Security officials acknowledge 'risk' in admitting Syrian refugees into US

Top law enforcement and security officials cautioned Wednesday that bringing in 10,000 Syrian refugees as planned carries a terror risk, with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson acknowledging background checks can only do so much and "there is no risk-free process.”
“The good news is that we are better at [vetting] than we were eight years ago. The bad news is that there is no risk-free process,” Johnson said at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing.
The Obama administration has committed to bringing in 10,000 Syrian refugees in fiscal 2016, as part of a total 85,000 worldwide refugees.
However, at the hearing on “Worldwide Threats and Homeland Security Challenges,” officials said while they are confident about their vetting process, there is a risk in terms of screening refugees who have never crossed the intelligence radar.
“If the person has not crossed our radar screen, there will be nothing to query against so we do see a risk there,” FBI Director James Comey said.
“It is not a perfect process. There is a degree of risk attached to any screening and vetting process. We look to manage that risk as best we can,” Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said.
“We may have someone who is not on our radar and someone may choose to do something bad after they get here,” Johnson said. “We can only query against what we have collected, so if someone hasn’t made a ripple in the pond, we can check our databases until the cows come home but we have no record on that person.”
However, Johnson said the system in place is “a good system,” and noted that the process also includes a personal assessment for each refugee. “It’s not just simply what’s in a public record,” Johnson said.
The testimony reflects the challenge ahead for the administration, as it tries to respond to a global refugee crisis fueled by the Syrian civil war and other conflicts. Aid groups and other governments had urged the United States to accept more refugees, who mostly have fled to neighboring Middle Eastern countries and Europe, and the administration agreed to accept more.
Republican lawmakers continued to voice concerns at Wednesday's hearing.
“My concern is that you’re relying upon them and what they say or what they write out in an application and you can’t go beyond that,” Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said. “So you’re having to take their word for it.”
South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan said his constituents were "very concerned about our inability to vet properly the refugees that are coming."
“I just want to encourage you all … to rethink the resettlement of refugees in this country, especially in the numbers I’m hearing," Duncan said.
Addressing the ISIS threat more generally, FBI Director Comey also said that the number of Americans going abroad to join ISIS has fallen in recent months. Comey said the FBI is aware of six Americans trying to join the group in the last three-and-a-half months, in contrast to the approximately nine each month they were seeing before that.
However, he said he could not explain the reduction, and noted the group’s use of social media has allowed them to successfully “break the model” of terror recruitment.
“ISIS has used that ubiquitous social media to break the model and push into the United States into the pocket, onto the mobile devices, on troubled souls throughout our country in all 50 states, a twin message, ‘Come or Kill,’” Comey said.

Ryan wins support of key conservative bloc for speaker run

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan gained support from a key group Wednesday night for House speaker when a supermajority of the House Freedom Caucus announced it was backing him.
In a statement, the group said Ryan "has promised to be an ideas-focused Speaker who will advance limited government principles and devolve power to the membership."
While the group held off an official endorsement of Ryan, the announcement of support could get him to officially enter the race for House speaker, and lock down the votes to win in elections next week.
Ryan said in a statement Wednesday night the move by the Freedom Caucus "is a positive step toward a unified Republican team.”
Ryan had met behind closed doors with members earlier in the day. When he left the meeting, he told reporters, “Nice meeting. We had a good chat.”
Support from the caucus was not certain, since they've repeatedly opposed GOP leaders and pushed House Speaker John Boehner to announce his resignation. Before Ryan entered the mix, the caucus previously had endorsed Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida, who said late Wednesday he was still in the running.
On Tuesday, Ryan let his Republican colleagues know that if he's to become the next House speaker, he'll do so on his own terms -- or not at all.
After initially turning down the job, the Wisconsin congressman outlined a set of significant demands that would need to be met in order for him to run:

• He wants broad support across the Republican conference, specifically the endorsement of all the major caucuses.
• He wants House rules changed to overhaul what is known as the "motion to vacate the chair" -- a parliamentary weapon members can use to try and oust a speaker.
• He wants to be able to spend time with his family, and not be on the road as much as previous speakers.

Ryan, outlining these conditions, then gave colleagues until Friday to express their views. And he made clear that if he doesn't get what he wants, he'd be "happy" to stay where he is, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
The statement put out by the House Freedom Caucus Wednesday night does not technically count as an endorsement, since members fell short of the 80 percent requirement for one. However, about two-thirds of the caucus members did come out in favor of Ryan, leading to the Wednesday night statement.
Boehner told the House Republican Conference on Wednesday that they will vote internally for speaker on Oct. 28, followed by a full floor vote on Oct. 29.
In total, Ryan or any candidate would need roughly 218 votes to win the speakership.
On Tuesday, Ryan said, "My greatest worry is the consequence of not stepping up."
He said the country is in "desperate need for leadership."
At the same time, he made clear he could back out.
"What I told the members is if you can agree to the requests, and if I can be a truly unifying figure, I'll serve," Ryan said. "And if I'm not a unifying force, that will be fine as well. I'm happy to stay where I am."
While his conditions may be steep, multiple sources told Fox News that GOP leaders and others pushed Ryan so hard that he felt he had to at least get to this point, and outline the conditions for a run.
Those same sources also say Ryan has engineered a way out if necessary, by making significant demands that are hard to meet. If Ryan ultimately does not enter the race, it's unclear who might step up to run for the job -- and more importantly, who would be able to muster 218 votes.

