Russia has it’s Own Jihadi John

Posted on December 15, 2015December 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

ISIS member Anatoly Zemlyanka dubbed the Russian Jihadi John revealed

Anatoly Zemlyanka, 28, beheaded countryman Magomed Khasiev in Syria

Born in Noyabrsk, Zemlyanka brought up Christian and converted to Islam

Ex-teacher described him as very ordinary, adding ‘He wasn’t a hooligan’

Zemlyanka, on Russia’s federal wanted list, went to Syria with a girlfriend

GeorgiaNewsday: The ISIS executioner who beheaded a suspected Russian spy in Syria was ‘a bad student’, his former school teacher said today.Anatoly ‘Tolya’ Zemlyanka is being dubbed ‘Jihad Vlad’ after he murdered countryman Magomed Khasiev – and declared war on Moscow.Zemlyanka, 28, told Russia president Vladimir Putin: ‘Here today, on this blessed land, the battle [against Russia] begins. We shall kill your children for every child you’ve killed here.’

School days: The ISIS executioner who beheaded a fellow Russian has been named as Anatoly Zemlyanka, pictured here at school. His former teacher described him as ‘bad pupil’

Unmasked: The Russian jihadi, 28-year-old Zemlyanka, features in a gruesome video of the beheading of Magomed Khasiev, who was accused of being a spy

Born in Noyabrsk, 230 miles south of the Arctic Circle, Zemlyanka is the son of an Orthodox Christian mother who ran a kitchenware shop while he was growing up.

Svetlana Zemlyanka, 53, who had at least one other son, closed the store selling cutlery, crockery, glassware and ceramics, three years ago.

A former teacher at Noyabrsk’s school number three described Zemlyanka as an unremarkable pupil whose exam results were ‘satisfactory at very best’.

‘He was a bad student. His average score was, let’s say, unsatisfactory or, at the very best, satisfactory,’ they said.

‘He wasn’t a hooligan, quite the opposite, demure, and very ordinary.’

Zemlyanka, who is on Russia’s federal wanted list, is said to have become a Muslim and founded a local Islamic organisation called Iskhan, which was banned by a court order.

He attended Thai boxing classes for two years before he left for Syria, reportedly with a girlfriend.

Local coach Oleg Zinner at Baylun sports club, said: ‘He wasn’t a regular. He came from to time. He is a handsome tall guy, very muscular, but as a sportsman he turned out to be quite weak, rotten.

‘Other guys would pull themselves together after a defeat, and rush to fight back. But he wasn’t that kind. Not a fighter’s character. He would come time to time, sometimes he wouldn’t be seen for a while.’

Zemlyanka became Russia’s most wanted this week when he murdered Chechen loyalist Khasiev as he knelt next to a lake near what is thought to be the ISIS de-facto capital, Raqqa.

Khasiev was born in Chelyabinsk, in the Russian Urals mountains but orphaned aged nine and raised by adoptive parents in Chechnya.

The following year he became a Muslim and went on to study law at Maykop Polytechnic college, in the small Russian region of Adygea.

Khasiev – born Yevgeny Yudin before taking the name of his adoptive mother – is said to have ended up in Syria after being recruited by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB.

In February last year he was caught in possession of prescription medication, lyrica pills, and was known to have links to drug dealers. Khasiev is said to have done a deal with the FSB to avoid prosecution, it is claimed.

He was then sent to ISIS via Turkey and given the intelligence services information from behind enemy lines.

Khasiev’s adoptive mother has told how she rescued him from an orphanage and gave him a new life in Chechnya – but also how he defied her opposition to him travelling to Syria.

Fighter: Russia now its own version of Jihadi John, the British executioner who featured in several sickening films and who was believed to have been killed recently in an American strike in Syria

Family: Mother of Zemlyanka, Svetlana, who is an orthodox Christian and used to run a kitchenware shop

‘Bad student’: A former teacher of Zemlyanka (circled) described him as ‘unsatisfactory’ as well as ‘demure, and very ordinary’

The FSB has not given details on whether Khasiev was spying on terrorists and reporting back to Moscow.

Sources have played down the claims without issuing an outright denial.

It was also revealed Khasiev – who posted pictures of grenades on his social site – had a half brother called Alexey who serves in the Russian military potentially fighting the terrorist threat.

