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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came in for some well-deserved criticism for declaring over the weekend that “the system worked” with respect to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s effort to blow up the plane he was flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. By Monday, she was backpedalling, acknowledging that “our system did not work in this instance.” In truth, for a lot of Americans, Ms. Napolitano has not had much credibility since she tried to ban “terrorism” from the official lexicon of her department. But arguably the most serious indication that she is wholly ill-equipped to carry out her present responsibilities can be...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came in for some well-deserved criticism for declaring over the weekend that "the system worked" with respect to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's effort to blow up the plane he was flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. By Monday, she was backpedalling, acknowledging that "our system did not work in this instance." In truth, for a lot of Americans, Ms. Napolitano has not had much credibility since she tried to ban "terrorism" from the official lexicon of her department. But arguably the most serious indication that she is wholly ill-equipped to carry out her present responsibilities can be...

Decision Brief No. 05-D 44 2005-08-31 On eve of U.N. push for global government, advocates urge Senate to approve a building block: The Law of the Sea Treaty (Washington, D.C.): As concern grows that the United Nations is intent on replacing what the National Security Guidance calls "an orderly arrangement of sovereign states" with a proto-world government - complete with the ability to impose international taxes, a new push is being made for a treaty that would advance that purpose: the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). This sovereignty-sapping agenda is at the heart of a dispute now playing...

First, phony documents were intended to sink President Bush's 2004 reelection. Then, phony quotations prevented Rush Limbaugh from purchasing an NFL team. Now, the Left seems to be preparing its next tall-tale transcript to smear conservative foreign policy expert Frank Gaffney. Today's Wonkette recounts last night's skirmish between Gaffney and Ron Reagan Jr. on MSNBC's Hardball, which I reported earlier today. The blog claims: Gaffney screams at Reagan, who’s like, “…” Then Reagan essentially tells Frank Gaffney that he and all his stupid arguments are red herrings, like red herrings in a barrel that you shoot easily. And then,...

From this vantage point, two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that inexorably may plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war. The first is that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, countrywide civil defense exercise this week. At one point, every man, woman and child in the Jewish state is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it. The second is President Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, on Thursday from...

Bill Gertz talked about his book The Failure Factory: How Unelected Bureaucrats, Liberal Democrats, and Big Government Republicans Are Undermining America's Security and Leading Us to War (Crown Forum; 1 edition (September 30, 2008). Mr. Gertz argues that high-level bureaucrats in the State Department, White House, Pentagon, and Central Intelligence Agency have repeatedly undermined the Bush administration's national security policies. Mr. Gertz says that these unelected officials - liberals from both political parties - have pursued their own agendas toward countries like Iran, China, North Korea, and Iraq and have weakened U.S. security as a result. The guest interviewer was...

Suddenly, the presidential campaigns are addressing an issue that should have been at the forefront of this year's election long ago. Call it "characters count." We know people - especially public figures - by the company they keep. And we need to know much more about, to put it charitably, the characters that have figured prominently for years in Barack Obama's life. Over the weekend, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin brought the issue to the fore by observing caustically that the Democrats' would-be commander in chief has "palled around with terrorists." The Obama campaign immediately deployed talking points and...

Star Wars In Nonfiction by: Lance Nation, September 18, 2008 Power lost . . . communication down . . . millions die from starvation . . . the United States has just been hit by an Electro-Magnetic Pulse, or EMP. This is not a new Lucas or Spielberg script, a fantasy concocted in the minds of a sci-fi junkie. “The threat of an EMP attack is serious, and the United States is increasingly vulnerable to such an attack,” stated Frank J. Gaffney Jr. during the recent Heritage Foundation seminar, The Case for Missile Defense. “An EMP attack is produced by...

President George W. Bush Thursday formally abandoned the last vestiges of a once-robust policy towards a North Korean regime he had rightly said he “loathed.” Worse yet, he is doing so in the face of Pyongyang’s manifest contempt exhibited through, among other things, its serial refusal even to provide promised data about the status and disposition of its nuclear arsenal, let alone to eliminate it. Consider the following egregious shortfalls in the “declaration” supplied by Kim Jong Il’s representatives to the United States via Communist China: The North Korean declaration was delivered six months late. As time dragged on without...

The war over Iraq – not to be confused with the conflict actually taking place there – is back in the headlines. This week's report to Congress by America's top two emissaries in Baghdad, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will provide a backdrop for the momentous decisions to come concerning whether and how to pursue victory in Iraq. Before the politicians and their constituents make such decisions about where we go from here, they should be sure to ground themselves in the facts about how we got to this point. After all, as George Santayana put it, "Those...

