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Hillary Clinton (from audio clip): We came, we saw, we died. [Laughter.] Yes, we came, we saw, we died.

Host: 'Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya,' author Pete Hoekstra, the former Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tells the real story about the tragic events in Benghazi, Obama administration's disastrous foreign policy. Welcome former Congressman Pete Hoekstra to Hudson Valley Focus Live.

Hoekstra: Hey, thank you. Good to be with you this morning.

Host: I'm glad you're able to join me. And I was so fortunate to you know get the opportunity to have you on this morning. This is, these are stories about what I have watched unfold in the Middle East for far too long. And there are so many pieces coming together, Pete Hoekstra, that I just don't think the mainstream media is really telling the story about what we have witnessed for the last, well it's more than a decade now.

Hoekstra: I think that's right. I mean our foreign policy in the Middle East has been an absolute disaster. You know in 2003/2004 we actually had one of the few successes. We had a country and its leader come in from the cold, someone that had been you know terrorizing U.S. interests throughout Europe, throughout the Middle East, throughout Northern Africa, actually decided to change its way and to join us in the fight against radical Islam, to give up its nuclear program, and as much as you can financially, which is very, very limited, but financially make up for its terrorist activities in the past by paying reparations to victims, and then in 2011 this administration threw that all away.

Host: Yes, yes. So question for you, I know there was a story that I had talked about, oh, probably a month or two ago, and it had to do with the release of one of Hillary Clinton's emails, and I believe it was an exchange between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, and pointing to the fact that Libya was in possession of a pretty huge store of gold, and they were looking to promote an, I believe it was an African dinar gold-based African dinar, which Western powers were concerned would weaken the dollar, weaken their central banking systems. And that may have been one of the motivations for the you know NATO's attack on Libya and the death of Moammar Gadhafi. Your thoughts about that?

Hoekstra: Well the you know you really have to scratch your head and try to figure out what the Obama administration was thinking when they thought it was a good idea to get rid of Moammar Gadhafi. Libya had become an island of stability, stabilizing Northern Africa, making sure there weren't refugees fleeing from Northern Africa into Southern Europe across the Med, because there weren't refugees, the countries were stabilized –

Host: Yes.

Hoekstra: – and Al-Qaeda and other radical jihadist groups were feeling tremendous pressure. And Gadhafi's focus, at least in the times that I met with him, he made it very, very clear that you know he wasn't looking towards the Middle East for his legacy; he was looking towards Africa, Northern Africa, going into Central Africa, as where he would have, where he would leave his legacy. And whether it would have been in a new currency, whether it would have been you know military or an economic strength, that's where he was looking. So you know I think that a lot of this stuff could have been looked into by the Benghazi committee, but they're going to have, they're passing on it, they're not looking at these kinds of questions and issues as to what the motivation was, because militarily, economically, and all of those types of things politically, there was no rationale, sound rationale, to do what this administration did.

Host: Even from afar, and you know reading various articles, that's what it seemed to me. I mean what we have witnessed, the destabilization of the entire Middle East, going all the way back to the Arab Spring and coming forward from there, it has taken us in the exact wrong direction. And on the phone with me is Pete Hoekstra, former Chairman of the House, United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And of course you are the author of 'Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya.' And I, where do we go from here, Pete Hoekstra? I mean it just seems that we are in this presidential campaign right now. We watch the theatrics that play out on stage, and as a nation, first of all, I don't even know that we've even defined what the role of the federal government's supposed to be. I know it's not you know birth control pills for Sandra Fluke, where we have all these other things going on. How do we get the American public to sit up and take notice and realize that they have a government that is now running away with you know our rights and freedoms?

Hoekstra: Well I think you know number one, we have to get back and we have to recognize who our enemy is. The enemy is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Host: Yes.

Hoekstra: This administration in 2009, actually earlier than that, before they even came into power, made it clear that they would engage with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, and we're going to be doing a number of exposes on the Muslim Brotherhood, this is a radical jihadist group. This is where many of the other jihadist groups across the world you know spring from. And the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to the destruction of our way of life. They hate the West. They want to establish a caliphate. They want to impose Sharia law. And this administration decided that they could negotiate and work with the Muslim Brotherhood and that if we treated the Muslim Brotherhood differently and engaged with them that the Muslim Brotherhood would change their behavior. And that is nothing but naïve thinking. And that thinking has been guiding our foreign policy now for more than seven years with disastrous results. So we need to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups for what they are, organizations like CAIR, and that are present here in the United States. And so and we then we have to recognize the real threat to our way of life. Take a look at what is happening in Europe today.

Host: Yes.

Hoekstra: For a number of years it's been the stealth jihad, but I really predict that 2016 is going to be a hot summer for Europe. Their social services network, with all of the refugees in there, is going to be overwhelmed. You're going to see continued increases in criminal activity. But I think you're also going to start seeing more radical jihadist violent attacks throughout Europe. We saw an attack that was just recently stopped by the Jordanian government in Jordan, because countries like Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are also under increasing threat. The number of people that may have been killed by this thwarted attack in Jordan goes into perhaps the thousands.

Host: Wow.

