PRESS RELEASE

Rep. Rohrabacher Announces
He'll Call Hearings on Closer
Security Cooperation with Russia

Jan. 7, 2014 (EIRNS)—Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee, announced Jan. 2 that he will be holding hearings on closer security cooperation between the United States and Russia in the run-up to the Sochi Olympics. Rohrabacher is head of the subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

"Whenever unarmed citizens are victims of terrorist attacks, we should stand in solidarity with their countries especially with Russia," Rohrabacher said in a Jan. 2 statement reported by Ria Novosti. "Unfortunately, our own recent relations with Moscow have called into question what should be Washington's automatic response."

Rohrabacher has been a consistent voice for cooperation with Russia's against Islamic terrorism. In 2004 he visited the site of the 2004 terrorist assault on a school in Southern Russia that left hundreds of school children dead, and has also said that closer cooperation with Russia might have prevented the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Rohrabacher led a six-person delegation to Russia to discuss more intelligence cooperation back in May of 2013. In August he told RIA Novosti that US officials should "quit villainizing Russia and try to find a way to work with Russia" to counter threats from radical Islamists.

"Our security cooperation should be at a much higher level and much more extensive," Rohrabacher said.

"Whether it is 9/11 or the murders of Russian schoolchildren or attacks in Egypt, radical Islamic terrorists should know that the good people are standing together and will not cower when confronted with monstrous crimes against unarmed and innocent civilians."