McCaul: When you vote, ask yourself if you feel safer

America’s national security has fallen behind significantly since President Obama took office, said McCaul, who previously served as Texas’ deputy attorney general and as the U.S. attorney general’s chief of counterterrorism and national security.

Citing the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., McCaul said the threat isn’t going away. “I wish it would, but it’s not going away in my lifetime. I just hope it goes away in my children’s lifetime.”

Though he said that prospect should deter Americans from voting for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election this fall, he also has yet to endorse Donald Trump, who McCaul said will need guidance on national security and foreign affairs. “I don’t think that’s his particular strength right now, but I think it can be with the right team around him,” McCaul said.

He also voiced frustration with Cuba, which in June denied visa applications from McCaul and several other lawmakers who were seeking to inspect suspected lackluster security at the country’s airports. The island nation, which sits 90 miles off the coast of Florida, is set to begin sending 110 daily flights into the U.S. this fall.

“This whole let’s open Cuba up to everybody — well, they just denied the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee access to Cuba,” McCaul said.

Washington Examiner: The president has been pushing for gun control in the wake of the Orlando shooting. If you were president, what would have been your response to Orlando?

McCaul: First, I would have acknowledged what it was, and that’s the impact of radical Islamist extremism in the United States and the threat that’s very real to Americans. The president did the right thing by going to Orlando personally and grieving with the victims. That was probably the deadliest attack since 9/11.

I think we have to tackle the root of the problem, this radicalization from within. The fact that it’s pervasive over the Internet and that it’s coming out of Iraq and Syria and northern Africa. It has expanded into that part of the world, and quite frankly, [we must] take it seriously. And have a military strategy, political, diplomatic and a counter-narrative that’s portent to the ideology that it’s spreading.

We don’t do an effective job countering this violent extremism or radicalization within the United States and overseas as well. We are losing this war of ideas and ideology that’s spreading across the globe on the Internet, which has provided a recruitment tool for the jihadists.

Bin Laden was very primitive in his communications, sort of cage and courier. Now they have the Internet and a new generation of terrorists to exploit the Internet to its advantage. They are, in my judgment, winning, not on the run.

“I wish it would, but it’s not going away in my lifetime. I just hope it goes away in my children’s lifetime,” Rep. Michael McCaul said of recent attacks, including the one in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo)

Examiner: The Democratic National Committee was hacked last week, possibly by the Russian government, but possibly by other parties as well. What are your observations on that?

McCaul: It shows that our defenses are weak in the United States, and that we are under attack. I would say this was espionage. We saw 20 million security clearances stolen from the federal government in addition to 80 million healthcare records from Anthem that were big data theft. They were put on top of each other and are exploited for espionage purposes.

Those particular attacks came out of China. The DNC attack came out of Russia. You have Russia, China, North Korea hits Sony and you have Iran that hits our financial sector every day.

We need to really harden our defenses in the United States from these sorts of attacks. The bill I passed last December was the landmark cyberbill that will help share threat information to protect our critical infrastructures.

Examiner: Is the U.S. falling behind on cyber? Why?

McCaul: To some extent it hasn’t been given proper attention. That’s a lack of information, both Congress and the executive branch, and I think it’s an ever-evolving threat that is moving so fast it’s hard to stay in front of it.

We’re very good at our offensive capability in terms of cyberoperations or Cyber Command to bring things down overseas, but we’re not very good at defending the nation from these attacks. Both with the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, I’ve been working very hard to make sure that our defenses here in the United States are improved.

Examiner: On a scale of one to 10, how secure is the average member of Congress from a nation-state trying to hack them?

McCaul: I don’t know if I can scale it. I think we’re vulnerable. I think we have pretty good protection and defensive measures in place.

The thing what worries me is the way that kind of OPM was inside credentials, or [Edward] Snowden with NSA. That’s always a vulnerability. The best technology, whether it’s screening at airports or screening email traffic and intrusions, if you have an insider who has access to the system, they can really get in and really compromise things.

The DNC hacking incident “shows that our defenses are weak in the United States, and that we are under attack,” said McCaul. (AP Photo)

Examiner: Wasn’t OPM phishing through a contractor?

McCaul: Yeah, they used old credentials and employee credentials at OPM and they got in. The Chinese were in our networks for about 14 months before we discovered them, which is crazy.

I’m trying to leverage the private sector a lot. I think there are some really good solutions out there, some software that can detect aberrant behavior on the networks. If someone is going into places they wouldn’t normally go into, it would automatically firewall it off and then have a kill switch for the user. That would have detected the OPM breach and stopped it and perhaps Snowden as well.

Examiner: Do you think Cyber Command should be broken off into its own unit apart from the NSA?

McCaul: It’s an interesting question. There have been discussions about that, or a sort of JSOC, joint special operations center [focused on] cyber. I think Cyber Command has the offensive capabilities, but again, standing up in the event there’s an act of cyberwarfare, are they capable of doing that is a question.

