IPT
Executive Director Steven Emerson Reports on New York Terror Suspect
by Sunday Morning Newsmakers
Larry Marino Show, AM 870, the Answer
November 5, 2017
|
|
|
Share:
|
Be the
first of your friends to like this.
Multimedia for this item
Audio
Recording
|
[Start transcript]
Emerson: Seventy-percent of all allotments of this lotto system
are granted to countries with national security problems, terrorist
problems, or vetting problems that can't be solved.
Marino: My guest is Steve Emerson on the Investigative Project on
Terrorism. He is joining us right now to discuss some of the aspects of the
stories that have unfolded this week involving the New York terror
situation there. Steve, thank you so much for being with us on the program.
Emerson: Happy to be with you.
Marino: As far as events in New York City, this is considered the
biggest terror event since 9/11 – an individual rents a truck, drives down
a bike lane, kills eight people, injures scores more. There's all sorts of
debates about this story, from whether he should be picked up and sent to
Gitmo, whether he should get the death penalty or not. As someone who
studies all this, what are some of the things and issues that come to mind
to you that we need to focus on?
Emerson: First of all, it's been happening in Israel and Europe
for years now. And actually, car rammings have happened in the United
States in the past decade, although not with the same lethality. Number
two, I think that we're going to find more people arrested. I do not think
he was the mastermind and sole inventor of this attack. The background
information that I have received, besides just the official complaint,
which states that he downloaded ISIS videos on his cell a year ago,
suggests that he had been radicalized a long time ago and may in fact have
come to the United States under the lottery system, which has a lot of
defects, in 2010, as a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a
terrorist group then affiliated with al-Qaida. Now, you should know that he
is Uzbeki, but in the truck, all of the writings that they found in the
notebook were in Arabic, perfect, fluent Arabic. So, the question is how
does he learn the Arabic? He is known to have had several passports, and
they cannot account for his timeline for a couple of years, which suggests
he may have been in Syria, or elsewhere, or someplace else. Number two, the
mosques that he affiliated with in the United States, in Paterson and in
Tampa, were Arab mosques mostly known to be affiliated with Arab ISIS, Al-Qaida,
Hamas, or Chechen terrorist groups, not Uzbeki.
Marino: You bring up several points here and I don't want to let
them slip by, so quick answers. There is one report that says that the U.S.
and New York City used to monitor the mosques –
Emerson: Yes.
Marino: – that this individual went to, but under a program that
New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio did, they stopped doing that to try to
improve relations. What can you tell us there?
Emerson: Yes, there was a program, in fact I spoke to one of the
officials in charge of the program who actually shared with me some of the
intelligence reports the other day, from 2006, in particular the Mosque
Omar that was in Paterson, which this terrorist directly went to the moment
he was allowed into the United States. And, that document shows, states
absolutely, uncategorically that the Mosque Omar in Paterson was known to
be a hotbed of radicalism, involving Chechen and Hamas terrorism. Now,
there was a whole program of surveillance implemented by the New York Police
Department of various mosques in New York and New Jersey as part of an
attempted effort to monitor potential terrorism. That's intelligence
gathering. Nobody's rights were interrupted, but the mainstream media made
this into a big issue of civil liberties. And, in 2013, I believe, the
mayor of New York made a big apology, promised not to do any type of
surveillance, stopped everything, and the program was discontinued. I think
that was a big mistake. And, the fact of the matter is unless you have
intelligence, that is the (UI word) of stopping terrorism, without that,
you cannot stop it. And that is, by the way, the reason why the U.S., above
all other countries in the world have stopped 97 percent of the more than
200 attempted Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Marino: Steve Emerson with us, Investigative Project on
Terrorism. We're talking about the events of this past week. I want to ask
you about the Visa Diversity program. You mentioned it with a bit of a
criticism a moment ago, we've talked to others about this, how did that
come about, and why are there people still adamantly for this?
Emerson: You know you raise a very good question. You know I
think it was created in 1990, and it started off I think with good
intentions, but now 70 percent of all allotments of this lotto system are
granted to countries with national security problems, or terrorist
problems, or vetting problems that can't be solved.