Required Reading by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. Tuesday, April 8, 2008 The war over Iraq – not to be confused with the conflict actually taking place there – is back in the headlines. This week’s report to Congress by America’s top two emissaries in Baghdad, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will provide a backdrop for the momentous decisions to come concerning whether and how to pursue victory in Iraq. Before the politicians and their constituents make such decisions about where we go from here, they should be sure to ground themselves in the facts about how we got...

It is fitting that Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of tomorrow’s so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women. Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Ms. Rice’s conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Hitler and Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia. This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease...

2007 Keeper of the Flame Award Center for Security Policy | Oct 17, 2007 (Washington, D.C.): On Wednesday, the Center for Security Policy paid tribute to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Defenders of the Home Front – the men and women who work daily to keep us and our families safe here at home. Senator Lieberman's address to the nearly 350 attendees at this elegant black-tie dinner held at Washington's landmark Union Station was preceded by a welcome from Mr. Linden Blue, Vice Chairman of General Atomics, and remarks by The Honorable Francis...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is behaving like a zealot. In her ever-more-rash pursuit of a Palestinian state, she is exhibiting the syndrome defined by the philosopher George Santana, as one who redoubles her efforts upon losing sight of the objective. Let’s recall: The objective laid out by President Bush, when he decided in June 2002 to support the creation of a homeland for the Palestinian people, was to provide a stable, secure neighbor for Israel, committed to leaving peaceably with the Jewish State. Mr. Bush explicitly preconditioned such support on: an end to Palestinian terror; a Palestinian leadership that...

There is no more important front in the global conflict best described as the "War for the Free World" than the struggle to determine the nature and future course of Islam. If Islamists seeking to impose their intolerant, repressive strain of the faith — more a totalitarian political ideology (Islamofascism) than a religion — on the rest of us (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) are able to prevail, we are condemned to the clash of civilizations forecast by Osama bin Laden. If, on the other hand, Muslims who reject that ideology — the anti-Islamists — succeed in offering their co-religionists an...

The story of the public school in Brooklyn that is poised to become a taxpayer-underwritten, Islamist recruitment and indoctrination center took a dramatic turn last week. The principal-designate of the so-called Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser, was forced to resign after she defended a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Intifada NYC" — making clear her radical ideology and proclivity for dissembling. The question is no longer whether Ms. Almontaser was... determined to use the KGIA to advance her theo-political agenda. Her claim ... was so preposterous — not to say alarming — that her supporters, notably Mayor...

It is generally accepted that the conflict we are in is as much a war of ideas as a military one. Sadly, the United States has largely failed to wage this ideological struggle against adversaries who both understand its vital importance to the outcome and who often, like most ideologues, are very skilled in its ways. This is bad enough overseas, where adherents to one strain or another of the ideology best described as Islamofascism use various organizations, media and educational institutions to recruit and indoctrinate young people. The failure to recognize the danger such activities represent, let alone to...

Commentary "River Kwai Syndrome" Plays in Law of the Sea Frank J. Gaffney Jr. Proceedings, March 2005 Discuss this article in the eForum. In 1957, Hollywood created the unforgettable image of military men throwing themselves into a construction project, having lost sight of the fact that the result could be used by the enemy to the grave detriment of their comrades and country. Unfortunately, nearly 50 years after The Bridge on the River Kwai entered the public consciousness, the Navy seems afflicted with the same syndrome as it encourages U.S. ratification of the controversial U.N. Convention on the Law of...

Alec "the Bloviator" Baldwin has a new bosom buddy: Beltway Republican strategist Grover Norquist. The Bush-bashing actor-turned-activist and the Muslim vote-courting political organizer joined together at a Washington, D.C.-area conference last weekend to perpetuate bald lies about the Patriot Act and to oppose the "repressive" War on Terror (repressing terrorist suspects apparently being a bad thing). Baldwin and Norquist's panel, titled "Strange Bedfellows," was sponsored by the ultraliberal group People For the American Way. When PFAW head and panel participant Ralph Neas ranted about the lack of judicial and congressional oversight of the Justice Department's terror investigations, the audience...

In the wake of this weekend’s spate of actual and attempted car-bombings in the U.K., I watched the uncut version of “The Path to 9/11” – ABC’s dramatic portrayal of the events that contributed to, and culminated in, the deadliest attacks on U.S. soil to date. As the brilliantly crafted segments (written by Cyrus Nowrasteh) rolled by – showing addled thinking, failed policies and missed opportunities to prevent those attacks, I kept thinking: What mistakes are being made today that will form the backdrop to the next, possibly far more horrific, terrorist strikes in this country? When they occur, the...

