Mike McCaul Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Mike McCaul:
We're trying to find needles in the haystack, and the needles are going dark, and it's because of this phenomenon we can't track their movements.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I predict you're going to see more and more of this shifting of al Qaeda fighters going over to ISIS because they are the game in town.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
When you project weakness throughout the world, and you have a failed foreign policy, this is what you get. And now we have chaos in the Middle East, have ISIS taking over Iraq, Syria, Northern Africa, Egypt.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
The phenomena here is the foreign fighter threat, the revolving door from Europe to the region in Iraq and Syria and back through Turkey, back into Europe. And that's what happened in the Paris attackers.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Violent extremism is going viral, but our response to it is moving at bureaucratic, sluggish speed.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I want to give the American people assurances that we are protecting them.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think the effective thing is, I passed this bill to combat violent extremism in the United States as effective outreach to the Muslim community, so you can pull the religious leaders really on to our team, if you will, to protect us from radicalization from within those communities.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We didn't take the words of Vladimir Lenin seriously until Communism spread across the globe. And unfortunately, the president didn't take the words of groups like ISIS seriously until they established a sweeping self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I am extremely concerned that Syrian and ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speeds to recruit followers in the United States with thousands of followers in the United States and then activate them to do whatever they want to do.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
In Europe, you have very different situation than you do in the United States. In Europe, it's very segregated. And you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw. And they're being radicalized because they're not assimilated with the culture. I don't think we have that same situation in the United States.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We should be careful not to vilify encryption itself, which is essential for privacy, data security, and global commerce.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I was in Cairo, Egypt, where Sinai - ISIS conducted the Russian airliner downing. We're concerned about safety and security at these last point-of-departure airports flying directly into the United States - in that case, JFK.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Do we want a back door in an iPhone where the government can go in to track movements if they have probable cause? I know the director of the FBI and local law enforcement want that capability.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
The sad fact is, because we've had a failed policy and failed leadership, now we're having to rely on Russians and the Iranians to go into Syria to fight and destroy ISIS.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think it's important to note that after the airstrikes began in Iraq and Syria, ISIS began a very aggressive social media campaign calling for these types of attacks, these lone wolf attacks.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
The head of ISIS called for attacks during the season of Ramadan, which is what you have seen both in Orlando and now in Istanbul at the airport.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We think there should be a better countering-violent-extremism effort, that there should be a lead agency tasked to handle that.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We want to do this methodically, smart, starting with border security then looking at immigration reform measures.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
It's a very angry electorate out there. I think Trump is tapping into that.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We are ramping up security in the United States but also looking at visa applicants, visa waiver applicants - and looking at travel manifests on the airplanes trying to come into the United States.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I am speaking as a Republican now, not a national security expert, but I believe that my party needs to come together.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Now we have a generational threat struggle called Islamist extremism.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We need to look at how we can better fortify our force protection at military installations. But also, how can we deal with these mental health issues with our returning veterans? And our suicide rate in the military is twice as high as the average population.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We do a very good job at fixing broken bodies but not such a great job at healing broken minds with our returning veterans.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
You can have the best technology, but you if have a corrupted, radicalized, bribed official that has access to the plane to put the bomb in the cargo, as what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh, that's a real problem.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I would like to take a moment of silence to remember all those who lost their lives at the hands of ISIS, especially Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and, most recently, Kayla Mueller.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the largest external operation force within al Qaeda.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
This is an unprecedented pace of terror in modern times. And so, to say they're on the run absolutely defies reality.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Traditionally, you support your nominee for president, and so when I went to Cleveland, I gave a strong speech about Hillary Clinton and her devastating foreign policy, but also in the support of the nominee. I think that's an obligation that we have to support the nominee.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Terror threats to the U.S. homeland have reached unprecedented levels.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I take ISIS at its word. When they said, in their words, 'We'll use and exploit the refugee crisis to infiltrate the West,' that concerns me.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
ISIS is the greatest threat.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Our adversaries no long fear us, and our enemies are plotting against us.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We're seeing Iran now through the Shia militias in Iraq. We're seeing Iran in Syria; we know the Quds Force is in there.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Social media campaigns and the savviness of ISIS and propaganda is what greatly concerns us Homeland Security officials.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Now we're dealing with a younger generation of terrorists that are very, very savvy with computer skills, very savvy over the Internet, and very savvy with social media of the likes that we have never seen before.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
What I'm concerned about are two things. I think one that John Miller talked about, and that's the radicalization over the Internet that ISIS is very adept at doing. The other one is a foreign fighter threat.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We cannot stop what we cannot see.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Churchill didn't dance around the Nazis; he called it fascism.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think there is a failure in foreign policy. And you have to acknowledge that under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton was the architect of that foreign policy. Whether it was malevolent or not, I don't know.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I'm very disturbed about the uptick in shootings and violence at our military installations across the nation.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
The dark space is one of the biggest concerns on the part of counterterrorism officials right now. Comey did a good job of explaining how they jump into a direct messaging box and then go into platforms designed specifically to be secure. There's no way, even if we have a lawful court order, to be able to access those communications.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
