The Rule Of Law

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. I thank the gentleman from Texas and your hosting this leadership hour and your great leadership on this issue. You and I see this the same way. You were a judge. I was a Federal prosecutor. We respect the rule of law, but we respect the truth. We call it like it is. We call it like we see it. That's what Texans do. And the way I see it is this matter has been swept under the rug; we're not calling it what it is.

You and I, I think, were some of the first two Members of Congress to stand up and say, you know what, that was an act of terrorism that occurred the other day at Fort Hood. That was an act of a terrorist. Not some

criminal defendant. This was an act of terrorism. You stood up, in representing Fort Hood in your usual way, and said that's what it was and I stood up and said the same. And it took months before the Secretary of Homeland Security came before our committee and finally acknowledged what we had said all along and that this was truly an act of terrorism.

I want to congratulate you for your bill, which essentially acknowledges it for what it was, and that was an act of war on U.S. soil, combat, recognizing the victims and their families, giving them the combat pay that they deserve. You and I were at the ceremony, the memorial service, one of the most dramatic memorial services I think I've ever attended. I know the gentleman feels the same way.

I just wanted to hold up a picture of that tragic day, where we had 13 pairs of combat boots, 13 rifles with 13 helmets honoring the dead and, of course, one unborn child; 43 injured, two of those injured standing next to me in this photograph. I asked them the question, because they are the best evidence, what happened that day? They were shot by him. What did he say to you? And these two said: Congressman, he said ``Allahu Akbar.'' He screamed ``Allahu Akbar'' as he gunned down my colleagues in cold blood, as he wounded 43 soldiers on the base, the largest military installation in the country.

And who is this man? I met with General Cone at the ceremony and I said, Would you have liked to have known that a major on your base was making communications with the top al Qaeda operative?

Sure I would have.

What happened that day? The Joint Terrorism Task Force who I used to work with when I was a prosecutor had that evidence; a Department of Defense representative on the JTTF had that evidence; but for a variety of reasons--and I've questioned witnesses on this--did not want to share that with the commander of Fort Hood; for a variety of reasons. But for God's sake at least let the commanding officer know that he's got a major--this is not some ordinary event--a major on his base talking to an al Qaeda operative in Yemen, a man who it has come to our attention in a big way recently with the Christmas bomber, the same radical cleric who talked to the Christmas bomber.

But who is Mr. Hasan? And thank God he's a terrorist that is going to face a military tribunal. Well, he was born of Jordanian immigrants. Each of these, as the case unfolded, if you will, raised a flag as to who is this man. We talk a lot about connecting the dots, but these were dots that popped up that were failed to be acted upon. Why weren't these dots acted upon?

A man who said his allegiance was to the Koran, not the Constitution.

A man who described the war on terrorism as a war against Islam, according to a doctor who was in a graduate program with him.

A man who argued that Muslims are being targeted by U.S. anti-terror campaigns. A former classmate said of Mr. Hasan, he was very vocal about the war; very up-front about being a Muslim first and an American second.

And if that's politically incorrect for me to say that, all I'm saying here in this Chamber is the truth. You take it for what it is.

He was also concerned that Muslims in the military were being persecuted. On his business cards--this is all the evidence of this man--his business card said Soldier of Allah. We know that the morning of the shooting he wore traditional Pakistani garb at the 7-Eleven that morning. He was known to wear that off-duty. Certainly there are religious protections in this country for that.

But all these flags put together shows us an individual who was presenting a threat to the soldiers. We know al Qaeda has targeted military installations. We know they targeted Fort Dix. The question that General Cone asked me was, We just don't know how many more Hasans are out there. How many more Hasans are out there who are a direct threat to our military installations? The cleric in Yemen basically said that Hasan trusted him and praised him as a hero after the shooting. ``God is great,'' that's what he screamed when he shot those men in cold blood. I can't think of anything more sickening to my heart as a God-fearing man, a Christian, or anybody who believes in God, to believe in a God where you could say, ``God is great'' as you're killing somebody. That's a perverted, twisted religion. That is what we are dealing with.

I have asked the Homeland Security Committee through letters. I am ranking on the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. I asked Chairwoman Jane Harman to hold hearings on this. We asked Bennie Thompson, the majority chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, to hold hearings on this matter, because the American people are entitled to know what happened that day. And yet we got a report, a report that really didn't say a whole lot, a report that was so politically correct, it didn't even mention radical Islam. Well, in my view, that's what this war is all about that we're in right now, is a war against the extremists, against a radical, perverted teaching of Islam that says it's okay to kill in the name of Allah. The day we recognize that in this country, I think is the day we're going to be a lot safer.

