Peter Thomas King (born April 5,
1944) is an
American politician and current
U.S. Representative for
New York's 2nd congressional district. He is a member of the
Republican Party and represents the central
Long Island district that includes parts of
Nassau and
Suffolk counties.
King formerly served as the Chairman of the
House Committee on Homeland Security, where he drew attention in early
2011 for holding hearings on the extent of radicalization of
American Muslims. He also sits on the
Financial Services Committee and the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He stepped down as
Homeland Security Chairman because of self-imposed
Republican term limits. He remains a member of the committee.
King began actively supporting the
Irish republican movement in the late
1970s. He frequently traveled to
Northern Ireland to meet with senior members of the
Provisional Irish Republican Army (
IRA), many of whom he counted as friends.[11][24]
King compared
Gerry Adams, the leader of
Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish republican movement, to
George Washington, and asserted that the "
British government is a murder machine".[25] However, he did not meet
Adams until
1984.[26]
King became involved with
NORAID, an organization that the
British, Irish and
U.S. governments had accused of financing IRA activities and providing them with weapons. Regarding the 30 years of violence during which the IRA killed over 1,700 people, King said, "If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it
."[30]
He also called the IRA "the legitimate voice of occupied
Ireland".[31] Speaking at a pro-IRA rally in
1982 in
Nassau County, New York, King pledged support to "those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against
British imperialism in the streets of
Belfast and
Derry."[11][32] In
1985, the
Irish government boycotted New York's annual
St. Patrick's Day celebrations in protest at King serving as
Grand Marshal of the event; the Irish government condemned him as an "avowed" supporter of IRA terrorism.[33] At the
parade he again offered words of support for the IRA.[34]
During the murder trial of an IRA member in the
1980s, a judge in Northern Ireland ejected King from the courtroom, describing King as "an obvious collaborator with the IRA".[11][35]
In
1993, King lobbied unsuccessfully for Gerry Adams to be a guest at the inauguration of
President Bill Clinton.[34] In
2000, he called then-presidential candidate
George W. Bush a tool of "anti-Catholic bigoted forces", after
Bush visited
Bob Jones University in
South Carolina, described by King as "an institution that is notorious in Ireland for awarding an honorary doctorate to Northern Ireland's tempestuous
Protestant leader,
Ian Paisley."[11] King was a go-between during the
Northern Ireland peace process,[36] and has said the IRA was a "legitimate force that had to be recognized" to have
peace.[37]
In
2002, King denounced Congressional investigation of the IRA-FARC links in the
Colombia Three case.[38][39]
During the 1980s and
1990s, the
NSA and
CIA collected intelligence on financial transactions between the
United States and
Ireland and Northern Ireland involving
Irish terrorist groups supported by King. The group
Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) funneled money to the
Irish Republican Army (IRA) that was used to buy weapons used to blow up civilians and members of the British government, military and police. King was an active supporter of
NORAID, a tax-exempt front for the IRA.
Martin Galvin,
King's friend and former NORAID chief, rejected the Northern Ireland
Good Friday Agreement and supports the agenda of the terrorist "
Real IRA".
During the 1980s, NSA's
British counterpart, the
Government Communications Headquarters (
GCHQ) intercepted a number of King's phone calls from the United States and from within
Britain, in which his political and financial support for the IRA was discussed. GCHQ relied on
Canada's Communications Security Establishment (
CSE) to monitor King's domestic phone calls in
New York and Long Island since
U.S. law, including the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (
FIS) prohibited the surveillance of King by NSA assets. King's financial and political support for the IRA coincided with the terrorist group's alliances with
Palestinians, Lebanese,
Latin American,
Basque, Corsican,
German, and
Breton terrorist groups and the
Libyan government of
Muammar el Qaddafi. NSA signals intelligence (
SIGINT) intercepts demonstrate that
Libya and Lebanese terrorist groups targeted
Americans in terrorist attacks during the 1980s, while King supported their Irish compatriots with money and weapons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King
- published: 30 Mar 2016
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