Rep. Barry Loudermilk: refugee resettlement “could prove to be disastrous”

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Frank Gaffney: One of the men who is brining considerable intelligence to bare on these issues of national and homeland security is our first guest. He is Congressman Barry Loudermilk, he represents with great distinction the people of Georgia’s 11^th Congressional District, including on two important House committees: the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee and also the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. We have had the pleasure of having him visit with us from time to time and he’s always welcome here. Congressman thanks for joining us once again at Secure Freedom Radio.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk: Well Frank, thank you for having me, it’s always a pleasure and I appreciate the important work you do.

FG: Well, vice-versa, and let me talk a little about some of that work. Congressman I think it was back about a month ago you released a report out of a task force of the Homeland Security Committee about this problem of foreign travel of would be terrorists and how that can be best combated. You came up with, as I understand it, 32 findings. Talk a little bit about this report. It sounds as though there is a great deal of work to be done in this department?

BL: Well there is, I mean when you look at the challenges that we face with combating terrorism, which is unique from any other type of national defense issue we have, their intent is to conduct an act of terrorism against an American citizen to seek destruction and to kill innocent people. So it totally changes the way that you operate, and you think, and how your intelligence community operates, and our focus was on this foreign fighter travel. You know we’ve had the largest convergence of foreign fighters in history of the world going into Syria. Some of those were coming back into the United States and when you look at the percentage of those that go into Syria to fight with ISIS, 80 percent of them usually never come back out of the war zone, they’re killed when they are there. Almost all of them, their passports are taken by ISIS, or destroyed, or they’re used for someone else and when you have a large percentage of your citizens going there and actually coming back it really raises a red flag. How are these folks getting back when you know most of the folks that go over there are being killed within the first two weeks or they’re basically being enslaved by ISIS.

FG: Let me address a related challenge, you mentioned Syria, Congressman Barry Loudermilk. The President has indicated that he would like to take as many as 100,000 Syrian so called refugees, some are migrants some may be something else all together, which is to the point. The FBI has now said, Director Comey, on several different occasions in congressional testimony that his bureau cannot vet these folks coming out of Syria, that they simply don’t have the background information necessary to assess whether some of them may be the kind of people you’re talking about, ISIS fighters or jihadists of other stripes. How serious, as a member of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, do you believe this policy direction of the President is for our national security?

BL: This could prove to be disastrous and you’re exactly right. We had director Comey as well as Secretary Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security, and then the Director of the Counterterrorism Center, before our committee just this week, and I asked some very pointed questions about these refugees that we’re planning on bringing in, and it was clear to me just from their reaction, from what they said, and more importantly what they didn’t say, they don’t know how to deal with this. They don’t know how they’re going to vet them and once they’re here, they have no plan on how to manage or monitor them. This is something that is evolving and the problem goes back to a President whose priority is social justice not national security. When you look at it, he’s very willing to risk the national security of the United States so he can look good on the international scene as we are the most socially equal nation in the world and it’s a priority issue. But when you look, I specifically asked all three of them to tell me if the reports that we have heard, that 70 percent of the refugees are young males, which are in that target area that you expect a terrorist operative to be, seventy percent of the refugees are males, was that true? They didn’t know. Well that was revealing to me is there is a lot we don’t know about this. Also, we start looking at where these terrorist groups have even pretty much admitted that they’re going to use the refugees as a way of implementing terrorist operatives into these countries and I asked if they knew that was true? They didn’t know the answer, so you know these are the top guys and this is a major issues we are discussing. You would expect that they would have at least some of that information. Now they committed me that they would get back to me on this, but it just illustrated, and this is no condemnation of them because this has been thrown in their laps. We’re already having an issue tracking foreign fighters trying to come back into the nation, we’re limited on resources, our intelligence community and our counterterrorism folks are stretched to the max already, and we’re going to add this work load to them, it’s just incredible.

FG: Congressman one of the other things that you and I’ve talked about in the past and you’ve taken a leadership role of is the vulnerability of our electric grid, and speaking of the Islamic State and enemies of this country, you have done in the Science and Technology Committee some important work on trying to assess that vulnerability, and I just wanted to touch base with you about this because as I understand it, we heard last week that the Islamic State had actually been trying to get into the electric grid’s control systems through cyber means. They apparently haven’t done it yet, others have, but again how serious a problem is this, and what is being done, if anything, by the Congress to address that vulnerability, and should more be done?

BL: Well the vulnerability is definitely there. I mean everyone who works in that will agree that we are very vulnerable in our electric grid because our society is so dependent on electricity, and it goes beyond just terrorist attacks. As we heard in a recent hearing that we barley missed a solar activity that could have pretty much set us back to the 1800s in our technology and in our society. You know that in itself is very concerning. Congress is beginning to delve further into this; one of the things that I recently uncovered just from doing my own investigation is that apparently Israel has made a lot of advances in protecting their grid. I think this is something that we need to look at Israel and see what they have done. There are technologies that are being developed here in the United States and methods to better protect the grid. We are vulnerable not only just from a physical attack but from a cyber attack. I think the industry in itself has done a pretty good job of protecting lets say the big power brokers, the power companies, such as Georgia Power, Southern Power, the big players have invested a lot in protecting their systems. Some of the vulnerability comes in with smaller electric utilities that are run by municipalities or co-ops that don’t have the resources of the big players. That’s where I think a lot of our vulnerability exists and so we’re going to be delving deeper into that and that’s somewhere we have to make an investment.

FG: Congressman we’re almost out of time. Very quickly you’ve expressed concern about, speaking of Israel, the attacks of Palestinians against Israel, particularly the indoctrination, not just the incitement, but the encouragement that they’ve, the Palestinians, have been getting from their leadership, Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas as well, to engage in violence against Israelis stabbings and the like. Just a quick word on that if you would?

BL: Yeah it’s tremendous what’s going on over there. I was there back in August, spent ten days in Israel. Saw the threats I’ve seen what Israel is doing to try to bring peace to the area, but it is so volatile there that the Palestinian Authority, when we met with them, it was clear as Israel was really trying to come up with peaceful solutions to the tensions in the West Bank. There the tensions were growing and it was almost like the leadership was just looking for an excuse to launch another series of attacks. Look the Palestinian Authority should be condemning every knife attack, every attack on an Israeli citizen or on an Israeli solider, but they’re doing the exact opposite. The tensions are going to continue to rise and I think part of it is brought on by our administration who has not set a clear tone that we will stand by Israel because I’m not so sure that’s what they administration feels, but I can tell you that’s the way Congress feels.

FG: It does, I pray to God that it will be heard, because I think your right, the signals sent by the administrations are very much to the contrary it seems like its open season on Israel in the eyes of this administration and Israel’s many enemies. Congressman Barry Loudermilk, thank you very much for your attention to all of these issues and for sharing your insights with us. Come back to us again, if you would, very soon.