Republicans To FBI: Put Those Anti-Muslim Materials Back!

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) delivers the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. on February 12, 2011.
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A few Republican members of Congress would really like the FBI to stop coddling Muslims.

Right-wing blogs have been complaining for months about the FBI’s decision to purge less than one percent of their counterterrorism training materials which a review found contained inaccurate, and often inflammatory information about Islam. On Wednesday, a few members of Congress joined the fight to get that biased information reinstated.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) demanded that FBI Director Robert Mueller turn over the names of the subject experts the FBI used to review their counterterrorism training materials. Rep. Howard Cobel (R-NC) also suggested the Obama administration was forcing the FBI to get rid of materials because of political correctness.

Their remarks followed Rep. Allen West’s comment last month which suggested the FBI was committing “cultural suicide” and letting the Muslim Brotherhood influence policy.

“If we continue to be recalcitrant in identifying who the enemy is and want to be less offensive to them, then we’re going to put ourselves in a bad situation,” West said. “Now you have an environment of political correctness which precludes these agents from doing their proper job and due diligence to go after the perceived threat.”

Rep. Trent Franks told CQ earlier this year that the FBI was letting outside parties “censor the true or critical material from FBI training curricula just because someone feels it to be politically incorrect.”

The FBI said in March that their review of 160,000 of pages of training materials found that less than one percent contained “factually inaccurate or imprecise information or used stereotypes.” The bureau issued guidelines on how training should be handled in the future.

Their statements echoed the concerns expressed by Brigitte Gabriel, president of the anti-Muslim group ACT, who wrote that “Political correctness must not trump constitutional rights, nor hamper our country’s ability to protect itself by muzzling law enforcement or hoodwinking its citizens.”

Mueller stood by the FBI’s review, which came about after Wired magazine brought some of the materials to light.

“I can say absolutely and with certainty that political correctness played no role in the efforts we/I undertook to make sure that we give the best training to our personnel,” Mueller said at Wednesday’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. “It does us no good to have personnel who are trained with inadequate materials or misguided materials.”

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