Hoekstra: These people were very, very well equipped. The numbers were over 20 people, 20, 30 people, who were, it looks like they were going to be targeting a campus. And you know we are going to I believe see a, some type of an attack that you know rather than a 130, we are probably going to be counting in the hundreds, if not up to a couple of thousand people, probably in the next 18 to 24 months. And the most likely areas would be Europe or Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or somewhere in Africa. It's going to happen.

Host: And Pete Hoekstra, I mean of course in this country we have a situation with let's call them porous borders that I don't think we even know who's coming into this country with any certainty.

Hoekstra: Oh no, no we don't. And the amazing thing is there is an orchestrated activity to make sure that we let more people in that we don't know who they are. I recently did a press conference in Rhode Island, just expressing concern with some other individuals who live in Rhode Island, saying and asking the governor to please slow down the acceptance of Syrian refugees, because we have no idea who they are. We don't know that they're Syrian refugees.

Host: Correct.

Hoekstra: We don't know where they're from. We don't know what their backgrounds are. There was an organized protest of 250 people, you know a lot of students and clergy, the rudest protesters I've ever encountered, and I've been in politics for 18 years before I left, but you know chanting and screaming, making sure our voices couldn't be heard, screaming profanities. And of course if you're saying screen the people who we are letting in, you immediately become an Islamophobe.

Host: Yes.

Hoekstra: And you become a racist. And it's kind of like no, this just kind of seems like good government to me knowing who is coming into this country before we let them have the privilege of you know coming into the United States. But these are the kinds of things that we need to worry about. America is under attack. And there are organized groups within the United States who are, you know maybe some, maybe the people at the rally they innocently believe we should leave these in, but there is no doubt that the people that are instigating and articulating these messages do not have the best interests of the United States in mind.

Host: And Pete Hoekstra, even back when, and I'll clarify this by saying I'm, you know I'm not a huge Donald Trump supporter, but when he made the statement about changing the policies until we have procedures in place, and that got repeated over and over and over again, by media who would very conveniently leave out the word 'until' –

Hoekstra: Right, yeah.

Host: – and effectively change the message. I mean this is disgraceful that we have people who will just parrot that and ultimately change the message.

Hoekstra: Yeah, no, that's exactly right, and yeah, because like I said, they have an agenda. The agenda is, and this is what organizations like CAIR want to do, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. They are a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood. And right now they and organizations like them in Europe for years have used what we call stealth jihad infiltrating into the United States, infiltrating into Europe. And in Europe it's probably 15 years ahead of us. They've now created an environment where you know they've laid the framework for more violent protests. But you know there's actually now somewhat of a counter-attack in Europe, but because people are saying, 'What's happened to our country?'

Host: Yes.

Hoekstra: And I'm hoping that for their sake that they're not too late to keep their culture and their societies.

Host: So let me go stick with Libya for a second, because I was listening to what you were saying and thinking back to Benghazi. What insights do you have as to what we actually were up to in Benghazi with facilities there?

Host: I think it's fairly clear, Libya nothing but one big arms cache – Gadhafi's weapons, the weapons that NATO brought in, the weapons that the UAA and Qatar brought in, so it was a huge weapons cache. What did the Obama administration have on their agenda? After getting rid of Mubarak in Egypt, after getting rid of Gadhafi in Libya, their next target was getting rid of Assad in Syria. So one way or another you know and they say, the CIA says, 'Well we weren't doing it,' there was a movement of weapons, fighters from Libya through Turkey into Syria to get rid of Assad. Those weapons and those fighters ultimately became the core of what today we call ISIS, and they were armed with the weapons that were coming from Syria. And after Benghazi, you know after Benghazi, and as we recognize what was happening in Syria, we finally recognized that these groups were not going to change their behavior; they wanted to destroy (UI word). The people that killed our ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, these were the same groups and represented the same groups that we armed and trained to get rid of Gadhafi. As soon as they got rid of Gadhafi, a few months later they turned their sights on the United States. They had no love for the United States. It was let's get rid of, let's work with the Americans and NATO to get rid of Gadhafi, then let's get rid of the Americans and NATO, and then let's spread our violent jihad, because they've equipped us and they've trained us, and let's turn it on Northern Africa and let's turn it on Assad and let's turn it on Iraq. So in effect we've funded and armed and trained the individuals today that we are now fighting in Syria today that we know as ISIS.

Host: Indeed. Pete Hoekstra is on the phone with me. I mean this and the fact that we did not have adequate security there, I mean this isn't even rational on anyone's part, which suggests to me that there were actions afoot that wanted to be shielded from you know prying eyes of the American public.

Hoekstra: Well remember, you don't need security if you believe that the Muslim Brotherhood actually is your friend and your ally. And that is how naïve our thinking was or the thinking of our policy makers back in Washington. I think Chris Stevens understood the threat finally, but our policy makers in Washington were unwilling to acknowledge –

Host: Yes.

Hoekstra: – that people we had armed and trained to overthrow Gadhafi actually had an ill intent against America and American interests, because it would have totally exposed the bankruptcy of Obama's foreign policy.

Host: Indeed. Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, we are out of time. We'll leave it right there. I want to thank you for being on Hudson Valley Focus Live. And again, his book is 'Architects of Disaster: The Destruction of Libya.'

Hoekstra: Hey, great. Thank you. Have a great day.

Host: Thank you.