US military infiltrated by ‘potential terrorists,’ says Rep. Pete King

Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) says the U.S. military has been infiltrated by “a significant number of people” who are tied to “radical movements and who could be potential terrorists.”

Speaking Thursday on “Fox and Friends,” King discussed his fourth hearing into the radicalization of Muslim-Americans within the U.S., which opened on Wednesday.

“There are a significant number of people who have enlisted in the military or are in the military who we believe have Islamic ties, who are tied to radical movements and who could be potential terrorists themselves,” King said. “It is a growing, growing concern.”

{mosads}On Wednesday, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, along with the committee’s Senate chairman, Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), held a joint hearing in which they said the U.S. military was the “most sought-after” target for “radical Islamist extremist groups.”

King said the number of terrorist attacks against the U.S. military, including the 2009 shootings at a military recruiting station in Arkansas and at Texas’s Fort Hood, which killed 14 people and wounded more than two dozen, are accelerating.

“The fact is there is growing Islamic radicalization in this country, and as Sen. Lieberman and I showed yesterday — there is clearly growing Islamic radicalization both within the United States military and also there’s been a definite increase in attacks in this country against the American military,” King said. “There’s been 33 attacks against the American military in this country since Sept. 11, and 70 percent of them have occurred in the last two years.”

King blamed “an overriding tendency in this administration to try and treat these as workplace incidents, to somehow not highlight the fact that it is Islamic terrorism” responsible for the uptick in the attacks.

“They don’t want to give any impression that somehow there’s a difference between Islamic terrorism and a person who happens to be a burglar or a bank robber,” he said.

In his opening remarks on Wednesday, King said the U.S. military has become the top target for homegrown Islamic terrorists, and noted that the only Americans to die in the U.S. from terrorist attacks since 9/11 were killed at U.S. military facilities.