The threat is real, and it comes from the Internet. This is a new generation of terrorist. This is not Bin Laden in caves with couriers anymore. This is what the new threat of terrorism looks like.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We have entered a new phase in Islamist terror. Fifteen years after 9/11, our enemies have regained their momentum.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
This policy of containment is not a winning strategy. We need a policy to defeat and destroy ISIS once and for all.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think Mrs. Clinton has a lot of weaknesses because she was the architect of the Obama administration's foreign policy.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Our United States military is not our threat.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
First and foremost, my job is to protect the American people.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Delay is not our friend. Delay is our enemy.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We're dealing with an enemy now, ISIS, that has a very sophisticated social media program.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
That's what really concerns me about the modern-day terrorists that we face is this global expansion.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We've had to pull out of so many countries in Northern Africa.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
This is the new wave, the new generation of terrorism. It's gone viral. It's very dangerous, and it's very hard to stop.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I'm a big supporter of our United States military.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Remember, the Boston bombers were Chechen rebels.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
One of the chapters outlined in my book talks about the Iranian influence with Venezuela, these terror flights that go back and forth that we don't manifests on, and then nuclear material smuggled across our unsecure southwest border from Mexico into the United States.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Anything I can do to help destroy ISIS, I will support that.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
There's no national strategy to deal with combating terrorism and foreign fighters.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Without - you know, good intelligence stops plots against the homeland. Without that intelligence, we cannot effectively stop it.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
What is our capability when someone posts a public social media posting that says that they're going to conduct attacks on the United States on behalf of the Islamic State. Why can't we pick up that information and then stop that act of terror?
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We talk a lot about operational control, and that's having a better understanding of who's coming in and who's leaving, what the threat really is. We're never really going to get that.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I know there's a lot of discussion about building a 2000-mile wall. I think we need to complete the Secure Fencing Act, but we need greater technology and aviation aspects down on the Southwest border so we can see the threat from the sky. Until you can see it, you don't know where it's coming from and how to correctly stop it.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We have about 200,000 ISIS tweets per day that hit the United States. The chatter is so loud and the volume is so high that it's a problem that's very hard to stop and disrupt in this country.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
You can have the best technology, but if you have an inside job of a worker that has access to the plane that's corrupted or bribed or radicalized, they can get a bomb on that aircraft and blow it up.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I don't think Mr. Putin has our best interests at heart.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
200,000 ISIS tweets a day, 1,000 investigations in all 50 states. It's really hard to stop all of it. But we have to get control over this Internet propaganda that is poisoning the minds of the United States.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We're a compassionate nation.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Yemen is one of the most dangerous spots in the world.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I can reveal today that the U.S. government has information to indicate that individuals tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
What you're seeing is tension that we've seen for years between President Erdogan and his military, his military being more secular, President Erdogan being a little more in the Islamist side of the house.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I cannot support a program that could potentially bring jihadists into the United States.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We are monitoring very closely threats against the pope as he comes in to the United States.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
In the radical Islamist jihad world, you're seeing more and more recruits going to ISIS rather than al-Qaida.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
It is time for President Obama to admit that - in this new age of peer-to-peer terror - we need a real strategy to combat radicalization at home and destroy extremist safe havens abroad.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think Syria is now the training ground for the world... These rebel forces are more of a threat than anything.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Cairo has flights into JFK, and they're going to open another one at Dulles... As long as we have flights coming directly to the United States, I think it's putting Americans at risk.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I don't think Mr. Snowden woke up one day and had the wherewithal to do this all by himself. I think he was helped by others.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think, in Washington, getting things for the great people of Texas done is an important job.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
There's a conspiracy going on online every day between these top U.K. individuals within ISIS leadership out of Syria.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
The pope is a very... passionate man. He likes to get out with the people, and with that comes a large security risk.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I would advise Donald Trump to try to bring and unify this party together.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We are in a struggle against the forces of radical Islam and terror, which must be defeated for our children and our grandchildren.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We need a military strategy to defeat terrorists on the ground.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We have a failed state in Syria.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
A Trump administration will take on this fight and send a clear message to the Islamist terrorists: you may have fired the first shot, but rest assured, America will fire the last.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We pulled out of Libya. Now look what's happened: a safe haven, a vacuum, ISIS training militants to hit in Tunisia.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Obama is dedicated to a 'drip, drip' doctrine.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I was a federal prosecutor when we exercised powers under the Patriot Act or under the FISA court.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
It's one thing for someone to travel over to Syria and Iraq and come back. But, boy, it's a lot easier if they activate someone who's already here.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Libya is a failed state and becoming a launching pad for external operations, as is Sinai in Egypt.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
We know there are terrorists communicating with individuals in the United States. We just can't see what they're saying.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think there's kind of a simplistic, kind of knee-jerk response that all you have to do is build a 2,000-mile wall, and problem solved.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
I think a lot of people don't realize that our military that defends our freedoms abroad, when they come home to the military base, are not allowed to carry weapons.
~Mike McCaul
Link:
Share:
Permalink:
Browse: