By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 14, 2015
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In case you had any doubt in your mind that a politically correct war on terror is no war on terror at all, behold:
Fearing a civil liberties backlash and "bad public relations" for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.
"During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process," John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News. One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen's account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants. A spokesperson for the DHS, Marsha Catron, told ABC News that months after Cohen left, in the fall of 2014, the Department began three pilot programs to include social media in vetting, but current officials say that it is still not a widespread policy. A review of the broader policy is already underway, the DHS said. The revelation comes as members of Congress question why U.S. officials failed to review the social media posts of San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik. She received a U.S. visa in May 2014, despite what the FBI said were extensive social media messages about jihad and martyrdom.
"Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement," said Cohen, who left DHS in June 2014. Cohen said the issue reached a head at a heated 2014 meeting chaired by Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, other top deputies and representatives of the DHS Office of Civil Liberties and the Office of Privacy. "The primary concern was that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly and there were concerns that it would be embarrassing," Cohen said in an interview broadcast on "Good Morning America" today. Cohen said he and others were deeply disappointed that the senior leadership would not approve a review of what were publicly-posted online messages.It's tempting to say this is another example of Obama being a coward or a wimp or something Ralph Peters might call him. But here's the problem with that thinking: Obama will stop at nothing to accomplish a goal he actually cares about. Whether it's setting up Iran to get nuclear weapons or getting this dumbass climate deal, or putting in place executive amnesty or using his regulatory powers to make gun control the de facto law of the land, Obama will do what Obama has to do and he really doesn't care who criticizes him for it. So if DHS was concerned about how it would look to be checking the social media posts of visa applicants, it's only because they knew it was not a priority for Obama to keep terrorists out of the country. If he cared about it, he would gladly weather the criticism, and would probably turn it around on his critics. That's the only reason rules like this were kept in place, because everyone at DHS knew that Obama was not interested in going full-bore to stop terrorists from getting into the country. If he was, there would be no rules.
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