GOP, Democrats maneuver for position ahead of Clinton's appearance before Benghazi committee

Both the GOP and Democrats maneuvered for position ahead of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's long-awaited appearance Thursday before the Benghazi panel, where she is expected to be closely quizzed about her actions during the 2012 assault in Libya that left four Americans dead.
While fireworks could erupt, Clinton will certainly try to avoid showing her frustration, as she did before a Senate panel in 2013, saying, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" referring to the motivation of the Benghazi attackers who killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.
Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy and the six other Republicans on the panel were expected to be equally measured, considering the partisan onslaught that followed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggestion last month that their investigation had hurt Clinton’s polls numbers.
Additional comments by New York Republican Rep. Richard Henna and a GOP investigator on the committee suggesting an over-focus on Clinton has resulted in her team continuing to say the panel is a partisan tool with “zero credibility.”
Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican and former prosecutor, insists the panel has always been about getting all of the facts related to the four deaths, which includes Clinton’s actions “before, during and after” the assault.
Among the likely questions are whether she properly addressed Stevens’ email request for increased security and told U.S. military units to “stand down” during the attacks.
House Speaker John Boehner, who formed the committee in May 2014, on Tuesday defended the probe, amid accusations that it is a taxpayer waste lasting longer than the congressional Watergate investigation.
“Today, the State Department turned over 1,300 pages of printed documents from Ambassador Stevens' emails.” he told Fox News. “Today. They've been stonewalling us now for three years on giving us the documents that we need.”
He also argued Clinton was the country’s top diplomat during the attack and that the committee was set up to “get to the truth about what happened.”
Boehner, Gowdy and other House Republicans also point out that the committee discovered this spring that Clinton, as secretary of state, used a private server and email accounts for official business. They also say that repeated questions about the controversial setup are related to the attacks, not to create headlines.

Jeb Cartoon

Trump’s 9/11 sparring with Bush: The left piles on Jeb’s brother

Donald Trump’s criticism of Jeb Bush’s brother over the 9/11 attacks is resonating strongly with one group:
Liberals.
They are more than happy to seize the moment and blame George W. Bush for the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history.
Take MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who is pumped up over the Trump offensive: “The Democrats never had the stones to go out and challenge George W… because they probably felt that would be un-nice. Trump isn’t un-nice, he’s willing to be tough.”
Brad Woodhouse, a former Democratic Party spokesman, sent out an email saying “Trump is right about 9/11.” That linked to a liberal piece in the Atlantic with the same headline.
Any fair review of what happened would conclude that the Clinton and Bush administrations shared responsibility for the attacks that claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans. The intelligence failures over the al-Qaeda plot, which had been in the works for years, certainly predate Bush, who had only been in office for eight months. But it’s also true that the classified presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001 warned Bush: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”—and there were other warnings as well.
In pure political terms, Trump has shifted the campaign conversation in a way that hurts Jeb. The more time that Jeb spends talking about 2001, the less time he spends talking about the future. And the more time he spends defending his brother, the more he reminds voters that he is the third Bush to seek the White House—which undermines Jeb’s “I’m my own man” theme.
This has become a Trump specialty, to jab at his rivals with a provocative comment that forces them to spend days counterpunching.
The contretemps began with a television interview on Bloomberg, when Trump said this about the 43^rd president: “I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time.”
When anchor Stephanie Ruehl objected, Trump said people could blame Bush or not, but this was a fact: “The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”
That prompted Jeb to tweet that the billionaire’s comments were “pathetic.”
Since the Trump line contradicts Jeb’s narrative that his brother “kept us safe,” Bush stepped it up on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying Trump is not serious when it comes to foreign policy: “Does anybody actually blame my brother for the attacks on 9/11? If they do, they’re totally marginalized in our society.”
But nobody this side of the conspiracy nuts is blaming George Bush for the attacks; some are saying (which was widely reported in the following years, though little remembered now) that his administration missed important signals and that law-enforcement and intelligence agencies failed to share information.
Trump elaborated Monday’s on “Fox & Friends” and Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day,” saying his tougher approach to immigration might have kept most of the hijackers out of the country. (This is debatable, as most of them had valid student and tourist visas.)
And the new focus on what was dubbed the War on Terror enabled Trump to pivot to Iraq, saying on CNN it was “just a disastrous decision” for the former president to launch that invasion and destabilize the Middle East.
Trump also told anchor Alisyn Camerota that “they knew an attack was coming. George Tenet, the CIA director, knew in advance there would be an attack, and he said so.”
It sounded at first glance like Trump might be wading into murky waters, but the key phrase is “an attack.” Tenet was indeed worried about an al-Qaeda attack—he insisted on a meeting with Condi Rice to press the point—but he didn’t know when and where, or that planes would be hijacked.
While liberals are jumping on this Trump bandwagon, some conservatives are upset. Fox’s Dana Perino, Bush’s former press secretary, accused Trump of peddling “liberal conspiracy theories.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a major detractor, ran a piece titled “Trump’s 9/11 Truthing.” The headline is unfair because truthers are those who say the Bush administration was complicit in the attacks.
“Mr. Trump is now trying to blunt that rebuke by distorting the truth about the hijackers and the
Osama bin Laden era…Blaming George W. Bush for the 9/11 attacks is like blaming President Obama for the recession that followed the 2008 financial panic,” the Journal says. “The rise of al Qaeda had been going on for years, and its first attack on U.S. soil was its bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.”
National Review, which is hostile to The Donald, published a column yesterday in which Jeb said Trump “echoes the attacks of Michael Moore and the fringe Left against my brother is yet another example of his dangerous views on national-security issues…
“Donald Trump simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And his bluster overcompensates for a shocking lack of knowledge on the complex national-security challenges that will confront the next president of the United States.”
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Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but Mike Murphy, an 18-year Jeb adviser who runs his Super PAC, broke a long period of media silence by calling Trump “a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he'll never be president of the United States, ever. By definition I don't think you can be a front-runner if you're totally un-electable,” Murphy told Bloomberg.
So Jeb World is fully engaged. And since Bush’s interviews tend not to generate much news, maybe this has brought him more media attention than he’s gotten in weeks.
But he’s playing very much on Trump’s turf, and that has hurt. In the latest CNN poll, Trump hit 27 percent, and Bush is at 8—numbers that, however early, Jeb needs to find a way to change.

