Ex-DHS Officer Philip Haney Testifies on Alleged “Purge” of Terror Info

Also: Website profile describes Haney as “blessed by the Holy Spirit to teach and communicate relevant information to the Body of Christ regarding Islam and the spiritual warfare taking place in the Middle East.”

Townhall reports from a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Islamic terrorism, chaired by Ted Cruz:

Cruz Hearing Exposes the Obama Admin’s History of Purging References to Islamic Terror

…Mr. Philip Haney, a retired Customs and Border Protection Officer for the Department of Homeland Security, revealed that the CIA has scrubbed more than 800 law enforcement records that were almost all connected to the Muslim brotherhood.

The first “great purge,” he said, was in 2009. Yet, in 2012 they didn’t just modify the records, they eliminated them out of the system, which, he noted, bypasses security protocol in Homeland Security. Why does it matter? Because of San Bernardino. If the department hadn’t edited its records, perhaps they could have caught the San Bernardino terrorist who killed 14 people at a Department of Public Health training event, Haney insinuated.

“There is no such thing as a lone-wolf terrorist,” Haney said. “To look at these acts as separate from community is flawed.”

Haney retired from the DHS late last year, having  worked for it since its founding in 2003. Right Wing Watch noted his claim about San Bernardino in December:

[Frank] Gaffney has been promoting the story of Phillip Haney, a former Department of Homeland Security employee who claims that the Obama administration pulled the plug on an investigation that he was conducting that he claims could possibly have caught the San Bernardino terrorists. It’s hard to tell what of Haney’s story is true since DHS has stayed mum on it other than to tell Fox News that his tale has “many holes.” Haney mentioned in an interview with Sandy Rios this morning that he also locked horns with the Bush administration, but did not provide details.

In February, Haney wrote an article for The Hill, in which he complained that

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”

…As the number of successful and attempted Islamic terrorist attacks on America increased, the type of information that the Obama administration ordered removed from travel and national security databases was the kind of information that, if properly assessed, could have prevented subsequent domestic Islamist attacks like the ones committed by Faisal Shahzad (May 2010), Detroit “honor killing” perpetrator Rahim A. Alfetlawi (2011); Amine El Khalifi, who plotted to blow up the U.S. Capitol (2012); Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing (2013); Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen (2014); or Muhammed Yusuf Abdulazeez, who opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2015)…

Alfetlawi’s name is less known than that of his victim, Jessica Mokdad. Her murder was widely cited as evidence of the horror of honour killings, but it seems that Alfetlawi was in fact motivated by a sexual obsession with his step-daughter (he may even have previously raped her). But either way, it is difficult to see what the case has to do with terrorism, and one is left with the impression that Haney has included it because he wants us to believe that his story sheds light on a wide range of causes célèbres. Such is often the arc of “whistleblower” punditry.

This suspicion is reinforced by the blurb for his book, See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, published by WND Books and co-written with Art Moore. We’re told that the book covers:

  • How the Bush administration stripped him and other frontline officers of their ability to define the threat;
  • How much the Obama administration knew in advance of the Boston Marathon bombing and how it launched an ongoing cover-up on behalf of a major ally;
  • The administration’s stealth policy to protect Islamic leaders with supremacist beliefs and violent-jihadist ties, allowing them to freely travel between the U.S. and the Middle East;
  • The scope of access to the White House and the classified information the Obama administration gave to members of Muslim Brotherhood front groups;
  • The damning intelligence on Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders invited to sit at the table and help form national-security policy;
  • The “words matter” memo imposing the demands of radical U.S. Muslims leaders on the DHS, including stripping intelligence and official communications of any mention of Islam in association with terrorism;
  • The purging of training material that casts Islam in a negative light;
  • The erasing and altering of vital intelligence on terrorists and terror threats;
  • The fear-based tactics imposed by the Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the U.S. and their accomplices that paralyze officials, members of Congress and any Department of Homeland Security employee who dares to expose or resist their agenda; and
  • Much more ….

That’s certainly “much more” than he had to say in February. The “purging of training material” presumably refers to the exposure of pseudo-experts, opportunists, and anti-Islam ideologists who were touting harmful and incompetent courses up to 2011 (blogged here); on the Boston Marathon, there was a conspiracy theory which connected the attack to Saudi Arabia, but that was comprehensively debunked. One can’t help wondering how much of the book is simply Haney raking over old right-wing talking points rather than offering an insider’s insights.

