Community Is The Most Effective Tool For Fighting Terrorism

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – As a matter of fact, I have a very provocative piece of email that came my way yesterday.  Do you remember yesterday we had a very robust discussion about whether or not the federales ought to continue in their vaunted position as seeking out terrorists or pursuing terror masterminds of first resort?  I was making the case yesterday that it was the citizens of the Boston area and a sort of vigilant public that actually apprehended the on-the-lam Tsarnaev brother.  Check out today’s audio and transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We have other big news here today.  As a matter of fact, I have a very provocative piece of email that came my way yesterday.  Do you remember yesterday we had a very robust discussion about whether or not the federales ought to continue in their vaunted position as seeking out terrorists or pursuing terror masterminds of first resort?  I was making the case yesterday that it was the citizens of the Boston area and a sort of vigilant public that actually apprehended the on-the-lam Tsarnaev brother.  It was citizens who actually perused the surveillance and photographic evidence that was all around the internet after the Boston Marathon bombings that actually found or made the connection among all those that were at the site and those that could have perpetrated the act.  It was citizens that did all these things.

The jackboots that were going door to door on the Friday when little Tsarnaev, Tsar bro #2, Dzhokhar was apprehended, were for the most part, even though they were dressed up in military flak jacket gear, were mostly local cops.  Why can’t local cops handle it was the point that I was making.  Who is it that knows what’s going on in any community better than those that are charged with the task of policing it?  Lo and behold, I received this most interesting email last night.  I foreswore to not give this guy’s identity away.  I won’t tell you who wrote it other than his first name is Michael.

Mike Church Show Transcript: Local Law Enforcement Could Do A Better Job Than The Feds

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Mike – I heard you talking about Peter King and his push to investigate Muslim communities and him blaming the FBI for not doing so because we’ll be sued.  Well, we already have been.

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Mike:  The gentleman that wrote me this letter works inside one of the federal ABC, alphabet soup agencies that is charged with keeping us all safe.  Even though I know the identity of the agency, again, I’m protecting my source here.

[reading]

I heard you talking about Peter King and his push to investigate Muslim communities and him blaming the FBI for not doing so because we’ll be sued. Well, we already have been. The ACLU made a Freedom of Information Act request for information on how we were investigating, profiling Muslims and training materials used to train folks in counterterrorism. It’s still ongoing to some extent with appeals, etc., and was a monster to handle since some of that training material involved issues pertaining to active investigations. Mr. King, from what I was able to gather, wanted more scrutiny of these groups by law enforcement and intelligence community partners. Well, what these Freedom of Information Act requests revealed is that we kind of have, but in a different manner than DeceptiCONS would like us to [Mike: I like how he used decepticons and punctuated it correctly, DeceptiCONS, also known as frauds masquerading as conservatives who are anything but.] Instead of tracking emails, tapping phones, etc., etc. of everyone who wanders into a mosque at some point in their life, we do a lot more community outreach. [Mike: This is exactly what I was talking about yesterday, precisely what we were talking about yesterday.] It’s actually more effective than what Decepticonia would have you believe. We learn a lot about customs, traditions and variations of Islam that help operations elsewhere while building tolerance and rapport between these communities and ourselves. It’s hard to investigate the alien…

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Mike Church Show Transcript: Interview With Rod Dreher On Ruthie Leming, Community, And The Secret Of A Good Life

Mike:  In other words, by actually going out there and instead of just surreptitiously eavesdropping on these people and assuming that they’re all guilty and you’re just looking for the smoking Mohammed gun or the smoking Koran, this particular agency is actually going in and trying to make friends with and make alliances with those in the Muslim and Islamic communities.  Why would you do that?  You would do that for a couple of reasons, I would imagine.  I’m not in law enforcement, so this is pure conjecture on my part.

I would theorize that you would do this in much the same manner that a beat cop would get to know the people on his route, if there are any beat cops left out there, that are storeowners, just so that you know who runs the store, who owns the store, what kind of people work there, what kind of work habits they have, if it would be odd if the lights were on and people were moving about inside said store at 2 a.m.  It might be because you know this because you talked to the owner who informed you that he can’t wait to get the hell out of there every night and closes the shop up at 7 p.m.

Again, this is person-to-person intel.  This is actual human intelligence gathered by actually going to the source and commiserating with the source.  Oh, shutter the thought.  Let’s use a drone to fly over that thing.  [mocking] “Let’s spy on them.  We have all the equipment anyway.  Besides, it’s fun to abuse people’s civil liberties.  If we can do it to these guys, just imagine what we can do to other bad guys, or maybe even good guys down the road.”  The letter writer continues in an email that was sent to me last night from a listener who works inside an ABC agency in the federal leviathan.