Should U.N. Broker Return of Alaska to Russia? By Cliff Kincaid | June 29, 2007 At a recent Heritage Foundation symposium on the Law of the Sea Treaty....Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy calmly and methodologically delineated the problems with the treaty, and how U.S. national security could be adversely affected... Gaffney had complained about the treaty, formally known as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), creating a global tax mechanism. Under UNCLOS, now before the Senate, U.S. corporations would be required to pay taxes to an International Seabed Authority for the right to...

Separating Mullahs From Their Moolah INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 4/25/2007 Axis Of Evil: As Hezbollah's leadership admits Tehran is pulling its strings, Ohio takes a step toward making a contribution to the war on terror: Don't defund the war; defund the terrorists and their state sponsors. Despite overwhelming evidence, Democrats have long denied there ever was any link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and terrorist organizations like al-Qaida. Even as American and British soldiers are being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian-made high-tech explosives, they still refuse to connect the dots between terrorists and their state sponsors. While House Speaker Nancy...

In what appears to be a case of outrageous censorship by publicly-funded PBS, a documentary film, prepared by a partnership including the estimable Frank Gaffney, on the struggle between moderate and radical Muslims has been deep-sixed. We print below a statement prepared by Mr. Gaffney on the situation. Read the linked article and the statement and decide for yourself whether PBS is behaving as the even-handed non-partisan entity it is supposed to be. The statement: Background ... Frank Gaffney was among those invited to submit a proposal for a documentary film about the world post-9/11 to the CPB... Shortly thereafter,...

In the years since the United States led a “Coalition of the Willing” in the liberation of Iraq, few issues have been more contentious and more afflicted with confusion, misinformation and hyperbole than the question of whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and, if so, what became of them. I commend this distinguished Committee for its willingness to try to get to the bottom of so vexing a matter, and appreciate greatly being afforded the opportunity to contribute to its deliberations.

As the Senate Finance Committee considers President Bush’s nomination of Henry Paulson to be the next secretary of the Treasury, the question is not whether he will be confirmed. That seems assured, as senators in both parties behave like star-struck groupies in the presence of a Wall Street “master of the universe,” whose net worth, from his time as a senior executive of Goldman Sachs, is estimated to be on the order of $600 million. Rather, the question is: Will any of his Senate interlocutors even bother to explore the nominee’s troubling fifteen-year ties to Communist China and the potential...

June 20, 2006, 8:29 a.m. Pyongyang Goes BallisticDoing what works for the other evil ones. By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. At any moment, the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il — one of the most despotic and dangerous on the planet — will demonstrate that it has acquired the means to deliver nuclear weapons and other payloads over very long distances. It is likely that one of the intended targets for such weapons is the United States of America. At the very least, that is the message the launch of the so-called Taepodong 2 is intended to convey. Pyongyang...

The Bush administration has yet to adopt the war footing required to counter Islamofascism, let alone hold our allies — real and imagined — accountable for their appeasement of its practitioners. The United States can no longer indulge in such a dereliction of duty, or tolerate, to say nothing of encourage, it in others In courtrooms and movie theaters this spring, Americans are being exposed in an unvarnished way to the true character and evil purposes of our enemies in this War for the Free World. Yet, governments around the world — including, on most days, ours — seem still...

Millions of illegal immigrants are marching in America's streets and boycotting jobs, schools and merchants. Their explicit purpose is to blackmail our government into granting rights to which they are not entitled. Good Here, Bad There These activities demonstrate two realities: First, life is good in this country and the opportunities for economic advancement are extraordinary for those willing to work hard. Second, life is typically not so good in Mexico and the other Latin American nations from which these illegal aliens principally come. Unfortunately, if present political, economic and social trends continue south of our border, there will likely...

One national security expert calls it the mega-threat you haven't heard of. But America's enemies know all too well about the destructive potential of an electromagnetic pulse attack. In the hit film Ocean's Eleven, thieves used it to shut down the city of Las Vegas. In last summer's blockbuster, War of the Worlds, alien invaders used it to cripple the Earth's infrastructure. And the heroes of The Matrix used it to disable rampaging robots. It is an electromagnetic pulse bomb, also known as EMP. But EMP is not just another Hollywood special effect. A growing number of national security experts...

Iran has enlisted Russia in yet-another time-buying feint, a just-announced "basic agreement" whereby Moscow and Tehran will reportedly jointly manage the latter's spent nuclear fuel. Even though the details of this arrangement remain to be made public, two things are certain: (1) Iran has not abandoned its determined effort to obtain nuclear weapons and (2) far from preventing such an outcome, this gambit will likely afford the Iranian Islamofascist regime a chance to achieve it. As a result of Russian connivance with its client, Iran, the mullahs in Tehran and their frontman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be able not only to...