The WND webpage for Haney’s book comes with a video endorsement from Michelle Bachmann, and a new WND article explains that Haney has met with Bachmann on several occasions:

“I lived that story with Phil, and actually it was my assistant that I had asked to go to the highways and byways and bring every person that you could to me,” Bachmann said during a recent appearance on “Understanding the Times Radio” with Jan Markell.

“I sat on the Intelligence Committee, which dealt with classified secrets of our nation, and terrorism, and I wanted to find out the whole truth on what was going on with terrorism and with our country. I had suspected that maybe we weren’t getting the whole story in front of my committee, and so my assistant brought Phil Haney to me.”

…”What I tried to do was introduce Phil to as many members of Congress as I could, keeping a protective shield over him, a bubble, so that he wouldn’t be fired,” Bachmann told Markell. “He had no reason to be fired, but he knew that he was operating in the Obama administration and that he potentially could be fired.”

…Bachmann took Haney to committee chairs, subcommittee chairs and other members of Congress.

Understanding the Times focuses on “current events, Bible Prophecy and apologetics” (I previously noted Markell here). And that’s perhaps of relevance in itself, given that Haney also appears on a website called “Mystery of Israel”, where we’re told that:

Philip is a gifted brother… who comes to us from Marietta, GA where he lives with his wife Francesca. Philip has been blessed by the Holy Spirit to teach and communicate relevant information to the Body of Christ regarding Islam and the spiritual warfare taking place in the Middle East. As an anti-terrorism intelligence officer with specialty in Hamas and Tablighi Jamaat, Philip has made numerous trips to Israel working with the Dept. of Homeland Security. He works from the Atlanta International Airport (the busiest airport in the world).

An accompanying photo also confirms that this is definitely the same person. The website is run by a certain Reggie Kelly (shown here in discussion with “Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet” Joel Richardson), and Haney is billed as a “teacher” at an event called “Convocation 2012”. Topics at the event included “Jesus’ Last Great Teaching”, “Jerusalem or Babylon?”, “The Abomination of Desolation” and “How God Uses Tribulation”. Haney himself spoke on “Jerusalem: The City of the Great King”; the year before, his theme had been “Principalities and Powers: The Strategy and Tactics of the Global Islamic Movement”.

Oddly, Haney’s commitment to a form of apocalyptic Christian Zionism that identifies Islam as a demonic force in the Last Days is not stressed in the various conservative articles promoting his claims.

Bachmann also arranged for Haney to give a half-hour presentation via the National Press Club, where he spoke on the Orlando shooting. Haney says that he looked at the website of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, where he saw the following:

And lo and behold what do I find right on their website that they’re directly affiliated with the Shariah Board of America. Well, right off there there’s a big bright blinking red light, because the word “Shariah” should be an immediate warning. Shariah law is illegal in the United States…

Actually, the “big bright blinking” warning here is that Haney’s analytical abilities are wanting. There is nothing “illegal” about the Sharia Board of America, any more than there is anything “illegal” about the Beth Din of America. If that’s the basis on which Haney was identifying terrorist conspiracies, it’s little wonder that his employer was less than appreciative. But then again, I don’t claim to be “blessed by the Holy Spirit” when it comes to the subject.

There is also a DVD of a “Capitol Hill Briefing with Philip Haney” available from Brigitte Gabriel‘s Act for America. In the advert for the DVD, Haney says that he was asked “to do something illegal” by his boss.

Haney’s co-author, Art Moore, has written a number of articles for WND that chronicle and promote Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s birther antics, and WND‘s birtherism previously brought WND editor Joseph Farah into direct contact with Donald Trump. This is also of some relevance: if Haney has a serious point to make, why would he so readily associate with a milieu known for the most extreme politicized conspiracy mongering? Why did the road from The Hill lead downwards to WND and websites like Breibart rather than upwards to serious news and commentary outlets?

2 Responses

  1. thanks for the only review I could find that did not come from the same conspiracy theorist groups and readers who swallow his perspective hook line and sinker.

  2. “There is nothing “illegal” about the Sharia Board of America,”

    Actually, there is. Article VI of the Constitution says that the Constitution “shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

    In other words, this isn’t about freedom of religion or freedom of speech. It is about the supremacy of the United States Constitution. No other system of law is allowed to be practiced.

    “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

    The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

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