Ginni Thomas

National security expert: Agents should be able to conduct surveillance inside churches, mosques [VIDEO]

Paul Conner Executive Editor
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National security expert Dr. Sebastian Gorka believes the push for political correctness in the U.S. has hurt America’s ability to defend itself.

Gorka, a military affairs fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also told The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas that federal agents should be permitted to carry out surveillance activities inside churches or mosques, if indeed the person being monitored is considered a threat to national security.

He also suggested that some do continue surveillance inside places of worship, even without the proper permission.

“I do a lot of work with FBI agents. I have been told that if someone is surveilling a known jihadi, a known person of interest on U.S. soil and they have audio and video surveillance on that individual, if that person goes into a mosque, in certain parts of the law enforcement in the United States, if that agents tells his superiors that he is tracking somebody and he is going into a mosque, he prefers not to tell them, because he will be told to switch off his surveillance equipment, because his superiors think that’s where the separation of church and state — or mosque and state — is,” Gorka said. “When that is a wholly misrepresented version of what that truly means.”

“I don’t care if that bad guy is going into a temple or a church or an ashram, if he is a person who can threaten Americans, we need to be following him, and that’s where political correctness invades upon national security,” he said.

He also said that U.S. officials should be honest in describing the threat from Islamists.

“If the enemy controls what you’re allowed to say about him, you’re already losing.”

Look for the full interview with Gorka Monday.

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