grounds on that case on the Saudis at this point. As I try to go through the information, there’s a long story for that and most of it is in a classified setting. But as I walk through all the documents, there is a difference between individuals that are Saudis and clearly Saudi individuals were involved in the 9-11 attacks, and the actual government doing the training and equipping and preparation for that. So there will be a long story for another day on that.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

A suit, for sure.

JAMES LANKFORD:

And one of the things that we have to watch for very, very carefully.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Indeed. Senator, I know we have to let you go. But very quickly, you’re taking some flak, you and other members of the senate, I think, over the question of whether the congress will adequately fund the president’s proposal for zika virus countermeasures. What are your thoughts on the adequacy of that funding?

JAMES LANKFORD:

You know, it’s interesting to me the president’s focus on we need to have more zika funding. Which we do need to deal with two specific areas on zika, well, I guess three specific areas. One is the warning systems that the CDC can do. The other one is dealing with the mosquito population. That is one of the best things we can do right now is knock down the population. And within about a year and a half, we should have a vaccine for zika. So that actual preparation for the vaccine. So the administration saying that they need two billion dollars to do that, now they’ve already moved half a billion dollars from the Ebola fund, where there was a frantic move years ago to build five billion dollars because they had to have it right now. They still have two and a half billion of that five billion they had to have right now still sitting there. So there’s half a billion moved over. I reminded the president that he moved half a billion dollars from the infectious diseases account in March of this year, just two months ago, to use for the green climate fund for the UN. And so there didn’t seem to be such an emergency two months ago, that he could move money out of the green – out of the infectious diseases to use for climate change research. So it seems a little hypocritical for him to say suddenly, I’ve got to have this money right now. When he actually used the money for infectious diseases for something else just two months ago.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Senator James Lankford, thank you so much for your time, sir. We appreciate what you do for the people of Oklahoma and the rest of us and the chance to visit with you from time to time. Come back to us again very soon. Next up, Diana West, straight after this.