Ryan to run for House speaker if he gets full party support

Wisc. Rep. Paul Ryan told House Republicans Tuesday he would run for speaker if he gets broad support from all wings of the party and gave colleagues until Friday to express their views.
Speaking to reporters after a closed-door meeting with colleagues, Ryan said he had “made a few requests for what I think is necessary” and said he’d asked to hear back from them by the end of the week.
“What I told the members is if you can agree to the requests, and if I can be a truly unifying figure, I’ll serve,” Ryan said. “And if I’m not a unifying force, that will be fine as well. I’m happy to stay where I am.”
Saying the country was “in desperate need for leadership,” Ryan added, "My greatest worry is the consequence of not stepping up. Of some day having my own kids ask me, when the stakes were so high, 'Why didn’t you do all you could? Why didn’t you stand and fight for my future when you had the chance?"
At the same time, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah said in a tweet he was dropping out of the race for speaker in favor of Ryan.
“I am out and supporting @RepPaulRyan for Speaker. Right person at the right time,” he tweeted.

More on this...

• Exclusive: John Boehner says it's time for him to 'move on'

Ryan, 45, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, had consistently said earlier he did not want to be speaker and would prefer to stay on as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, which he's described as his dream job.
Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told Fox News’ Bret Baier Tuesday that he thought Ryan “would be a great speaker” and “has the skills to do this job.”

New York City police officer dies after being shot in East Harlem

A New York City police officer was shot and killed late Tuesday in the East Harlem section of the city after he responded to a report of shots fired and an armed robbery.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton identified the murdered officer as Randolph Holder, 33, a five-year veteran of the force. Holder was an officer in the department's Housing Bureau, which polices the city's public housing developments.
"Tonight, he did what every other officer in the NYPD does," Bratton said. "When the call comes, he ran toward danger. It was the last time he will respond to that call."
Bratton said Holder and his partner responded to a report of shots fired at East 102nd Street on the city's Upper East Side. Witnesses told the officers a man had fled on a foot path and the officers encountered another man who told them an assailant had stolen his bicycle at gunpoint. Bratton said the officers confronted the suspect and pursued him to the intersection of East 120th Street and the FDR Drive, where gunfire rang out. One witness told Fox 5 that she heard at least five shots.
Holder was shot in the forehead and rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:22 p.m. Dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers lined the hospital hallway while other officers held each other as they arrived.
"We are humbled by Officer Randolph Holder's example, an example of service and courage and sacrifice," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "Our hearts are heavy. We offer our thoughts and our prayers to his family."
Bratton said the suspect was wounded in the shootout and apprehended four blocks away. The commissioner said the suspect, who has not been identified, was expected to be released from the hospital into police custody Wednesday. Three other man were also taken into custody and questioned.
Holder was a native of Guyana, where his father and grandfather both were police officers, Bratton said.
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said: "New York City police officers every day go out and carry themselves like superheroes. But the reality is when we're attacked, we bleed. When we bleed, we die. And when we die, we cry."
Holder is the fourth NYPD officer to die in the line of duty in the last 11 months.
On May 2, Officer Brian Moore was shot while questioning suspect Demetrius Blackwell in Queens. Moore died of his injuries two days later.
On December 20, detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down as they sat in their car in Brooklyn by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who stated that he wanted to avenge the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner by killing officers. Brinsley later shot himself in the head while fleeing police.
So far this year, 101 police officers have died in the line of duty in the U.S. -- 33 of those deaths caused by gunfire -- according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. By early Wednesday, Holder's name already had been added to the list.