Khasiev’s mother Markha Khasiyeva said: ‘He lost his parents when he was a child, and was put in an orphanage, Gvardeysky orphanage where we took him from.’

She was childless and raised the Chelyabinsk-born orphan with her elderly father.

‘We really liked him: he was an honest, good, kind, thoughtful boy,’ she said.

‘In school he had a lot of good friends.’

‘Today we found out about his feats. We’re shocked, I even have nothing to say.’

She said: ‘I lived with my old father, and he decided that there should be someone to look after me when I get old, as I was looking after him.

‘He made a decision to adopt him and even gave him his name. My father loved him a lot.

‘My older family and I always stood up for him.

‘We never betrayed him.

‘He was honest, very honest. I trusted him.’

Undercover: Magomed Khasiev, pictured, was rescued by his adoptive mother from an orphanage and given a new life in Chechnya

Orphan: Khasiev’s (pictured) adoptive mother Markha Khasiyeva said that she knew nothing of her son being with ISIS, or whether or not he was working as a spy

She revealed that he had been in contact less with her the past year or so, saying he deliberately did not tell her about going to Syria, knowing she would not approve.

‘We stayed in touch while he was studying,’ she said.

‘The last time I saw him in summer… autumn, when he came to see us.’

Asked if she knew he had travelled to join terrorists fighters – whether or not he was working for the FSB in doing so – she said: ‘No, of course we didn’t know.

‘He was afraid even to talk about it, he never ever said anything about it. Of course, how would he say that? He knows I am against all such things so he hasn’t told me. He always said, ‘You will never be ashamed of me. Whatever you hear, I’ll never blacken your family’.

‘I just found out about it. I couldn’t believe it.

‘My neighbour told me.’

She watched the video but not the hideous footage showing the execution.

‘He introduced himself there – name, family name, who was he working as, I saw this but I didn’t see how he was killed,’ she said.

‘We stayed in touch as long as we could.

‘Until he made us understand that it shouldn’t be done.’

‘Spy’: Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov admitted today that Khasiev could indeed have been an informer for Russian secret services

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said today Khasiev could have been an informer for Russian secret services – while laying blame for his capture and murder with the West – claiming: ‘We can say with some certainty that in this case there is a trace of the CIA.’

The ally of Vladimir Putin claimed that ‘Western intelligence agencies’ share with the leadership of the Islamic State ‘data on persons who can perform certain tasks’ for the Moscow secret services.

‘The murder of Magomed Khasiev is a propaganda campaign by Ibliss gang (ISIS) and their patrons among Western intelligence agencies,’ he said.

Islam by the Numbers, Video

Posted on December 14, 2015December 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

By the Numbers is an honest and open discussion about Muslim opinions and demographics. Narrated by Raheel Raza, president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, this short film is about the acceptance that radical Islam is a bigger problem than most politically correct governments and individuals are ready to admit. Is ISIS, the Islamic State, trying to penetrate the U.S. with the refugee influx? Are Muslims radicalized on U.S. soil? Are organizations such as CAIR, who purport to represent American Muslims accepting and liberal or radicalized with links to terror organizations?

It’s time to have your say, go to http://go.clarionproject.org/numbers-…

Facts on Militant Islam Infiltration in America

Posted on December 14, 2015December 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

Early on in the jihad career of Usama bin Ladin, he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Table set, read on.

The Investigative Project is a stellar non-profit organization that researches and investigates all militant influence, groups and people in the United States.

IPT Exclusive: Witnesses Say CAIR’s Hamas/MB Links Cemented From Start

Like a good politician, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) repeatedly proves adept at inserting itself into national debates.

When presidential candidate Ben Carson said he could not support a Muslim president, CAIR gathered reporters to express outrage and call on Carson to drop out of the race. When a 14-year-old Texas boy was detained for bringing what he said was a homemade clock to school that a teacher feared might be a bomb, a CAIR official expressed outrage and sat by the boy’s side during news conferences and interviews.

And in the immediate aftermath of the Dec. 2 mass killings in San Bernardino by a radicalized Muslim man and his wife, CAIR called a news conference where its top Los Angeles official “unequivocally” condemned the killings.