I have a lot more to say, but I know the gentleman probably has some comments, but I do want to thank you for being one of the first ones to step out of the box and say this was an act of terrorism. I'm glad that Napolitano has come around to that same conclusion. And I want to thank you also for your steadfast support for our troops. You represent a base that has more soldiers than any in the world, and I know how proud you are of them and how well you represent them, and I want to personally thank you for that.

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Mr. McCAUL. It was refreshing to see that. And I don't always agree with her either, but she had the courage to call it like it is, like you and I called it for quite some time. The sad thing is there are 13 dead, one unborn, and 43 wounded because people didn't have the guts to stand up and call it what it was. You know, the day that happened it seemed to me there was a systematic process of trying to--like you said, I was a prosecutor too. If you can't win this case, you know, you need to get out of the business. The sweeping under the rug and not wanting to hold hearings on this issue and not willing to brief us.

We finally got a briefing on this just a couple of

weeks ago for the first time. And you saw the impact this administration was trying to have on this whole thing that no, this wasn't--you know, we can't really call it what it is because we don't want to offend anybody. Well, that is the same type of attitude that led to this monster killing 13 people to begin with.

It was when all these red flags popped up and these dots, if you will, when they popped up, no one had the guts to act on it. And they want to sweep it under the rug, and they swept his promotion. They promoted him, even though all this was out there, swept it under the rug. And now even after the tragic events that happened that day, there is an attempt, in my view, to try to sweep all this under the rug and trying to move forward.

You know, this is one example of many things that have happened this past year. I always said that they like to attack a President in the first year of office, al Qaeda. They did it with Bill Clinton, '93 World Trade Center. They did it with George W. Bush with 9/11. And I predicted that this was going to happen under this President's watch this year. And not only did this happen, but we had the same radical cleric tied to the Christmas bomber. Fortunately, Mr. Hasan will face a military tribunal. The Christmas bomber, on the other hand, will not.

We had several events over the last year of threats to the United States and multiple attempted terrorist attacks on the United States of America. And I think it is high time we recognize it and see it for what it is to better protect the American people and our military bases that we know are being targeted right now. The idea that the Joint Terrorism Task Force and, again, these are friends of mine, that they had this information and they didn't--I understand compromising investigations. But you could at least let the general at the base know that he has an individual, a major, in his outfit talking to a top al Qaeda recruiter, and you may just want to put him under observation. You don't have to question him, you don't have to dig into his files, you don't have to put him on alert that we are looking at him; but you may want to kind of just monitor his actions because there is some radical stuff going on, and potentially he could be a threat.

This man did not believe in the mission. The irony of Mr. Hasan is he was the man trained and paid for by the taxpayer in the United States Army to counsel people coming back from the theater of war, and he didn't believe in the mission. I can only imagine what kind of counseling he was giving to these troops coming back from the war theaters that you and I have been to in Iraq and Afghanistan and what he was telling them when he himself didn't believe in the mission they were sent to do. That is the absurd irony of Mr. Hasan.

And, again, as General Cone asked, how many more Hasans are out there? I think we have a duty in the Congress. I think the Department of Defense has a duty. I hope the Webster report will uncover more of this. But we have a duty to better protect our soldiers not only abroad, but right here in the United States. And that is the great, awful tragic event of what happened was that it happened on American soil and it happened in their home. That is just not supposed to occur in this country.

It needs to be taken seriously. It shouldn't be swept under the rug. And I think we should continue to do this and continue to ask the majority to hold hearings on this. And you know, as Secretary Napolitano admitted, it was a violent Islamic terrorist attack. I think the Department of Defense needs to come forward with that as well, and I think we have an obligation to the American people not to sweep this under the rug, to prevent future actions from occurring. Our oversight responsibilities under the Constitution I take very seriously, and we have a duty here in the Congress to hold those hearings and get to the bottom of this case so we can stop it in the future.

I went down to Guantanamo after the President decided to close it down, and I saw Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And it was during prayer hour. And he was laying on his rug, bowing to Mecca. And it was one of the most chilling things I have ever seen in my life. A man responsible for killing 3,000 Americans, and the idea that we are going to bring him into the United States. And look, I am a Federal prosecutor. The Southern District of New York is one of the best U.S. Attorney's offices in the country. But are we going to treat these people as criminal defendants or enemy combatants? Are we going to say that this is a war or a criminal prosecution?

It seems to me that we are slipping back into the Clinton years, where we really looked at these as really just illegal criminal prosecution, not an act of warfare perpetrated against the United States of America. It seems to me, particularly with the top 16 al Qaeda operatives, many of whom were responsible for 9/11, that was an act of warfare, and it should be treated as such.