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These groups we foster relationships with have also helped them realize that we don’t want to investigate all Muslims.  Trust me, we’re busy enough as it is.  Believe it or not, even in the social media society that we live in, people are our best asset and source of information.

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Mike Church Show Transcript: We’ll Decide Who Deserves Civil Liberties, Citizen!

Mike:  Boy, isn’t that a mouthful?  That is exactly the point that we were making yesterday when we were talking about this, that it is actual human-to-human contact and actual firsthand knowledge of events, practices, customs.  They may be deceitful or evil events, practices, and customs, but firsthand knowledge of this stuff is far more valuable than conjecture and theory and deduction that is made just using electronic surveillance.  Of course, in today’s 24/7 television, miniseries world that we live in, we’re led to believe that all this crime sleuthing is done inside the confines of places that Kiefer Sutherland works inside of.  The letter writer continues:

[reading]

They do a good job keeping an eye out on their fellow Muslims because they know all too well what the consequences of one’s rogue actions could be. Yes, there are some things we gather from other sources, but we are in no way dependent upon that for leads. We get a lot from technical means, but the amount of actionable intel gleaned from this is minute in comparison to the junk that has to be sifted through. [Mike:  Then he sent me a link to the ACLU stories of the lawsuit.] Thanks for keeping the show going, Mike. [Mike: I laughed out loud when I read this and I’m going to have to self-censor this and I will. I will exercise obedience to the unenforceable.] It gives me a lot of hope. There are people who claim to be conservative. They are far less reasoned than you and seem to reproduce faster than either you or I can. Go read the comments on the [blank, blank] website if you need to make yourself feel smart.

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Mike:  I appreciated getting it very much.  You can write me as well, kingdude@mikechurch.com.  The point of the letter here is our discussion here — AG, do you still have Peter King?

AG:  Yeah, one minute.

Mike Church Show Transcript: Loss Of Community Means More Power For The State

Mike:  I’d like to just revisit what it was that Congressman King said.  Here we have an agent that actually works inside one of these agencies that is telling me that the direction we were going in our discussion of this is, in his opinion anyway, was the correct one.  It’s Peter King, [mocking] “You don’t have to surveil all of them.  Just because they’re Muslim, that doesn’t mean they’re innocent either.”  There was a discussion about whether or not we ought to be surveilling and eavesdropping and snooping — I would say illegally — on every Muslim community in the United States, which is an impossible task.  You couldn’t do it anyway if you wanted to.  Here’s what King said on Sunday morning:

[start audio clip]

Representative Peter King: Just because you’re a citizen doesn’t mean they can’t ask questions.

David Gregory: But the question is based on what, based on the exercise of free speech or actual evidence of them plotting?

King: I think they’re afraid to somehow be called anti-Muslim or anti-Islam if they accept the reality that the element is coming from within the Muslim community. As in previous times, you had elements coming from certain communities. Eric Holder said this keeps him awake at night, radical Islam among young people in the Muslim community. Dennis McDonough said the same thing in 2011 when he went to a mosque in Virginia to say about the threats that have come to the Muslim community. It’s there.

What the NYPD is doing in New York with a thousand police officers focusing on this issue, knowing where the threat is coming from. Now, most Muslims are outstanding people but the threat is coming from the Muslim community. Just yesterday Tom Friedman, who is certainly no conservative, said, “We must ask the question only Muslims can answer. What is going on in your community that a critical number of your youth believes that every American military action in the Middle East justifies a violent response?” It’s coming from the community.

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Mike:  Well, if it’s coming from the community, then who is it that knows about it?  The community knows about it.  You don’t know about it; the people that live in the community know about it.  Where would you go for the most reliable information or the most reliable sources of that?  You would go into the community.  You don’t have to go in with a search warrant or guns blazing.  You don’t have to play Eliot Ness.  You don’t have to play like you’re a star on some television miniseries on Showtime.  You can go in there and introduce yourself: Hi, I’m with the FBI.  Hi, I’m with the CIA.  Hi, I’m with the BPD.  I’m with the NYPD.  We’re not here to be your enemy.  We just want to get to know you, get to know the people that go to your mosque, that congregate here, and to start a working relationship with you because we know that you also don’t want to be blown to smithereens by a mad bomber.

End Mike Church Show Transcript