CAIR’s aggressive approach, and a combination of media ignorance or laziness, generates uncritical television and newspaper stories throughout the country. This helps the organization reinforce its self-anointed and incorrect reputation as the voice for America’s roughly 2 million Muslims. CAIR is presented as a responsible, moderate organization.

But when cracks appear in that façade, journalists rarely rise to the occasion. Less than two days later, the same CAIR official who unequivocally condemned the San Bernardino killings appeared on CNN to blame “our foreign policy” for fueling radicalization that leads to such violence.

In blaming the United States for an attack by radical Islamists, CAIR- Los Angeles director Hussam Ayloush picked up talking points CAIR officials pushed in the wake of last month’s ISIS massacres in Paris. The aim is to keep the killers’ religious motivations out of any conversation.

“We are partly responsible,” Ayloush said about the United States. “Terrorism is a global problem, not a Muslim problem. And the solution has to be global. Everyone has a role in it.”

Anchor Chris Cuomo did not challenge this statement.

Such uncritical news coverage comes despite a well-documented record establishing CAIR’s own ties to terrorists. Internal Muslim Brotherhood records obtained by the FBI place CAIR and its founders at the core of a Brotherhood-created Hamas support network in the United States. It is a history so checkered that formal FBI policy since 2008 bars interaction with its officials except in criminal investigations.

On Thursday, CAIR legislative director Corey Saylor told the Wall Street Journal that the alleged Hamas ties were “put to rest by the Department of Justice in 2011 and now exists as an Internet story.”

This is a lie. Saylor knows that the FBI policy toward CAIR remains in effect, and it was publicly reaffirmed in 2013. And there simply is no way to “put to rest” the internal records admitted into evidence in 2008.

FBI records recently obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism further illustrate why CAIR merits closer scrutiny, rather than free air time, from the mainstream media. The records cement CAIR’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas from its very foundation, including disclosures about the only executive director CAIR has ever had – Nihad Awad.

Before he helped create CAIR 21 years ago, Awad moved from Dallas to Washington, D.C. “in order to represent Hamas,” an acquaintance said.

Awad’s co-founder Omar Ahmad sought the blessing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to proceed with the new political start-up. That approval went as far as getting the global Islamist movement’s blessing over CAIR’s bylaws.

These accounts came from separate sources, each of whom ran in the same Islamist circles as Awad and Ahmad, during interviews with the FBI in 2005 and in 2009-10. They were among more than 1,000 pages of FBI records released to the IPT, via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The IPT sought records from the 2010 deportation of another CAIR official, former national board member Nabil Sadoun.

Sadoun’s deportation resulted at least in part from his “connections to HAMAS, HAMAS leader Mousa Abu Marzook, and HAMAS front organizations,” papers filed in Immigration Court show. Sadoun was a longtime CAIR national board member and served as president of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), the 1,013-page FOIA response shows.

“MAYA served as a conduit for money to HAMAS, through the HLF [Holy Land Foundation], and served as a forum where HAMAS could promote its ideology and recruit new members,” a February 2010 declaration filed in Sadoun’s deportation case said. He also made anti-Semitic statements and advocated for violent jihad during an interview in a MAYA publication. (For more on Sadoun, click here)

CAIR was uncharacteristically reticent when asked about Sadoun’s case in 2010. The group promotes itself as “arguably the most visible and public representative of the American Muslim community.” But questions about its connections to Hamas have dogged the organization for years. Those questions led the FBI to break off outreach contact with the group in 2008, with an associate director explaining, “until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

CAIR’s Hamas connection is established by evidence FBI agents uncovered while investigating a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Hamas-support network in the United States. One document, coinciding with the group’s 1994 creation, places CAIR among the Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee” branches. A 1992 internal memo, “Islamic Action for Palestine,” explains that the Brotherhood’s guidance office and international Shura Council (governing board) created Palestine Committees throughout the world “whose job it is to make the Palestinian cause victorious and to support it with what it needs of media, money, men and all of that.”

Lest there be any confusion over who benefits from the committees’ efforts, the next paragraph is devoted to Hamas. “This Movement – which was bred in the bosom of the mother movement, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood’ – restored hope and life to the Muslim nation and the notion that the flare of Jihad has not died out and that the banner of Islamic Jihad is still raised.”

CAIR officials have tried to ignore or minimize attention given to the evidence establishing the Hamas connections, or to dismiss critics who call attention to them – including the IPT – as anti-Muslim smear merchants.

