Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) claimed on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” Thursday that Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, has “nightmares” about “shutting down that part of the FBI.” that helps protect us” against foreign terrorism.
“Remember the history of all this,” Whitehouse said. We, as Americans, have long been determined that we do not want the CIA and other American intelligence agencies to work against Americans within the United States. And the FBI had responsibility for criminal law enforcement, and focused primarily on terrorism as a criminal act.
He added, “Then came 9/11 and people realized that the firewall between the outward-looking intelligence community and the inward-looking FBI was a recipe for failure and we needed better coordination. We needed to take down the firewall, make sure the FBI knew where its lanes were, the Intelligence Committee knew where its lanes were. This was actually a very successful change and a very important development in the response to 9/11. And to be completely ignorant of this and to think that the FBI has no proper role. What does he believe that the CIA should come in and start doing the work of the FBI in the United States? Or will we stop looking at terrorism from a preventive perspective? When a crime happens we just see it and go to investigate? It makes absolutely no sense.”
“With Patel, you don’t have to stretch,” Whitehouse said. He keeps it there. He’s going to shut down the part of the FBI that helps protect us from foreign terrorism. He’s going to close the Hoover Building, I’m not a big fan of the Hoover Building, but on day one? This is a situation of great confusion. Where should people go to work now? Then, of course, he has his enemies list of people that he thinks the FBI should work on that he’s going to bring in with him. And they have pledged to take civil or criminal action against people like you, they say, if, in their view, in the view of the government, the press is not telling the truth. So any one of those would be quite disabling. And the fact that he brings with him a whole basket of such nightmare sequences, it’s going to be a lively listen.
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