The FBI’s counterterrorism unit is stymied by politically correct pressures that push back against investigations based on a suspect’s radical Islamic affiliations, one congressman said.
Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican who’s a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said political correctness slowed investigators from honing in on the Boston bombing suspects, Newsmax reported. He based his claim, in part, on a review of terms that have been scrapped from FBI training manuals — terms that define and identify terrorists. And he said that scrubbing has come at the insistence of Arab-American groups.
“It most likely did play a part,” he said on Newsmax. “How do you question a guy to determine whether or not he’s been radicalized, when you’re not allowed to go into things like jihad and al Qaeda? Or if you’re not allowed to know enough about radical Islam?”
The censorship from law enforcement training manuals can’t even be fully reviewed because the terms have since been listed as classified, he said.
“They have classified it not because it would hurt the country to know what those words are,” Mr. Gohmert said in the Newsmax report. “It wouldn’t have at all.”
He added on Newsmax: “If you’re not allowed to study radical Islam because we don’t want to use ’jihad’ and ’radical Islam’ and those terms, how do you ask this [Dzhokhar Tsarnaev] kid questions that let you know whether or not he’s been radicalized? I don’t see how you can do it.”
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• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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