Rep. Peter King Defends Today's Hearings, and His Decision Not to Include the FBI

Rep. Peter King was all business this morning with Imus, and well he should have been: later today, King will hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims, and what the United States can do, as a country, to better defend itself from this threat.
 
As Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives, King feels an obligation to respond to Al-Qaeda’s admitted tactic of recruiting and radicalizing Muslims within U.S borders. King has been roundly criticized for his decision to hold these hearings, but insisted he has no choice. 

“God forbid there was an attack carried out by a Muslim American in this country who had been radicalized, and I had done nothing about it, nothing about investigating it,” he said. “People would say, ‘Where were you? Why did you allow this to happen?’”
 
He accused the mainstream media of refusing to acknowledge the very real danger within the Muslim community in the U.S., and pointed out that he’s not the only one crying wolf.
 
“On Sunday night, the President’s Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough made a point of saying Al-Qaeda is recruiting within the Muslim American community,” King said, and ticked off a list of other prominent administration officials—like Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano—who have expressed similar concerns.
 
Which is why King feels no need to investigate anti-American sentiments within other religious groups. “When we were looking to find out where the White Citizens’ Council and the KKK was, we didn’t investigate the African-American community,” he noted.
 
The three main witnesses that will testify at today’s hearing have all been deeply affected by Islamic radicalization in this country, whether within their communities or their own families. One of the people, a Somali-American man from Minneapolis, will tell the story of his nephew, an honor student planning to attend Harvard, who was recruited by a local mosque and sent to Somalia, where he was murdered.
 
“When the uncle went to the FBI to ask for an investigation, he was shunned by the mosque, the mosque threatened him, and the leaders in his community turned against him because they said he was making this public,” King said, and insisted stories like that are ubiquitous in Muslim communities across the country.  
 
King has not asked the FBI to testify today, he told Imus, because he believes they will be less than forthcoming. “The FBI will say, without giving specifics, that they get cooperation,” King said. “I know they don’t.” And they would not provide examples of the cooperation they do receive, in his view, because “they’re afraid of being attacked, like I am.”
 
There is little that will be revealed today, King confessed, that he does not already know. But this isn’t about him. “The intelligentsia of the country doesn’t know it, as you can see by the overreaction I’m getting,” he said, calling the media’s inherent left-wing bias “dangerous” in its ignorance. “I want to get it out there, let the American people see it.”
 
And if King has his way, they’ll see a lot more of it over the next few months. “We’re going to have follow-up hearings,” he told Imus. “This is the beginning of an ongoing process.”
 
-Julie Kanfer