NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Representative Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, thinks that Muslims aren’t doing enough to stop the scourge of terrorism in their own community. And so on Thursday, he’ll begin a series of hearings on the radicalization of Muslims in America, or as Muslim congressman Keith Ellison calls it, “a witch hunt.” […] King rose to power as a Long Island politician in the eighties in part thanks to strong support from Irish-Americans. Back then, King didn’t see it as a community’s job to police terrorists in its midst. In fact, he didn’t seem to be morally perturbed by the consequences of the IRA’s activities at all — despite the fact that the group was bombing and sniping at the British Army and Protestant paramilitaries, as well as the occasional pub or civilian public space. MORE
NEW YORK TIMES: “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.” As Mr. King, a Republican, rose as a Long Island politician in the 1980s, benefiting from strong Irish-American support, the I.R.A. was carrying out a bloody campaign of bombing and sniping, targeting the British Army, Protestant paramilitaries and sometimes pubs and other civilian gathering spots. His statements, along with his close ties to key figures in the military and political wings of the I.R.A., drew the attention of British and American authorities. A judge in Belfast threw him out of an I.R.A. murder trial, calling him an “obvious collaborator,” said Ed Moloney, an Irish journalist and author of “A Secret History of the I.R.A.” In 1984, Mr. King complained that the Secret Service had investigated him as a “security risk,” Mr. Moloney said. MORE
THE NEW REPUBLIC: He forged links with leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ireland, and in America he hooked up with Irish Northern Aid, known as Noraid, a New York based group that the American, British, and Irish governments often accused of funneling guns and money to the IRA. At a time when the IRA’s murder of Lord Mountbatten and its fierce bombing campaign in Britain and Ireland persuaded most American politicians to shun IRA-support groups, Mr. King displayed no such inhibitions. He spoke regularly at Noraid protests and became close to the group’s publicity director, the Bronx lawyer Martin Galvin, a figure reviled by the British. […] By the mid-1980s, the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were openly hostile to Mr. King. On one occasion, a judge threw him out of a Belfast courtroom during the murder trial of IRA men because, in the judge’s view, “he was an obvious collaborator with the IRA.” When he attended other trials, the police singled him out for thorough body searches. MORE
MOTHER JONES: British censors kept King off the airwaves (no small feat), and frequent newspaper profiles made note of his “militant” rhetoric, fierce support for the IRA, and prolific fundraising. So reviled was King across the pond that when New York’s archbishop dared to embrace King at the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, London’s Daily Mail dedicated an entire editorial to the affair and called it the “handshake of shame.” Exchanging formalities with the then-comptroller of Nassau County, the paper explained, was tantamount to slapping terror on the back. MORE