DHS has the protection of critical infrastructures in the United States. But in a time of warfare, the military obviously has to stand up, and the question is if Cyber Command is capable of doing that, or should we think about the idea of a joint special operation center that’s cyber?

Examiner: You launched a commission on digital security and encryption in February. Do you expect Congress to make any progress on that before the end of the year?

McCaul: I’m hopeful. I know it’s within the jurisdiction of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and [Chairman] Ron Johnson is taking a hard look at it. It could potentially have a markup in the near future. I think it’s too important and big of an issue for just staffers on the Hill to solve, with all due respect.

I have a lot of respect for staff on the Hill and members, but this is such a complex issue and so important that experts and stakeholders in the subject matters need to be weighing in on a national dialogue and advising the Congress how to go forward. We can make mistakes if we don’t do it right.

Encryption is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing in some respects. It’s security. They have learned how to exploit encryption and turn it against us. For instance, in Paris and Brussels they learned to use apps like Telegram to communicate point to point.

They’re now evolving where they can not only hide their communications, but hide their ISP addresses. Now we wouldn’t know who’s talking to whom, when and where. That concerns federal law enforcement for a variety of reasons in the intelligence community.

It used to be we could capture those and stop and disrupt plots, but if you can’t see it, you can’t stop it. Say someone [overseas] is talking to someone in Washington. You can at least put resources around that individual in the United States to monitor them. If they mask the ISPs, we can’t even see that.

Then the Apple phone issue is very complicated. The government asking a private company to create a vulnerability in its own system and exploit that is very complex. I think the end result was appropriate, and the FBI got the tools necessary to open them rather than forcing a private company to do it themselves. That’s more evidentiary, but that’s a huge issue.

[The commission has] been endorsed by so many people because it is a good idea. [CIA Director] John Brennan came out last week endorsing it, saying this working group stuff on the Hill is all fine and well, but it’s not going to get the answers we need. This commission, like a 9/11-style commission, is the way we need to go forward.

“Encryption is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing in some respects. It’s security,” said McCaul. (iStock Photo)

Examiner: Let’s shift to the Supreme Court decision on executive amnesty. The court just upheld a lower court’s decision finding that executive amnesty was unconstitutional. How is that going to affect border security? Was it a big victory for Texas?

McCaul: I think it was a victory for the Constitution and the Congress because we, under the Constitution, determine the immigration laws. Some would say we need to reform them, and I think it’s a broken system that needs to be reformed, but I do think we need to secure the border. In terms of enforcement and security at the border: enforcement, yes, security, no.

I’ve had a bill out for a year to secure the border, and at some point Congress is going to have to pass this and get it done. We just haven’t had the political will to secure the border. And we can get it done through a variety of ways. It’s a multi-layered approach of not just fencing — fencing works, to some extent — but also technology, aviation assets and manpower, boots on the ground responding.

McCaul says the Supreme Court deciding to uphold a lower court’s decision finding that executive amnesty was unconstitutional “was a victory for the Constitution and the Congress because we, under the Constitution, determine the immigration laws.” (AP Photo)

Examiner: What else is on your legislative agenda between now and the next president taking office?

McCaul: We’re looking at some smaller border bills. This McCaul-Warner commission would be a huge step forward. We’re looking at [Transportation Security Administration] in terms of how can we reform it, possibly enabling airports to privatize if they want to.

We did this bipartisan task force on foreign fighters countering radical extremism, and we have a few more recommendations we can turn into legislation.

We’ve already passed some of these counterterrorism bills that we may put on the [Federal Aviation Administration] bill extension, which would be a must pass.

One thing that concerns me [is] we just came back from a trip to the Persian Gulf on an aircraft carrier. We saw the F/A-18s flying into Iraq and Syria. We went to Syene in Egypt — where ISIS is — and Camp North. It was so extreme that when we left they evacuated the camp the next day. We were in Tunisia and saw the museum that was shot by the terrorists.

We got briefed by the Libyan team that’s in exile right now — the Libyan ambassador — which they said is a failed state. We have 5,000 foreign fighters out of Tunisia, we have 6,000 ISIS in Libya, that’s actually growing, not contracting, so we’re worried about the last points in departure airports.

We went to Cairo, and they have flights into JFK and Dulles airport. It really concerns me some of these flights. I thought security was inadequate in Cairo. I don’t want to see what ISIS did, and that’s put a bomb on an airplane. It was a Russian jet, in that case, but it was supposed to be a British plane. But they have the external operation capability to do that stuff — the insider threat.

Examiner: On the issue of airport security, Cuba just rejected your visa applications to inspect their departure airports.

McCaul: Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of the United States, they’re going to have [up to] 110 [daily] flights coming in now, and we wanted to look at their last point of departure airports.

We wanted to look at their security down there because TSA has been back-channeling to us that it’s not adequate, and I attempted to go down there to just look at it. There were five of us, and they denied our visas. This whole let’s open Cuba up to everybody — well, they just denied the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee access to Cuba and denied my visa application.

Examiner: Where do you go from here?

McCaul: They just did not want a guy like me going down there looking at their security because I may have seen problems, right? It’s hard to know where to go from here. We’re not going to let the issue die because it’s too important.

I don’t want inbound flights that could potentially be compromised with bombs on them. You get drugs coming in on these flights from Puerto Rico; you have drugs on flights in the United States. So, if you can get drugs on a plane, you can get a bomb on a plane. And I think that’s the point.

Examiner: Can you compare your experience as deputy attorney general of Texas to your current one as a congressman? Which group is easier to work with: people in D.C or people in Texas?

McCaul: I guess both. That’s kind of what I do in my current job. I work with people back home and up here. It’s a little more political back home. It’s a little more policy-based here.

My background as deputy attorney general — I had some creative initiatives to tackle child pornography and child predators to Project Exile, which is a gun prosecution idea that we did statewide.

I think this job allows some creativity to accomplish things for the good of the American people. I think being in the U.S. Attorney’s office as a counterterrorism guy was a great experience and great background for what I’m doing now, because I understand terrorists. I’ve been doing this and have had a passion for it for quite some time now. I think it prepared me well for the job I’m doing today.

Examiner: How would Hillary Clinton compare on national security to the presumptive nominee?

McCaul: I think our nominee is going to need advice. He needs to surround himself with good advisers on national security and foreign policy. I don’t think that’s his particular strength right now, but I think it can be with the right team around him. [Ronald] Reagan, that wasn’t his deal either, but he surrounded himself with good people and that made him very credible.

Clinton has a lot of experience on it, but it’s not exactly good experiences. She has some bad experiences. She’s been the architect for a lot of the problems we have today. The reset with Putin did not go too well. I was with Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker just yesterday talking about what happened in Iraq.

The failure of the Status of Forces Agreement when they basically gave it to them. And the political malfeasance not to engage with Prime Minister [Nouri al-] Maliki.

I met with Condoleezza Rice, who said Hillary Clinton only went to Baghdad one day for three hours to talk to [Maliki]. They were totally disengaged and just wanted to pull out of Iraq at all costs. And we saw what happened. Say what you want about Bush, but they did leave it stabilized.

McCaul says that while presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has a lot of experience on national security, “it’s not exactly good experiences. She has some bad experiences. She’s been the architect for a lot of the problems we have today.” (AP Photo)

It shows the point that you can’t completely withdraw. You need a presence to maintain the stability, so when we completely withdrew, the whole place imploded and now what’s happened? Al Qaeda in Iraq has morphed into ISIS. The Islamic State now is there. We’re relying on the Shia militias under the ayatollah to fight this war against ISIS. This is crazy.

Iran is now filling the vacuum. The Islamic State is filling the vacuum. Assad is still in power as a magnate for jihadists, and guess what? Now the Russians are in there, to really complicate things.

I think the optics are, from parts of the world, we’re embracing Iran so much with our deal at all costs with all other nations that we have this alliance with Russia and Iran, so the rest of that region — Turkey, the gulf states and Saudi [Arabia] — are confused as to what our foreign policy really is.

I think it’s been a failed foreign policy, and I think the architect of that foreign policy is Hillary Clinton. Given the right arguments, our nominee and his surrogates would have a very good opportunity to point that out to the American people. The question is, do you feel safer today than you did before? Reagan said do you feel better off. Well, do you feel safer? The answer is no. Most people would say, “No, I don’t.”

Boston, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Orlando. When’s the next one? Paris, Brussels, bombs on airplanes. Like I mentioned in the very beginning, the Internet is expanding its threat globally. And it’s not going away anytime soon. I wish it would, but it’s not going away in my lifetime. I just hope it goes away in my children’s lifetime.

Examiner: Who would you like to see the party nominate for vice president when the [Republican National Convention] convenes?

McCaul: I think there are several candidates out there who would be very qualified. I guess the question is whether they would be interested.

Examiner: Whom would you pick if you were the presidential nominee?

McCaul: I think a good pick from a political map standpoint and political talent would be somebody like [Marco] Rubio in Florida. Obviously the presumptive nominee has to do a better job repairing his relationship with minorities. And I think somebody like Rubio would be a good pick in that regard.

It always comes down to Florida. Maybe [John] Kasich with Ohio would be another possible good choice. It’s always down to Ohio and Florida. I think, talent, pool standpoint at hand and the map, without those two states you can’t win them.

Examiner: What’s on your recommended reading list?

McCaul: My book, Failures of Imagination. I’ll give you a signed copy. People say what keeps you up at night, and I lay out what keeps me up at night in this book. It’s eight chapters, eight different scenarios, whether it’s Islam or space terror or cybersecurity or Iran or Putin and Russia. It’s fiction, but fact-based and educational.