President Bush's announcement Tuesday that he would support the effort of a United Arab Emirates-owned company, Dubai Ports World, in its bid to take over a lease for part of the Port of New York and other major U.S. seaports — even to the point of vetoing legislation that would block the deal — is as regrettable as it is untenable. President Bush has dug in his heels on a fight he surely cannot win. The only political figure of note who has fully supported his position publicly seems to be former President Jimmy Carter — a salutary reminder of...

The federal bureaucracy has made a strategic mistake that threatens to cost the President dearly. The question is not whether the ill-advised decision taken last week by the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (known by its acronym, CFIUS, pronounced syphius) will be undone. Rather, the question is: By whom -- and at what political cost to Mr. Bush? In the latest of a series of approvals of questionable foreign takeovers of American interests, CFIUS has given the green light to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to acquire contracts to manage port facilities...

How would you feel if, in the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. government had decided to contract out airport security to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the country where most of the operational planning and financing of the attacks occurred? My guess is you, like most Americans, would think it a lunatic idea, one that could clear the way for still more terror in this country. You probably would want to know who on earth approved such a plan -- and be determined to prevent it from happening.

Patriots must act By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. Jan 31, 2006 The most consequential part of President Bush's State of the Union address tonight, at least in the near-term, will be the section he devotes to the need to ensure that the Nation's law enforcement and intelligence communities have the tools they need to protect us. In particular, he will make a strong case for the Patriot Act; one we can only hope the minority of Senators currently blocking its reenactment will heed. Mr. Bush afforded a small group of us an insight into his thinking on this and related...

Each day’s headlines underscore a central reality of our time: The United States has no choice but to make real progress on energy security — specifically by reducing the exclusive reliance of America’s transportation sector on gasoline and diesel fuels, most of which are derived from oil imported from overseas. Consider a sampler of recent developments in nations from which we obtain such oil: Saudi Arabia: Sunday’s Los Angeles Times gave prominent treatment to expressions of growing frustration by U.S. officials about the lack of Saudi cooperation in countering terrorism. The bottom line is that, while the Saudis may be...

The news from Iraq at this writing features a video of a terrorist murdering a man believed to be a kidnapped American civilian. The victim was trying to help rebuild that country. His cold-blooded execution is a reminder of what our Islamo-fascist enemies have in mind for all of us, non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Perhaps the murder was committed by putting a bullet in our countryman's head, rather than removing it, in deference to the recently disclosed injunction from an al-Qaida leader to one of his franchisees in Iraq that beheadings have proven counterproductive to the cause.

The news from Iraq at this writing features a video of a terrorist murdering a man believed to be a kidnapped American civilian. The victim was trying to help rebuild that country. His coldblooded execution is a reminder of what our Islamofascist enemies have in mind for all of us, non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Perhaps the murder was committed by putting a bullet in our countryman's head, rather than removing it, in deference to the recently disclosed injunction from an al Qaeda leader to one of his franchisees in Iraq that beheadings have proven counterproductive to the cause. The...

Listen While You Freep! Five channels, five programs every day and each one playing for 24 hours and on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number - 866-884-TALK (8255) Heating the EDGE of a New Media! 1pm est- The Right Hour : Remember feeling annoyed when the administration said after 9/11 that the best way to help out with the war effort was to go shopping? How many times in the past few years did you wonder why the president wasn’t speaking forcefully about the war and the terrorists. Why should we wait around for...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version December 07, 2005, 1:19 p.m. The Political Front Information is an important tool on the road to victory. In recent days, the prospects of the war for the free world have been buffeted by hysterical reactions to reports that the U.S. military has been secretly paying to place stories in the Iraqi press. The dust-up has caused panic in some circles, with congressmen demanding investigations and officials scurrying for cover. The result, for the moment at least, is an American rout in the war of ideas. This debacle evidently came...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be spending the week in Europe and apparently the message she will deliver to our so-called allies is as undiplomatic as it is needed: Get serious. It is a message that a lot of other people in this country — notably the media and academia — should take aboard, as well. Some in Europe are in a swivet over unconfirmed press reports that the U.S. government has been secretly operating detention facilities in unnamed Eastern European countries and covertly transporting suspected Islamist terrorists through the continent's airspace and airports. Anti-American parliamentarians and bureaucrats have...

