America is Less Safe than 1 Year Ago

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday night that Americans are less “safe” than they were a year ago.

During an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, the former Republican congressman from Georgia blamed a federal bureaucracy that is “so lacking in focus” that even though the father of the accused Christmas Day bomber warned a U.S. embassy about his son, “we couldn’t find a way to stop him.”

“We are not safe. We are in much greater danger than we were a year ago,” Gingrich said, though adding that “it’s not just Bush versus Obama.”

“The North Koreans had an additional year to build missiles,” he said. “Iranians had an additional year to develop their nuclear weapons and keep paying for terrorists. Al-Qaeda had an additional year. And by the way, two of the top four people in al-Qaeda in Yemen were released from Guantanamo Bay.”

Gingrich also accused the administration of “very quietly” signing an executive order that removes “all American constraints” from the international police force Interpol.

“Freedom of information acts don't apply,” he said. “All the constraints that you as a citizen could use against an American police force, based on a recent Obama signed executive order, give Interpol – which has relationships with Syria, Libya, with Iran – it gives them all sorts of extra legality in the United States in a way that has never, ever before been offered to Interpol.”

The reason, Gingrich said, that the Obama administration would provide more leeway to an international force, is that Attorney General Eric Holder is most concerned with “protecting the rights of terrorists.”

“He lives in a world where somehow the United States is dangerous and the United States government is dangerous,” Gingrich said of Holder.

In his December executive order, Obama expanded on Executive Order 12425 – signed by President Ronald Reagan – granting Interpol the same exemptions provided by numerous groups under the International Organizations Immunities Act. Reagan’s order did not include provisions blocking the search and seizure of property and records of Interpol employees – as it the act provided for other groups – or grant the organization exemptions on federal taxes, property taxes and social security. - Politico Story