Erroll Southers, whom President Obama has nominated to head the Transportation Security Administration, described groups that were a domestic security threat as being “anti-abortion” and “Christian-identity oriented.”

The TSA, an element of the Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for the security of the nation’s transportation systems, including commercial air travel. Southers made the remarks in question during a 2008 video interview with the Videojug.com Web site.

In the interview, Southers was asked whether there were “groups inside the United States that pose a danger to our security?”

“Domestically speaking, in large part, most of the groups we have here in the United States are white supremacist groups, World Church of the Creator, National Alliance, Aryan Nations. There are some black separatist groups,” said Southers. “What’s interesting about those groups is you find that they are usually either Christian identity groups and/or groups that really have a foothold in our correctional or prison systems in the way of radicalization and recruiting.”

Southers was then asked: “Which homegrown terrorist groups pose the greatest danger to the U.S.?”

“Most of the domestic groups that we have to pay attention to here are white supremacist groups.

They’re anti-government, and in most cases anti-abortion,” he said. “They are usually survivalist-type in nature, identity-orientated. If you recall, Buford Furrow came to Los Angeles in, I believe, it was 1999. When he went to three different Jewish institutions, museums, and then wound up shooting people at a children’s community center, then shooting a Filipino postal worker later on. Matthew Hale, who is the Pontifex Maximus of the World Church of the Creator out of Illinois, and Ben Smith, who went on a shooting spree in three different cities where he killed a number of African-Americans and Jews and Asians that day. Those groups are groups that claim to be extremely anti-government and Christian-identity oriented.”

Southers did not respond to e-mail inquiries from CNSNews.com asking about his interview with Videojug.com.

Southers’ nomination has been held up in the U.S. Senate over two issues. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has placed a hold on the nomination because he is worried that Southers might allow TSA workers, who are responsible for airport security, to unionize.

Additionally, seven Republican senators, including DeMint, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), have written to the White House asking for more information about contradictory accounts Southers provided to the Senate regarding incidents in the 1980s, when, as an FBI officer, he improperly accessed a federal database looking for information about his then-wife’s boyfriend.

As first reported by The Washington Post, Southers initially told the Senate Homeland Security Committee in an Oct. 22 affidavit that he had asked a police officer to access the database for him. In a Nov. 22 letter, Southers told the committee that the affidavit was incorrect and that he had accessed the database himself.  Southers said he had remembered incorrectly and that the mistake in the affidavit was inadvertent.
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