Team Clinton on offense ahead of Benghazi committee hearing

Hillary Clinton and her supporters are blistering the Benghazi committee ahead of her much-anticipated testimony Thursday, repeatedly questioning the GOP-led investigative panel’s “credibility” as the former secretary of state gears up for a potentially confrontational appearance. 
On Wednesday, a super PAC supporting Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign, Priorities USA, will begin running TV ads aimed at bolstering her image ahead of her appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The effort marks the group’s first TV ad buy of the election cycle. But it is also just part of an all-out offensive that unexpectedly started Sept. 29 when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested the committee -- created to investigate the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya -- has hurt Clinton’s poll numbers. Within days, New York Republican Rep. Richard Hanna and a GOP committee investigator also suggested the committee was too focused on Clinton, giving her and campaign officials an opening to call the panel a partisan tool.
“This committee is basically an arm of the Republican National Committee,” Clinton said to applause during last week’s Democratic primary debate. “It is a partisan vehicle, as admitted by … Mr. McCarthy, to drive down my poll numbers.” A few days earlier, Clinton told NBC the committee was “set up … for the purpose of making a partisan, political issue out of the deaths of four Americans.”
It's an allegation that Republican committee Chairman Trey Gowdy has adamantly denied, telling his Democratic committee counterpart as recently as Sunday that the committee "is not investigating Secretary Clinton" or the allegations surrounding her personal email use.
Whether the pre-hearing charges will lead to fireworks Thursday remains to be seen. Gowdy appears to be at pains to show his committee is only interested in getting at the truth regarding the Benghazi attacks, while Clinton publicly casts the panel as a partisan outfit. Clinton showed visible frustration during her 2013 Benghazi-related appearance on Capitol Hill, where she asked "what difference, at this point, does it make" what motivated the attackers. The Democratic presidential front-runner surely is mindful that such an unguarded moment on Thursday could become fodder for GOP ads in the 2016 cycle.
The committee itself was formed last year to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, while Clinton was secretary of state.
The 12-member bipartisan committee discovered this March that Clinton used a private server and email accounts for official business while in office, which has led to an FBI investigation, several other congressional probes and widespread concerns about whether her unusual setup resulted in national security breaches.
Still, Gowdy says the committee is focused on Benghazi. He and Republican committee member Rep. Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, indicated Sunday they have no intentions of closing the investigation and in fact have dozens more witnesses and more information, including new Stevens’ emails.
“The ambassador asked for more security, and it was ignored,” Bradley Blakemen, former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush, said Tuesday.
However, Clinton supporters and others have called for shuttering the 17-month-old committee -- arguing it’s a political sham and a $4.5 million taxpayer waste.
“If you want to get to the truth, you might want to broaden your reach as opposed to … for political reasons, just going after Hillary Clinton,” Democratic strategist David Mercer told FoxNews.com on Tuesday.
Critics have more recently noted that Republican committee members recently summoned long-time Clinton aide-de-camp Huma Abedin to testify while thus far not doing the same for then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, then-CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus and others.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told reporters last week that Clinton would still testify but that Gowdy’s inquiry now has “zero credibility left.”
The counter-attacks have more recently focused on Gowdy. The Washington Post last week found an alleged connection between him and the STOP Hillary PAC that ran a controversial Benghazi ad during the Democratic debate, resulting in Gowdy returning $2,000 in contributions.
The South Carolina Republican and former state and federal prosecutor recently told Politico that the past few weeks have been among “the worst in my life.” In response to Republican non-committee members critiquing their work, he said over the weekend that they should “shut up.”
The hearing Thursday is expected focus in large part on whether Clinton, who in 2013 testified before Congress on Benghazi, adequately responded to concerns by Stevens about security at the Benghazi outpost.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign has produced several videos ahead of Thursday’s hearing including a five-minute highlight reel that touts Clinton’s "smart leadership” as secretary of state.