Steve Emerson: Holder DOJ ‘Handcuffed’ the FBI From Investigating Islamic Extremism In US (Video)

Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism  said on Justice With Jeanine Pirro, Saturday night,  that there are now 300-400 American Volunteers fighting for ISIS. (The US State Dept. says there are only 12. Defense Sec. Hagel says about 100,  and Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, says hundreds.)

He told Pirro, “they can return to the United States any time they want. (Currently, there is no policy in place to revoke passports of Jihadists, but Republicans in Congress are working on legislation to address that.)

The FBI has been handcuffed in terms of investigating religious extremists in mosques as a result of guidelines put out by the Attorney General earlier, this year.” He added,  “there is a definite problem in investigating those militants in the United States who are either recruiting for ISIS or have returned from Syria or Iraq having fought for ISIS, ready to carry out freelance or directed terrorist attacks on behalf of ISIS against the United States.

Asked by Pirro to elaborate, Emerson said, “the Department of Justice has put out guidelines that restricted the FBI and other other law enforcement agencies from using religious actors in identifying National Security threats to the United States…”

His portion of the video begins 5:00 in:

According to The Center For Security Policy, back in January, the DOJ was poised to  “prohibit religious profiling in terror cases,”  completely blinding federal law enforcement to the threat from Islamic extremism.

Already, the department has forced the FBI to bleach references to “Islam” and “jihad” from its counterterrorism training materials. It’s also made it harder for agents to infiltrate radical mosques.

But Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly now wants to make it illegal for agents to even consider religion in their investigations.

Democrats on the Hill are cheering the changes, along with the ACLU and radical Muslim Brotherhood front groups, who have all lobbied the administration for them. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has seen several of its officials jailed on terror-related charges, calls it “a step in the right direction.”

Appearing before the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee in 2012, CAIR demanded the administration remove religion as a factor in terrorism investigations, even though just four years earlier Justice had named CAIR an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator.

The Islamic Society of North America, another designated co-conspirator, hailed the move as a civil-rights victory worthy of praise from “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

The timing couldn’t be worse. Experts say that if anything, the U.S. should be expanding its terrorist profile to include radical Muslim women along with men. Russian intelligence warns female suicide bombers are threatening next month’s Winter Olympics.

The FBI missed the Boston Marathon bombings because it failed to focus on radicalized local Muslims. The only way law enforcement can effectively head off future attacks — including possibly the upcoming Super Bowl in New Jersey — is by gathering predictive intelligence in the Muslim community — namely, inside mosques.

Holder cut off these investigative avenues for the FBI, “as well as for border agents charged with protecting the nation from Islamic extremists at airports and land crossings.”

 See Also: 

Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon:FBI National Domestic Threat Assessment Omits Islamist Terrorism: Internal report labels white supremacists, black separatists, militias, abortion extremists main domestic extremists…

Surreal…

The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats, despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting—both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.

Instead, the internal FBI intelligence report concluded in its 2013 assessment published this month that the threat to U.S. internal security from extremists is limited to attacks and activities by eight types of domestic extremist movements—none motivated by radical Islam.

They include anti-government militia groups and white supremacy extremists, along with “sovereign citizen” nationalists, and anarchists. Other domestic threat groups outlined by the FBI assessment include violent animal rights and environmentalist extremists, black separatists, anti- and pro-abortion activists, and Puerto Rican nationalists.

The Conversation: State Dept: Fighting With ISIS Doesn’t Automatically Mean Your Passport Will Be Revoked

The Conversation: Fighting for ISIS is no reason to keep someone out of the country, huh?

Linked by Doug Ross and iOWNTHEWORLD, thanks!