Fox News Peddles Rudy Giuliani’s Debunked Claim That Mosque Surveillance “Thwarted” Terror Threats
Published
Fox & Friends co-hosts pushed a false claim from Rudy Giuliani -- a frequent Fox News guest and a contender for secretary of state under President-elect Donald Trump -- that mosque surveillance during Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York “thwarted a lot of [terrorist] attacks.” Fox contributor Pete Hegseth agreed, calling mosque surveillance “great intelligence work.” Hegseth is scheduled to meet with Trump today at Trump Tower about a possible position in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In fact, the New York Police Department “abandoned” its mosque surveillance program after years of collecting information on Muslims in the city because the program “never generated a lead,” The New York Times reported. The Cato Institute described the program as a “failure by any reasonable standard,” and according to former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, “not one single piece of actionable intelligence ever came out of that unit in its years of existence.” Nevertheless, Fox hosts and contributors have repeatedly defended and encouraged restarting the program. From the November 29 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends: