"Now, how many Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists are here already?" said King. "The highly-disciplined soldiers of Hezbollah are trained to lie low for years, or for decades. Those who have gone up against this enemy for our government estimate the number to be at a minimum--at a minimum--in the hundreds." At the same hearing, the former chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration testified that Mexican drug cartels are in "very close contact" with Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda. He then pointed to what he called the possibility of a "nightmare scenario" in which Hezbollah and the Iranian al Quds force "focus on our Southwest border and use that as perhaps a springboard in attacking our country."
“When most people think of, you know, [the] drugs-terror nexus, they immediately think of Latin America,” Michael Braun, who retired from the DEA in 2008, told the committee on Wednesday. “But let me be perfectly clear," he said. "As Europe’s demand for cocaine continues to grow and as the Mexican and Colombian cartels, including the FARC, have sent their operatives into West Africa and North Africa to establish the transshipment infrastructure needed to move tons of those drugs, these bad guys are now routinely coming in very close contact with the likes of Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda who are vying for the same money, the same turf, and the same dollars.”
Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda and FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) all have been officially designated by the U.S. government as foreign terrorist organizations. “If anyone thinks for a moment that Hezbollah and the [Iranian] Quds Force, the masters at leveraging and exploiting existing illicit infrastructures globally, are not going to focus on our Southwest border and use that as perhaps a springboard in attacking our country, then they just don’t understand how the real underworld works.” Homeland Security Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) told the hearing, "we know" that Hezbollah "is in America," and that the Iranian-sponsored group "has been trained to lie low for years."
"Since 9/11, America's counter-terror officials have focused on finding al Qaeda operatives inside America, as weill as homegrown radicalized Islamist extremists ready to perpetrate violence against our people," King said. "Now, as Iran moves closer to nuclear wepaons, and there is increasing concern over war between Iran and Israel, we must also focus on Iran's secret operatives and their No. 1 terrorist proxy force, Hezbollah, which we know is in America," King said. "That's right. We know Hezbollah operatives are here," King emphasized. "The question is whether these Hezbollah operatives have the capacity to carry out attacks on the homeland, and how quickly they can become fully operational." "More than 20 federal investigation since 9/11 identified by the majority's investigative staff offer a chilling view of Iranian and Hezbollah's operations inside the United States," said King.
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