Former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Saturday that the nation's "entire Visa apparatus has to be closely examined" in light of reports that Muslims with jihadist ties were not fully vetted by Obama administration officials.
"There has to be a lot of potential for foreign abuse,"
Kelly told Uma Pemmaraju on Fox News. He commanded the city's forces from 2002 to 2013.
Kelly's new memoir is entitled
"Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting Its Empire City."
He said that he was less concerned about the "semantics" of the fight against terrorism versus the reality that radical Islamists are seeking to destroy the United States.
"We're fighting a fight overseas and fighting here in the U.S," he told Pemmaraju. "These people want to come here and kill us.
"We talk about al-Qaida. We talk about ISIS. We talk about Boko Haram.
"A lot of these are just distinctions without a difference," Kelly added. "It's important to remember these are radical Islamists who want to come here and kill us.
"That's their mission in life."
Kelly also discussed 16 terrorist plots that were foiled by New York City police, the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies.
"Some of them were stopped as a result of great work on the part of the FBI. Great work on the part of the NYPD — and sheer luck."
He noted that Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, "wasn't on anybody's radar screen, and we didn't know anything about him until he tried to blow that car up in Times Square."
After returning from a trip to Pakistan in 2010, Shahzad found a parking spot in Times Square on May 1 — and his car was loaded with propane tanks.
"So, we'll take luck any time," Kelly said.
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