While the Obama administration attempts to give the impression that it is hard at work keeping Americans safe as ISIS and other Islamic terror threats mount, a congressional investigation revealed at least 72 employees at the institution charged with keeping Americans safe -- the Department of Homeland Security -- are in fact listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list.
What's more, a Democratic congressman was the one to break the news. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.) revealed the findings of the congressional investigation during a Boston Public Radio interview.
“Back in August, we did an investigation—the inspector general did—of the Department of Homeland Security, and they had 72 individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security,” Lynch said.
“The [former DHS] director had to resign because of that.”
Lynch also shed light on the fact that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is 95 percent ineffective in finding and confiscating restricted items at airport security screenings. The Washington Free Beacon shared some of the lawmaker's comments:
“We had staffers go into eight different airports to test the department of homeland security screening process at major airports. They had a 95 percent failure rate,” Lynch said. “We had folks—this was a testing exercise, so we had folks going in there with guns on their ankles, and other weapons on their persons, and there was a 95 percent failure rate.”
Lynch said he has “very low confidence” in DHS based on its many failures over the years. For this reason, he voted in favor of recent legislation that will tighten the vetting process for any Syrian refugees applying for asylum in the United States.
“I have very low confidence based on empirical data that we’ve got on the Department of Homeland Security. I think we desperately need another set of eyeballs looking at the vetting process,” he said. “That’s vetting that’s being done at major airports where we have a stationary person coming through a facility, and we’re failing 95 percent of the time.”
Lynch also blasted the so-called vetting process of refugees in places like Cairo, Jordan and the Syrian border, to name a few.
"I have even lower confidence that they can conduct the vetting process in places like Jordan, or Belize or on the Syrian border, or in Cairo, or Beirut in any better fashion, especially given the huge volume of applicants we’ve had seeking refugee status.”
Of course the truths spoken by this Democrat congressman will fall on deaf ears to the ideologue in the Oval Office bent on forging ahead with his Syrian refugee plan, regardless the safety risks posed. It is reassuring to know that at least some Democrat lawmakers are cognizant of these threats and are attempting to bring them to light. Still, knowing that 72 DHS employees are themselves on the terror watch list strips away whatever shred of faith we had left in our national security institutions.
