WASHINGTON — New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler strongly criticized house Republicans on Friday for inviting former CIA officer Michael Scheuer to testify in front of a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, citing Scheuer's criticisms of Israel.
"Dr. Michael Scheuer's extreme views toward Israel are well known," Nadler said in a statement to BuzzFeed. "The fact that the Republican majority invited such a blatantly outspoken anti-Israel activist is inexcusable. Dr. Scheuer's testimony before the Homeland Security Committee recommending that America 'dump the Israelis tomorrow' couldn't be more wrong. A strong U.S.-Israel relationship is absolutely vital to the national security interests of the United States. I'm not sure why the Republican-controlled Homeland Security Committee would want to be amplifying Dr. Scheuer's harmful message."
Scheuer, who was chief of Alec Station in the late 1990s, was fired from the Jamestown Foundation in 2009 and is now an adjunct professor at Georgetown. Scheuer has made a series of controversial anti-Israel statements over the years, including that "AIPAC and the lobby here own the Congress" and that Rahm Emanuel and other "Israel-Firsters" are "unquestionably enemies of America's republican experiment and will have to be destroyed as the Copperheads were destroyed -- by the people, after a full public deabte (sic), at the ballot box."
Scheuer was one of the witnesses testifying in front of a House Homeland Security Committee hearing about Westerners joining jihadist groups on October 10. During the hearing, he said "If it was up to me I'd dump the Israelis tomorrow" and "All I worry about is the continuing preaching of American politicians to the American people that our relationship with the Israelis doesn't cause us to have dead Americans and extraordinary expenses in fighting the Muslim world."
A memo sent out to Democratic members of the committee the day before identifies two of the witnesses specifically as "Democratic witnesses," indicating that the others, including Scheuer, were invited by the Republicans. A spokesperson for the committee did not immediately return a request for comment.