Disclosures in the FOIA records the IPT obtained should be more difficult for CAIR to brush aside. They come from two former activists, both of whom were deeply involved in the same Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas-support network.

Omar Ahmad and the Muslim Brotherhood

Omar Ahmad’s CAIR bio

The FOIA records include prosecution evidence accepted by the Immigration Court and used to find Sadoun deportable on a 21-count charging document. Among the records, an FBI agent’s sworn statement from February 2010 – just days before Sadoun’s scheduled deportation hearing – which described CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad (also known as Omar Yehia) as “one of the leaders of HAMAS.”

An FBI report from January 2005 summarizes an interview with a man who said he was “part of the Brotherhood for many years” in the United States. The FBI describes him in immigration court papers as “a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

He provided a history of the Brotherhood in America, including a power struggle pitting members who wanted more autonomy from the International Muslim Brotherhood against those who favored “a direct and official relationship.”

During the mid-1980s, the FBI source became a member of the U.S. Brotherhood’s Majlis al Shura, or governing board, and he described its structure and operation during the 2005 interview. “The Palestine Committee was the largest and most powerful nationalistic committee within the Brotherhood at that time,” the FBI summary of the interview said.

The U.S. Palestine Committee, like all national chapters throughout the world, “report directly to the IMB [international Brotherhood]’s leadership,” an FBI declaration in the Sadoun case said. A chart included in the file shows Sadoun’s connections within the network, including CAIR.

According to the witness, the U.S. Brotherhood’s estimated 1,500 to 2,000 members unanimously supported the Palestinian intifada and saw Hamas as its leader. The group then created the Holy Land Foundation to be “the Brotherhood’s primary organization to support the Intifadah,” the FBI report of the 2005 interview said.

Other branches included a think tank called the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) and a propaganda outfit called the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). UASR was created by Mousa Abu Marzook, a longtime Hamas political leader, along with Ahmed Yousef – later a Hamas spokesman in Gaza – and Nabil Sadoun, the longtime CAIR national board member.

UASR “published papers and books about Hamas,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in denying the Holy Land Foundation’s appeal.

The IAP served as the Palestine Committee’s media outlet, promoting Hamas attacks and even publishing the terrorist group’s anti-Semitic charter which calls for Israel’s annihilation. The IAP worked with the Holy Land Foundation and other groups on fundraising events with the money being routed to charities controlled by Hamas. In addition, Marzook routed more than $750,000 to the IAP between 1985 and 1992.

IAP published a booklet, “America’s Greatest Enemy: The Jew! and an Unholy Alliance!”

CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad worked for the IAP immediately before launching CAIR.

Ahmad became Palestine Committee president after Marzook was deported from the United States, the FBI source said. He knew this because Ahmad “approached [name redacted] and asked the Brotherhood’s permission to start the CAIR organization.” Ahmad “requested the Brotherhood’s approval for CAIR’s by-laws, etc. YEHIA [Ahmad] wanted CAIR to work for all Muslim causes in the United States. The Brotherhood authorized the opening of CAIR because, unlike the HLF, it was not an organization that was concerned only about activities taking place in the Eastern part of the world.”

In 2010, reports surfaced that, after the successful prosecution of five former Holy Land Foundation officials for Hamas support, investigators proposed indicting Ahmad, the CAIR co-founder. That request was rejected by the Justice Department.

Information in the FOIA records, including the witness statements, offers new insight into why the investigators pushed for more.

During the Holy Land trial, evidence showed that Ahmad played a key role in organizing and leading a secret 1994 meeting of Hamas supporters in Philadelphia. It was called in response to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which offered the potential for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

The FBI recorded the weekend-long meeting. Transcripts entered into evidence show that the group opposed the deal for two reasons: They, like Hamas, opposed any peaceful settlement to the conflict. And, the agreement empowered the secular Palestine Liberation Organization to lead the newly created Palestinian Authority, diminishing the influence and power of the Islamist Hamas movement.

Ahmad helped determine who should attend the meeting and called it to order. At one point, he acknowledged that the group cannot afford to be honest with the public about their true ideology.

“We’ve always demanded the 1948 territories,” he said, referring to all of Israel and not just the West Bank and Gaza.

“Yes, but we don’t say that publicly,” an unidentified speaker said. “You cannot say it publicly, in front of the Americans.”

