Among the e-mails released by the WikiLeaks media organization was Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s response to a tweet originating with MSNBC host Christopher Hayes reading: “NBC News now reporting a US citizen named Sayeed Farouk believed to be one of the people involved in the [December 2, 2015 San Bernardino] shooting.” Podesta replied to Karen Finney, Clinton’s strategic communications advisor (who had forwarded Hayes’ tweet to him): “Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”
The shooting left 14 people dead, and the married couple who waged the attack were later killed in a gun battle with police. The attackers had pledged their allegiance to ISIS before the shootout.
Before sending Hayes’ tweet along to Podesta, Finney had responded with a one-word comment: “Damn.”
Even mainstream media outlet Fox News reported the obvious political agenda revealed by Podesta’s statement:
In other words, the campaign had hoped for the shooter to be a white man, presumably because that could be better exploited for political grist.
The fact that the shooter was in fact an Islamic extremist played into Donald Trump’s narrative that ISIS represents a significant threat to America.
The Fox reporter might also have mentioned that had the shooters — Syed Farook, who was American-born of Pakistani parents — and his Pakistani-born wife, Tashfeen Malik, not been of Middle Eastern origin, liberal voices in government and the mass media would probably have turned the incident into a major anti-gun cause célèbre, as they did following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. While the background of the shooters tended to shift attention away from that aspect of the incident, President Obama nevertheless did attempt to exploit it and called for “common-sense” gun safety laws and stronger background checks. The New York Times also responded to the shooting by publishing an editorial on its front page, calling for an end to the “gun epidemic.”
While Syed Farook was born in the United States, his wife, Tashfeen Malik was an immigrant from Pakistan, which prompted Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to ask the Obama administration to release her immigration records.
“We are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States,” Cruz and Sessions wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
A report in National Review last December 3 noted that the senators’ letter reiterated their longstanding request for the immigration records of 12 other terror suspects, which the Obama administration had failed to release.
CBS News reported that same day that Tashfeen Malik had passed DHS counterterrorism screening as part of her vetting for a K-1 visa.
We noted in a recent article that during a September 28 hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest convened by Sessions, Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, admitted that during the vetting process for refugees, U.S. immigration officials make no effort to learn if they harbor extremist views.
During the hearing, Sessions questioned Henshaw about the procedures for screening refugee applicants, asking: “Do you make any inquiry about practices that we reject in the United States, like female genital mutilation? Do you say, ‘Do you believe in that and when you come to the United States will you comply with the laws of the United States on that kind of question?’”
Henshaw said U.S. officials explain American law and customs to those being vetted, but admitted that they do not inquire about refugees’ political beliefs to determine if they might be extreme or radical. “On all questions, we make it clear to refugees that we’re a nation of laws and that they need to comply with our laws,” Henshaw said.
Senator Cruz, who is also a subcommittee member, was very direct in his criticism of the way our refugee program is being managed. “Our immigration laws are not a suicide pact,” Cruz said. “Our refugee program should not become a vehicle for terrorists to come [into the country] and murder innocent Americans.”
Perhaps if government officials screening immigrants from nations where terrorism is prevalent were more diligent in their assessment, a red flag might have been raised about Tashfeen Malik’s radical views. However, those in the Obama administration and in Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff seem more concerned about the possibility that the American public might make a connection between terrorist acts and the threat posed by Islamic terrorists coming into our nation among refugee aliens from the Middle East.
Related articles:
Are We Importing Middle East Terrorism to the United States?
Sons of Middle Eastern Immigrants Recruited by Terrorist Groups
Obama’s Two-front Migration “Surge”
San Bernardino Victims Defenseless in “Gun-free Zone”
East Coast Bomber’s Father Warned Police About His Son in 2014
Afghani Native, Suspect in New York and New Jersey Bombings, Taken Into Custody
Minnesota Knife-wielding Attacker Killed by Off-duty Officer
Apple Engineers Could Refuse to Help FBI in San Bernardino Case