President Bush is a man on a mission this week. He is seeking to reinvigorate his leadership and rehabilitate his public standing by addressing an issue of enormous import to the country and of no less concern to its citizens: the insecurity of our borders and the dysfunction of our immigration policies. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Bush will benefit politically from his visits to border states and meetings with those charged with protecting them and the rest of us from illegal aliens - many of whom are looking for economic opportunity, but some of whom may well...

Farewell to Europe 11/12/05 Not too long ago, the conventional wisdom was that Europe was going to emerge as a unified and mighty economic and political superpower. We were told it would engage in earnest, if friendly, competition with the United States, but that, thanks to its substantially larger population and productive capacity, the European Union (EU) would inevitably displace America on the world stage. It took less than a fortnight of rioting in France, and now in several other countries of what Donald Rumsfeld has called Old Europe, to lay bare the preposterousness of this prospect. Even before Islamists...

Listen While You Freep! All programs are replayed for 23 hours and again on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number - 866-884-TALK (8255) Heating the EDGE of a New Media! 1pm EST - The Buzz Cut - 'ENABLING DANGER AND BLAMING AMERICA!' In 'Dereliction of Duty,' Buzz wrote about the criminal neglect of the Clinton administration and their many failures to confront the gathering storm of terrorism. He revealed that President Clinton knew about Al Qaeda and the 9-11 plot as early as 1996. Last week's revelations pointed the finger, once again, at the...

The New Yorker, a house organ of the left, recently published a fawning – yea, fatuous – article about Grover Norquist, a prominent conservative activist who heads Americans for Tax Reform and is one of the movement's most visible, serial bashers of its leftist partisan foes. What's going on? The most benign explanation is that the article is a deserved, if grudging, admission by the left of the effectiveness of the man it calls the right's "ringleader [who] keeps the conservative movement together." This proposition is bolstered by a comment made by the author, John Cassidy, in an online interview...

Hugh and I have been trading emails on this the past couple of days, and even though I’m not sure if we have reached an accord, he and Frank Gaffney took down the CAIR shill today piece by piece. I give credit where it is due, and the difference from yesterday to today was a matter of preparation. The underlying purpose for yesterday’s interview with Ayloush was to discredit Rep. Tancredo’s “nuke Mecca” threat by offering the point of view of a “moderate” muslim from a “mainstream” organization. Ayloush is not moderate, and CAIR is not mainstream...

In the wake of recent bombings in London and Egypt confirming the vulnerability of even relatively vigilant societies to Islamofascist terrorism, the question occurs: Are we serious about fighting this menace with every instrument at our disposal? A test of the seriousness of the U.S. Senate will be offered as soon as today [July 26]. Senators will be asked to choose between two amendments to the defense authorization bill (S.1042) bearing on one of this country's most powerful and yet largely unutilized tools: Denying U.S. investment capital, technology and other commercial benefits to state-sponsors of terror. To be sure, successive...

Memorandum for President George W. Bush: The speech you will give tonight about the status of and prospects for the war will likely prove to be among the most important of your presidency. In the final analysis, the American people and history will both judge the latter principally by your conduct of the former. Indeed, you were rehired by the voters largely because they had more confidence in your leadership as a war president than in your opponent's judgment and abilities. To continue enjoying this confidence, however, the speech must not be seen as a box-checking exercise in which today's...

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. When a United States Senator says something deeply offensive, there are usually but two immediate recourses: Either he or she voluntarily apologizes, or colleagues formally censure the senator. If the senator happens, however, to be a member of the leadership -- as was the case with then-Majority Leader Trent Lott in December 2002 -- another option is available: The humiliating loss of power resulting from the forced removal from that high office. Such a remedy clearly seems appropriate in the case of the Senate's unapologetic and as-yet-uncensored Minority Whip, Dick Durbin, Illinois Democrat.

Memorandum to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: It is now widely expected that you will run for President in 2008, after successfully standing for reelection next year. By all accounts, you will enjoy the strong support of your party's generally left-of-center primary voters. But to win the Oval Office, you will have to overcome a very different challenge — persuading sufficient numbers of independents and perhaps even Republicans that you are the first Democrat in two generations who can safely be entrusted with the presidency in time of active, global hostilities.

Last week, the President of the United States effusively praised Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's right-hand man for some forty years. In the White House Rose Garden, Mr. Bush described Abbas as a "man of courage," explaining that he takes "great faith in not only [Abbas'] personal character, but the fact that he campaigned on a platform of peace — he said, 'Vote for me, I am for peace.' And the Palestinians voted overwhelmingly to support him." In light of what is actually happening in the proto-state Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen) was elected last January to govern, such characterizations seem at...