“No,” Ahmad replied. “We didn’t say that to the Americans.”

Nihad Awad and Hamas

Awad participated in that 1994 meeting, too, and joined the others in following instructions to refer to Hamas only in code. Those in the meeting were admonished not to say “Hamas,” but refer instead to “sister Samah” – or Hamas spelled backward.

“If there is a political issue, a Samah’s input, for instance, about this or that, we inform people to contact their representatives,” Awad said during the Philadelphia meeting.

Awad’s true mission was spelled out during a 2010 interview FBI officials had with Mohamed Shorbagi, a former Rome, Ga. imam who pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Hamas through donations and service to the Holy Land Foundation, and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, testifying twice for the government in Hamas-support cases.

Shorbagi remembered attending the 1994 Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) conference in Chicago where the Palestine Committee organized break-out sessions. Shorbagi attended a political group discussion with Nihad Awad. Awad, he was told, had been sent by the IAP to Washington “in order to educate and inform U.S. political leaders about the Palestinian cause. His job was to influence the leaders of the U.S. government in favor of the Palestinian cause,” an FBI memo summarizing the interview said.

Shorbagi had a different take: “The IAP’s only purpose was to support Hamas through media work. [Name redacted]’s job within the IAP was to work for and support Hamas and nothing else,” an FBI report from his 2009 interview said.

The head of the IAP in Dallas told Shorbagi that Awad “went to Washington, D.C. for the IAP in order to represent Hamas.” But then the idea to start CAIR came to fruition and Awad was tasked with running the new organization. “It was known in the community that CAIR was under or influenced by the IAP because its (CAIR) leadership had come from the IAP.”

The timing and the claim that Ahmad sent Awad to Washington fits with other information already in the public domain.

Awad’s own account of his move to Washington, in an article he wrote in 2000, offers a more benign motivation, but matches Shorbagi in saying it was Ahmad who “proposed that I move to Washington, D.C., where any effective national effort would have to be based.”

During a 2003 deposition in a civil lawsuit, Awad said he served as public relations chief for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in 1993, then moved to Washington “to work for CAIR.” As mentioned, the IAP was the Palestine Committee’s media arm, publishing the Hamas charter and reproducing Hamas communiques. Awad denied knowledge of this fact and claimed he had never read the Hamas charter.

In the deposition, Awad described IAP merely as a “cultural association” and denied ever seeing or reading the Hamas charter. But Shorbagi told federal investigators that “IAP ‘festivals’ championed the cause of Hamas exclusively” after the intifada. This point is clearly established by video exhibits entered into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation trial.

In March 1994, Awad was part of a panel discussion at Miami’s Barry University. He said he used to support the PLO, but “after I researched the situation inside Palestine and outside, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.” In the 2003 deposition, he claimed this was due to Hamas social services and not because of its violent attacks against Israel.

But in a November 1994 interview with “60 Minutes,” Mike Wallace asked Awad for his views of the “military undertakings of Hamas.”

“Well, I think that’s for people to judge there,” Awad said.

Wallace asked again.

“The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation to defend themselves against illegal occupation,” Awad said.

In addition to being the only executive director CAIR has had, Awad also serves as a national board member.

On social media posts a year ago, Awad argued that “Israel is the biggest threat to world peace and security,” making the statement between unrelated posts about acts of brutality committed by ISIS terrorists. Since then, other senior CAIR officials have issued their own Twitter posts arguing Israel is on par with ISIS.

Hamas officials in Gaza have taken notice of Shorbagi’s cooperation with the government. They were holding his passport, his father told him, “because the Holy Land Foundation received stiff prison sentences because of [Shorbagi]’s testimony on behalf of the U.S. Government. [Shorbagi]’s family warned him not to return to Gaza even for a few minutes.”

*** Ah, but there is more and if you can stand to know more truths on Muslim Organizations in America, click here. FOIA Exposes Deported CAIR Official’s Support for Jihad

Mainstream Media Starts Questioning Obama Policy….

Posted on December 14, 2015December 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

Political correctness got people killed and many others injured. Who started the policy of Islamic political correctness? Countless Muslim organizations in America.

From ABC News: Secret US Policy Blocks Agents From Looking at Social Media of Visa Applicants, Former Official Says

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.

