'The Vetting Is So Bad': Dan Bishop Slams Failures To Identify People On Terror Watchlist At Border

5 months ago

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing late last month, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) questioned witnesses about

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Transcript

00:00The gentleman yields back. The subcommittee will proceed to a second round of questioning,

00:05and so I recognize myself for an additional five minutes, Mr. Weinstein, and I want to sort of

00:10continue the same theme, and I appreciate your inclination to be accountable, Mr. Weinstein,

00:15and I'm not trying to suggest either that you're solely accountable, but I guess the thing I

00:19wonder is how we've gotten here. I read you that the quote that Director Abizade gave in response

00:26to a question from me, and I was trying to get at the thing. I mean, it seemed to me,

00:31I'm a layperson, you're a security expert, but I think millions of Americans have watched

00:39that, you know, from the beginning from 2021, from the run-up from the election to 2021,

00:45immediately to an historic level of border crossing, and we were told all along that

00:52the numbers of gotaways are significant, meaning there are a whole substantial number of people

00:56coming into the United States who are never encountering anyone, any government official,

01:03and to a point you just said that's kind of chilling. We got people who are, I don't know

01:07how the terrorist watch list works or what exactly that looks like or how people get on it and so

01:13forth, but it's incomprehensible that such a thing exists, and that even the vetting is so bad that

01:20those people don't get identified as they come across, and then I remember seeing the news

01:25article on that, and what it said, what it indicated was they were arrested, and then it listed the

01:29cities they were arrested in, and it was every major city in America, it sounded like, and I

01:35don't, but then, you know, I sit up here as a layperson asking the questions that seem obvious

01:39to me. I don't, candidly, sir, I don't know that I remember your coming out and making a public

01:45statement that the administration is engaged in a reckless policy. I don't think you've done that.

01:52Frankly, Chris Wray has begun sounding increasingly alarmed in his rhetoric, but I read from you what

01:59the director of the counterterrorism center said. We don't really think that's a risk,

02:05and now it's, I mean, the evidence is cropping up. So far, thanks to God, we have not seen a

02:12spectacular act of terrorism, but you're still sitting down here, and the priorities you're

02:16identifying are changes in, you know, an October 7th attack on Israel, which sounds like a make

02:22weight to me as a tremendously horrific incident, but it's not a change in terms of the threat

02:28picture that has always existed in the Middle East, and then you talk about domestic violent

02:32extremists. Mr. Magaziner asked you about risks like January 6th. I know that it is a stock

02:38piece in some politics in the United States that January 6th was as bad as 9-11. I don't honestly

02:43remember it that way. Maybe some American will disagree with me, or many Americans from Mr.

02:47Magaziner might disagree, but what accounts for that? I mean, it sounds reckless to me.

02:53You did not, Ms. Abizade has not, other members have not come out and said this is dangerous to

02:59the homeland. I'm accountable, and I'm not going to sit in my position and see the risks you're

03:04bound to see that you're not able to tell me about in detail. Why keep quiet about a risk like that,

03:10that we now see manifested in visits to Quantico, a Chechen conducting surveillance on an Army

03:16special forces colonel in Carthage, North Carolina, leading to a killing, and an Eritrean in Gates

03:22County, North Carolina, leading to a standoff of police and a shooting. It just goes on and on,

03:27and it's not domestic violent extremists. So what gives? A couple things, sir. Thank you for

03:35the question, and I understand where you're coming from. If I could just clarify one thing, I didn't

03:39finish sort of the chain of reasoning I talked about, I started on about Gaza. You say that

03:44there's no change since October 7th. I think if you were to talk to the Jewish community, they

03:49would say quite otherwise. They're suffering. They're under threat in a way they weren't before,

03:55and that is what I was talking about, that the events overseas have energized threat actors of

04:00a variety of different types, foreign as well as domestic, and they're suffering from it. So

04:05I agree with that. We put bulletins out about that jointly with the FBI. We've been engaged

04:10fully with the Jewish community because this is a scene change, and it's not coming, it's not

04:16going to end. Yeah, I never imagined I would see what I see vested in the Democratic Party, frankly,

04:21in our country, but go ahead. It's horrendous, but in terms of the threat from foreign terrorism,

04:30you asked why I'm not saying anything more about it. I've spent every public moment talking about

04:36the terrorism threat, in particular, the threat from foreign terrorism, especially since October

04:417th, and if you look at the Tajik situation, you'll get briefed on that, but you know,

04:50it's not lost on us that the people who killed over 150 Russians in that theater were from the

04:56same part of the world, okay? So, and I can tell you that Director Abizade is working with my team

05:03and me on a daily basis. I'm going to be with her tomorrow, and we're working on a daily basis on

05:10this very threat and with the Bureau. The amount of, and I mentioned this earlier, it really is

05:15unprecedented the level of cooperation between us and the Bureau on these threats, and I say that

05:21with a little bit of perspective, because I was in government in the national security space up

05:25until inauguration day 2009. I left with the Bush administration and then stepped out of government

05:31and then stepped back in two years ago, and the amount of real day-to-day operational coordination

05:36between DHS and FBI that I'm seeing now, we didn't have anything that close to that back then. So,

05:42it is unprecedented, it's real, and we're taking it seriously.

05:45Thank you, sir. My time's expired, I recognize.

'The Vetting Is So Bad': Dan Bishop Slams Failures To Identify People On Terror Watchlist At Border

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