Marino: But, even with this happening, there are those who are
saying – no, for example, Schumer endorses, this is a legal program, and he
finds it atrocious that the president would make it a political issue.
Emerson: Of course, he's, he created the program back in 1990.
You think he's going to admit that he was wrong? I mean he's part of the
pro-, you know the Democrats, like Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York,
or even an Assistant NYPD Director, John Miller, stated yesterday that
Islam or mosques have nothing to do with the issue of terrorism, of Islamic
terrorism. I mean you combine the, I'm sorry to be negative here, but you
combine the I.Q. of both men and you come up with negative integers. The
fact of the matter is that the lotto program today is an abomination. It is
you know if you look at the numbers, you see the countries that are
allotted immigration passes, and they are basically free passes without the
normal vetting, to come into the United States to countries that have the
worst security problems.
Marino: And yet they still defend it. That's amazing. Alright,
let's recap where we are and let's talk about some of the things that are
being talked about now. One of those is the president kind of, he says you
know death penalty, he tweeted out it should be death penalty here. Mayor
de Blasio is against the death penalty in this particular case. He says he
generally doesn't support the death penalty. These people probably would
like to die for Allah. So, do you give them what they want? Or do you deny
it? How do you take that issue into account?
Emerson: Well, that's a good question. First of all, legally each
state, you know it's a state issue. The states have designed their (UI
word) or prohibition on the death penalty. Texas, for example, allows it;
some other states don't. Would he be a martyr? Probably. But, the fact of
the matter is this is a man who is, I'll be honest with you, based on
information that I've obtained from law enforcement, he is a stooge. I
think there will be other people arrested.
Marino: There are also some who run a theory that the people who
get sucked into this ISIS belief through their website are people who have
certain proclivities – they're aimed toward men who feel disenfranchised,
they're taught that you know people of the Muslim faith are being
disparaged by the Western world and that they need to fight back. Talk a
moment about this profile that ISIS uses to attract people like him.
Emerson: First of all, it's not just ISIS. Israel just did a
study of terrorism for the last 15 years, and found that over 25 percent of
Islamic terrorists who carried out attacks against Israelis were either
married, middle class, had jobs, had children, and above the ages of 40, or
even female, so the notion that there's this one profile is not true.
Number two, if you remember the Counter Violent Extremism big summit that
Obama had in 2015 or '16, one of his main tenants was – if only jobs were
available, that would stop it. That's absolutely not true. The Muslim
Brotherhood, an extremist group that spawned al-Qaida and all of the other
Sunni terrorist groups, is composed mostly of PhDs in engineering and
medical doctorates. So, the fact is, yes, there are people like this guy,
who are you know very likely losers who likely will be attracted to it, but
in terms of other ISIS people, the captured ones that the Peshmerga have
actually captured, more than 150, have shown so far that at least 50,
according to their numbers, were middle-class husbands who left their
wives. So, I don't buy the notion that it's simply some people who are off
their rockers or totally alienated, looking for jobs, missing something in
life. That may apply to some people, as it applies to other people who
would carry out killings.
Marino: Well, let me ask you this, because we're running short on
time, short answer. The president first had some tweets regarding whether
he should be taken to Gitmo, that he should be treated more like an enemy
combatant. Later in the week he kind of backed away from that and said,
well, I guess he should be tried in New York; that's where the crime took
place. What about that? Do we need to have a category that allows us to
keep people who commit terror acts on U.S. soil and not send them through
all the appeals and all the things that our courts allow?
Emerson: You know I think that if they carry out an attack in the
U.S., I happen to believe that the regular U.S. law should apply and that
they should not be treated as enemy combatants. If they're caught outside
the United States carrying out an attack, then the reverse should apply.
But, I also don't think that politicians should inject themselves ahead of
trials and motions, because that has an effect in terms of rulings whether
it should be held outside of normal jurisdiction.
Marino: With that I've got to leave it there. I want to thank you
very much, Steve Emerson, Investigative Project on Terrorism. Thank you so
much for providing some background on this story this week.
[End transcript]
|
No comments:
Post a Comment