A spokesperson for the DHS, Marsha Catron, told ABC News that months after Cohen left, in the fall of 2014, the Department began three pilot programs to include social media in vetting, but current officials say that it is still not a widespread policy. A review of the broader policy is already underway, the DHS said.

The revelation comes as members of Congress question why U.S. officials failed to review the social media posts of San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik. She received a U.S. visa in May 2014, despite what the FBI said were extensive social media messages about jihad and martyrdom.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded Sunday that the U.S. immediately initiate a program that would check the social media sites of those admitted on visas.”

“Had they checked out Tashfeen Malik,” the senator said, “maybe those people in San Bernardino would be alive.”

Former DHS under-secretary Cohen said he and others pressed hard for just such a policy change in 2014 that would allow a review of publicly-posted social media messages as terror group followers increasingly used Twitter and Facebook to show their allegiance to a variety of jihadist groups.

Cohen said officials from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) both pressed for a change in policy.

“Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement,” said Cohen, who left DHS in June 2014.

Cohen said the issue reached a head at a heated 2014 meeting chaired by Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, other top deputies and representatives of the DHS Office of Civil Liberties and the Office of Privacy.

“The primary concern was that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly and there were concerns that it would be embarrassing,” Cohen said in an interview broadcast on “Good Morning America” today.

Cohen said he and others were deeply disappointed that the senior leadership would not approve a review of what were publicly-posted online messages.

“There is no excuse for not using every resource at our disposal to fully vet individuals before they come to the United States,” Cohen said.

A former senior counter-terrorism official, who participated in the 2014 discussion, said, “Why the State Department and Homeland Security Department have not leveraged the power of social media is beyond me.”

“They felt looking at public postings [of foreign U.S. visa applicants] was an invasion of their privacy,” the official told ABC News. “The arguments being made were, and are still, in bad faith.”

Cohen said the disclosures by Edward Snowden about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance policies fed concern of bad public relations that would affect the U.S. government’s standing with civil rights groups and European allies.

“It was primarily a question of optics,” said Cohen. “There were concerns from a privacy and civil liberties perspective that while this was not illegal, that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly.”

Cohen said he and others were deeply troubled by the decision.

“If we don’t look and don’t review, we don’t know,” he said.

Officials said that because Malik used a pseudonym in her online messages, it is not clear that her support for terror groups would have become known even if the U.S. conducted a full review of her online traffic.

DHS’s Catron told ABC News the Department is “actively considering additional ways to incorporate the use of social media review in its various vetting programs,” while keeping an eye on privacy concerns.

“The Department will continue to ensure that any use of social media in its vetting program is consistent with current law and appropriately takes into account civil rights and civil liberties and privacy protections,” Catron said.

State Department records show that in 2014 the U.S. government issued nearly 10 million nonimmigrant visas, over 40,000 of which were K-1 fiancé visas like the one Malik used to enter the country.

From Ben Shapiro at DailyWire:

We already know that political correctness got Americans killed in San Bernardino. A neighbor of that delightful, non-suspicious, American-as-apple-pie couple Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik refused to report his suspicions of nefarious activity thanks to his fear of being labeled a racist.

That fear was legitimate – the same Obama administration that tells Americans to say something if they see something is now investigating the Irving Police Department for doing just that with a Muslim teenager who brought a device that looked like a bomb to school.

But at least you could make the case that it wasn’t directly the fault of the Obama administration that the neighbor didn’t call the cops.

Not any longer.

We knew last week that not only was Malik “screened” by the Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism squad, but that she passed a criminal and national security background check using an FBI database.

Now we know something more: we know that, according to a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis, the Obama administration actively prohibited its own agents from screening social media messages of foreign citizens applying for visas to enter the country. According to John Cohen, that official, “During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process.”

This is pure insanity. The same adminisitration that insists it must gather metadata from the entire population of the United States for security purposes refuses to screen the social messages of non-citizens with no American rights. Why? For public relations. Said Cohen:

Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement….The primary concern was that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly and there were concerns that it would be embarrassing.

He added, “it was primarily a question of optics. There were concerns from a privacy and civil liberties perspective that while this was not illegal, that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly.

Fourteen Americans died for optics. But that’s nothing new for the Obama administration, which has allowed thousands worldwide to die for optics.

