WBEZ: Rep. Quigley: U.S. Spending Too Much On Nukes, Not Enough To Combat Gun Violence

The following interview aired on WBEZ on May 12, 2016. A link to the interview can be found here.

Host: There is a Congressional Subcommittee in Washington, D.C. and it meets out of the public eye. It meets in a room beneath the Capitol. This is called the emerging threats subcommittee and it discusses trends in national security. Much of what the subcommittee discusses is secret, Congressman Mike Quigley from Chicago on the North side, sits on that committee and recently talked to WBEZ’s Tony Arnold to talk about the work and some of the country’s misplaced spending priorities when it comes to national security.

MQ: I remind people that since 9/11 there have been almost 70 terror plots against our country. The vast majority have been thwarted with good intelligence, with good police work, the work the FBI does, the work the CIA does, that is what we discuss.

Tony Arnold: Tell me a little about where you meet, when you meet.

MQ: We get briefed about 2-3 times a week then we come back for additional readings when we can. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Capitol, within a vault, there is something akin to a vault like hearing room in which we get briefed on things that keep us up at night.

TA: What do you mean by a vault? What does this room even look like? It sounds like a spy novel.

MQ: I can’t talk much about what the rooms look like other than that they are not much different than others, just that they are ones that can’t be invaded. We’re talking about the secrets that keep our country safe; we’re talking about intelligence work.

TA: I understand that these meetings aren’t even public. How much of this can you even talk about?

MQ: We can talk generally about how the system operates, and why it is important and theories that come from that. But you can’t talk about this because some of these things that we talk about, are, if the wrong people had that information, our troops would be less safe, our installations would be less safe, the public would be less safe.

TA: The subcommittee is called Emerging Threats. How many of these are false alarms or how many warrant almost immediate action?

MQ: Well think about broad, general themes here when you think about emerging threats. I was in the West Bank just last week and there’s legitimate concern that ISIS would like to get a foot hold in Gaza or in the West Bank. That’s an emerging threat. When it comes to the individual threats that stem from these – we get briefed on most of these, as examples of other types of threats that can take place. How would this country be attacked? What do we have to be prepared for? We have to constantly ask ourselves: what really keeps us safe? What really works? And for me, unfortunately, we are still funding a cold war apparatus at a time when we should be shifting our focus to those programs like those in the intelligence community which keep us safe. We need to end military spending that has absolutely no value. I think that is 70 billion over the next five years. The pentagon says they don’t want, they don’t need, and they won’t help us.

TA: On that note, talk a little bit about what you hear from Chicagoans and what they are concerned about versus what the committees are actually doing about it.

MQ: Most Chicagoans number one fear from a physical point of view is being mugged or being shot and they are worried about a terrorist attack similar to Brussels or Paris. Well, what protects us from that? Well, homeland security money, the cameras that were put in our CTA stations were only 10 million dollars but they reduced crime by about 50%. At the same time, we are cutting top grants, grants to hire more police officers in Chicago. You know, we’re funding nuclear weapons which makes absolutely no sense. When I grew up, we were protecting ourselves with drills of kids hiding underneath their desk. In some respects, we are still hiding under our desks with our strategy. Putin is far more likely to launch a cyber-attack again than a nuclear attack and we need to be prepared for that and spend our money on that.

TA: And so for Chicagoans?

MQ: We need to be more worried about how illegal guns get here than we are about nukes. We need to be more worried about having programs that protect us from a homeland security point of view rather than have missiles and silos in programs that most people look at the strategy and say that it doesn’t work anymore. My message is – we are cutting money on programs that really keep us safe. We are doing nothing on guns. And we’re still funding the cold war footing that does nothing to keep us safe today.

Host: That’s Illinois United States Representative Mike Quigley talking with WBEZ’s Tony Arnold. Quigley serves on the Emerging Threats Subcommittee.