New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio erred when he ended a program to monitor mosques suspected of teaching a radical form of Islam, says one of his predecessors in the office, Rudy Giuliani.
Appearing Wednesday on Fox News Channel's
"The O'Reilly Factor," Giuliani said he first introduced a program in 1994 after the first World Trade Center attack. That attack, he said, was hatched primarily in three New Jersey mosques.
When people complained about the action, he said, he responded that he couldn't imagine any priest or rabbi would complain about putting officers in their services.
"Churches generally want people to come in and worship with them," he said.
Giuliani's immediate successor, Michael Bloomberg, formally initiated the program, dubbed the Demographics Unit, or Zone Assessment Unit.
But de Blasio, during his campaign, vowed to end the program and not carry out surveillance against a mosque unless there was specific evidence of a crime.
Giuliani called that "knocking logic out," saying it made as much sense as if he had stayed out of Italian social clubs when he was investigating the Mafia when he was a U.S. attorney.
"It's not racial profiling. It's logical deduction," he said.
Police once caught two Muslim extremists two hours before they were going to bomb a subway, by using those tactics, Giuliani said.
"It's irresponsible not to do it."
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