Even Democrats acknowledge this is dangerous and idiotic policy. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) admitted as much, stating, “Had they checked out Tashfeen Malik, maybe those people in San Bernardino would be alive.”

This is why Donald Trump’s blanket ban on Muslim immigration until the government can “figure things out” has suddenly spiked in popularity. According to a Rasmussen poll released Friday, “46 percent of likely voters would favor a policy preventing Muslim immigrants from entering the country until tighter security screening procedures can be implemented, while 40 percent would oppose such a measure.”

This isn’t bigotry. It’s rational distrust of a government hell-bent on protecting its own public relations ass rather than the American people.

Political correctness kills. And the Obama administration is its headman.

Top Issue for America: Terrorism or the Economy?

Posted on December 14, 2015December 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

Obama has willingly ignored the global terror threat matrix telling the world that climate change is a major threat.

In part USAToday: President Obama is sticking with his view that climate change is a global threat on the order of terrorism, in part because terrorist groups like the Islamic State will be defeated in traditional ways.

“But If you start seeing the oceans rise by five, six, seven feet” and if weather patterns change to where “bread baskets to the world suddenly can no longer grow food, then you’re seeing the kind of crisis that we can’t deal with through the deployment of the Marines,” Obama said in an interview on CBS This Morning.

“We can’t deal with it through pouring money at it,” Obama added.

As for terrorism, Obama — who is seeking a global climate change agreement — said “we’re gonna get” the Islamic State.

“They will be defeated,” Obama said. “There will be ongoing efforts to disrupt the world order from terrorists, from rogue states, from cyber attacks. There’s always some bad people out there trying to do bad things. And we have to be vigilant in going after them.”

Americans Name Terrorism as Top Problem for US

Nearly one in six say so, the highest figure in a decade

FreeBeacon: Americans are most likely to name terrorism as the top problem facing the United States in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

Sixteen percent of Americans name terrorism as the largest problem for the country, more than a fivefold increase over the 3 percent who said so in early November before coordinated shootings and suicide bombings killed 130 people in Paris, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.

Terrorism ranks as a higher concern than the government, which 13 percent of U.S. adults name as the top issue facing the country. Americans are also more likely to point to terrorism as the largest issue than they are the economy (9 percent) and guns (7 percent).

The share of Americans labeling terrorism the primary issue is at its highest level in a decade, though remains far below the 46 percent who said so following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The poll also found that, though Republicans are more likely than Democrats to name terrorism as today’s biggest issue, Americans identifying with both political parties are much more likely to mention terrorism as the top problem today than they were one month ago.

Currently, nearly a quarter of Republicans name terrorism the primary issue, six times the share who did so in early November. The percentage of Democrats has tripled in one month to 9 percent, and the share of independents has jumped more than sevenfold to 15 percent.

The poll was conducted in the days following the deadly shooting at a San Bernardino office party that killed 14 people and wounded more than 20 others. The two attackers, who later died in a shootout with police, had both been radicalized for years. Both were also allegedly supporters of ISIS, the terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris on November 13.

In addition to naming terrorism the top issue, Americans are also decreasingly confident in the U.S. government’s ability to protect the nation from terrorist attacks in the future, according to previously released Gallup polling. A new low of 55 percent have at least a fair amount of confidence in the government under President Obama to protect the country against terrorism, a number that has eroded 12 percentage points since June.

Americans are particularly dissatisfied with the way in which Obama has been handling ISIS, with a majority of 64 percent disapproving of the way in which the president has responded to the terror group, according to a CNN/ORC survey released last week. Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats do not believe that the U.S. military response to the terrorists has been aggressive enough.

Though a majority of adults now want the U.S. to send ground troops into combat operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Obama administration has argued that doing so is not the answer to defeating the terror group.

“While we certainly have the capability to furnish a U.S. component to such a ground force, we have not recommended this course of action for several reasons,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter told lawmakers Wednesday. “In the near term, it would be a significant undertaking that, much as we may wish otherwise, realistically, we would embark upon largely by ourselves; and it would be ceding our comparative advantage of special forces, mobility, and firepower, instead fighting on the enemy’s terms.”

“In the medium-term, by seeming to Americanize the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, we could well turn those fighting [ISIS] or inclined to resist their rule into fighting us instead,” Carter added.