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Mr. McCAUL. I agree. I think this is, in some ways, worse than 9/11 because, there, the enemy was foreign, radical Islamic terrorists. In this case, these soldiers are saluting their colleagues who lost their lives, who were killed by a major in the U.S. Army who was wearing the very same military uniform that they are. And the idea that he could betray his soldiers like this, and not only betray, but kill them, that's what I think makes it so very, very hard to accept.

Aulaqi, the Yemeni cleric, said that Hasan trusted him. The radical cleric said that Hasan trusted him. Unfortunately, the Army trusted Mr. Hasan and promoted him through the ranks. Because of political correctness, he was never called out for his behavior, which we know was a problem. We know the flags were raised. I'm not making this stuff up. He had business cards that said ``soldier of Allah,'' the jihadist line he used when he killed them in cold blood, talking about the war on terrorism is a war against Islam. It just makes you wonder how could we have promoted someone in the United States Army and the United States military with these types of flags going up? He said his allegiance was to the Koran and not the Constitution.

Judge, you are absolutely right. The morale, which is so important in a time of war that we are in, is critical here. And if we can't act upon cases like this in the United States Army in the United States out of fear that we won't be politically correct and we may hurt someone's feelings, where have we gone in this country? We can't call it out like it is and say it for what it is, that this man did not love his country, that he had more loyalty to radical Islam, and that is precisely why he killed those 13 soldiers that day.

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Mr. McCAUL. I point to the same radical cleric who praised Mr. Hasan's actions and called him a hero is the same radical cleric who is behind the Christmas bomber. This is no coincidence here. It is connecting back to a radical al Qaeda operative out of Yemen. Why in the world General Cone didn't know about this, a major on his base, is really beyond me. And that's what we have got to fix looking forward with the JTTFs and with the Department of Defense.

We have talked to them about the Christmas bomber. But how many Christmas bombers are out there? How many more people is the radical cleric Aulaqi influencing? Jihad Jane and others, they all go to these Web sites. And not only do we have to deal with the al Qaeda operatives overseas, but this kind of act inspires them, and the fact that we could have let this happen inspires them. And then how many more radical homegrown terrorists are potentially out there in the United States?

We know that the radical cleric has now said just one man, one incident. They are decentralizing. They are saying one man can carry out, take a gun, take an explosive device. That is in a very radical departure from how al Qaeda had worked in the past, and it is coming from the same individual who is tied to Mr. Hasan and the Christmas bomber, and we better wake up to that.

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Mr. McCAUL. If the gentleman would yield. We had the information in both the Hasan case and the Christmas bomber. I made all the points about the Hasan case, all the flags that popped up, a failure to act upon those red flags.

Indeed, in the Christmas bomber case you had a State Department cable coming out that warned the father had come in warning that his son was in touch with Islamic extremists in Yemen. Yet, when I asked the Under Secretary of the State Department, Mr. Kennedy, in God's name when he found that out, why didn't he revoke his visa, his response was, You know, a lot of people come into embassies and a lot of people give us tips, and they are not all credible. And I said, Well, this was not some anonymous source coming in, it was his father.

Meanwhile, in the intelligence community there is specific threat information coming in about this individual. The State Department has got the cable, the intelligence community has got the threat information. It is not put together. Both sides could have acted on it. The intelligence community could have asked the State Department, Does this guy have a passport? Does he have a visa? Can we revoke that? And the same with the State Department. Yet, that doesn't happen.

We need to move forward to make sure the Christmas bomber never happens again, and to make sure, with all the evidence coming in with Mr. Hasan, to make sure that with individuals like this the evidence isn't swept under the rug out of political correctness.

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Mr. McCAUL. If the gentleman will yield. It was preventable. There is a lot of information coming in, and we have a lot of good men and women working counter terrorism. They have got a tough job. There is a lot of information coming in. But we had these two major focal points that just were never acted upon and never put together in the Christmas bomber case. And Mr. Hasan, my God, how many points of error popping up on him? How many red flags are popping up?

And why weren't they acted upon? I think it goes back to your original point: We didn't want to hurt

someone's feelings.

And do you know what? We see this in the Federal Government. They would rather just kind of promote and move on somebody rather than have to deal with the problem. Gee, we have someone who is making these radical statements, but I would rather not deal with the problem. Let's just push them along in the system. Let's transfer him from Walter Reed, where he was a major problem--we know that, poor performance evaluations--to one of the largest military installations in the country, and let's promote him to major in spite of the fact all these points of evidence were out on him. I think that is the real tragedy.

I know my good friend from Texas has probably one of the most difficult jobs out of any Member in this body, and that is because you have more soldiers in your district than any other, and you are the one who has to comfort them, as we all do, but you, many more times than any other Member, have to comfort the loved ones whose son or daughter has been killed in a time of war. I know you personally have comforted the families of the victims here and Fort Hood, and the biggest tragedy is that it could have been prevented.

With that, I yield back.

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