IBD
Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that
tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and
yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.
That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most
private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown
terrorists are radicalized.
Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No
more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level
approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed
the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.
Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody
knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.
We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups
who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the
panel's formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up
with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of
Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and
monitor mosques there.
Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net
the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful
sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and
disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.
If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of
the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs.
The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April
15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the
Muslim bombers worshipped.
The bureau didn't even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying
their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV
cameras and cellphones.
One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship,
yet because the mosque wasn't monitored, red flags didn't go off inside
the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.
This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent
surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach
violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshippers.
What other five-alarm jihadists are counterterrorism officials
missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area
they should be monitoring?
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