Morning Wire - Operation Flights Home | Saturday Extra

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

As the war between the nation of Israel and Hamas rages on, worry over Americans stranded in Israel continues to rise. We speak to a U.S. congressman and former decorated Army Veteran about a team he oversees that's doing its part to get Americans home. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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matched. That means $25 becomes $50. $50 becomes $100, but only while matching funds last. Go to join ADF.com slash wire or text wire to 83848 to double your impact for freedom. With every day the war against Hamas rages on, the desperation to free the Americans remaining in the region and hundreds of hostages being held by terrorists grows. A team helmed by one U.S. congressman, a decorated army veteran, is doing its part to get Americans to safety. In this episode, we speak with Congressman Corey Mills of Florida about his team's evacuation operation in Israel. I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Vickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Saturday, October 28th, and this is a lot of an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Republican Congressman Corey Mills, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served

multiple tours in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Congressman, thank you for your service, and thank you so much for joining us. Now, first, you've been on the ground in Israel since the Hamas terrorist attacks. How would you assess the media's coverage of the conflict? Are the American people getting an accurate understanding of the facts on the ground? I think that the media has done a pretty fair job at depicting what's happening on the ground, though I understand some of the more barbaric and horrendous, atrocious events that took place are a bit more graphic than what most media are able to cover. But I think

for the most part, they've been giving it necessary attention to what is truly going on. I think the misstep here, and not to shock anyone, is really on how the Biden administration has been communicating the facts. You know, for the longest time, they wouldn't even admit Iran's direct involvement with Hamas, even though we know that as the largest state sponsor of terror that they have continued to fund Hamas. They have continued to fund and work with General Hassan Nisrala in Lebanon for Hezbollah, same with the Houthis in Yemen, or even Katayab Hezbollah, and a group called Hachhti al-Shabi, which is in Iraq, to continue to be their proxy militias. And these are all proxy militias that were developed and built by the former Kud's Force commander

that lost his life and was killed with a very successful counterterrorism strike under the Trump administration, Qasem Soleimani. And so I think that while they're covering certain areas. I don't think there's enough highlighting the fact that the Biden administration, the State Department, and the DOD have had no real plan strategy or effectiveness in trying to help get Americans out of these areas and that they have not learned their lesson from 2021 in the botched Afghan withdrawal. Your mission has been to rescue Americans. What is the biggest obstacle to getting them out of the region? You know, it's actually the, what we call CIGAS, the significant activities and the threat elements themselves, but also,

there's a complete limitation on what you can or cannot get into certain runways and airports. I mean, we know that all the comm air has completely stopped, whether that was Turkish Air, Emirates, any of the U.S. carriers. And so it's really limited to you down to just utilizing LL. And that right there, when you think about it for a moment and you take, say, let's just say, seven providers, seven carriers, and you reduce that down to one, the demand hasn't receded, but the actual supply capabilities have. And so now you've got people who have been there five, six, six,

seven, eight, even some have been there almost 10 days trying to get out that have no options. And that was why we developed the idea. I had been traveling through the region for more than 20 years. I speak fluent Arabic. And so I knew about the Sheikh Hussein, the King Hussein's out there to be the Rafa Bridge crossings, the one down in Akaba. And so we looked at how to formulate a ground evacuation strategy very similar to what I did in 2021 in Afghanistan.

I remember our team and I actually had conducted the very first successful overland rescue in Afghanistan of a mother and three children who were born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. And so, you know, the hindrance here is obviously access and availability of air evacuation. The ability for those, because some of the runs that we were making, you know, my first day, we were running Tiberius and Haifa and Nazareth, and then second day into the West Bank and into Jerusalem into other areas is just the amount of time on the roads and the fact that you're exposed to certain elements of risk. And so it's minimizing those risk factors that allow us to be able to try and determine what routes we take. And we always establish three routes to the best

of our ability, which we call a green, yellow, and red route. And those are assessed by what activities and risk levels and recent events have taken place in that area are the probabilities of risk. And this just tailors into the 20 plus years of my experience, whether it's through the military or with the State Department or agencies, et cetera. But I think that permissibility and risk management is really the big limitations, but it also doesn't help whenever the State Department and others are not being very helpful to support us. How are you identifying individuals in need of extraction? Well, one of the key things that we were doing is we reach out to every member in Congress and we basically say if you've got constituents that are overseas, get us contacts, get us

information. We then built an Excel spreadsheet and a rapid response form that we send out to every person that lets us know their locations, contacts, and one availability to move is we then start coordinating with our team and also. We then start coordinating with our team and also, So I was working with Rabbi Weiss, who gave us an Excel over 2,100 people. And we start asking and verifying who actually is still there on the ground, who's been evacuated, what's your current status, where are you located? Because then we can start looking at various things like, okay, who are able-bodied and not need additional support,

who are in areas that are a higher risk for indirect fire or any type of a ground assault, who is going to be the furthest that needs to be moved towards the consolidation point and how do we get out to them first? Who has children who need to be moved with the family? and then starting to prioritize that as well as for our elderly, and then looking at all the other factors, like almost triage this in an event, but we've had great success in getting feedback. We've had help. You know, the first couple evacuations that we had in all the ground evacuations, I personally

funded myself, and we did this all in our team. Now we've got people, thanks to outlets like yours, as well as for many others who've kind of amplified the voice of need, concern. And again, I heard a statement yesterday, which is courage is contagious. And I think that's very true. And I think that a lot of people have now stood up and started to come forward. I know Glenn Beck and Mercury 1 has stepped forward to help us with this charter that we're at now. Cash Patel has stepped up and supported who I've known cash for many years, great guy. So I think that now we're starting to get lists and people on these manifests. And I'm very happy to report that I just got a charter out this morning, which is Friday their time, who will be landing around 10 a.m. in New York.

And we're successfully evacuating another 271 personnel. Amazing. What about Americans held hostage in Gaza? How many are there and who are they? Well, one, we don't necessarily with any operation, want to disclose information that can be utilized to one, thwart the efforts of our operation and a hostage rescue. But also, you don't want to necessarily highlight every one of the people on media because some of those may have high-level ties or connections. They may have their various family connections that would link them to a high net worth family. There's many things that the more information that you put out that can be utilized by the

captors that we could actually impact or lead to an unsuccessful rescue. And so I think at this time, it's very wise of us to continue to try and maintain as much communication security and operational security as possible so that we don't impede or increase the probability of an unsuccessful rescue. Yeah, makes sense. Final question. Now that business in D.C. is handled with Republicans electing a new House Speaker, will there be more missions to Israel? For myself, I'm definitely going to continue to do everything I can to launch more missions into Israel. And I'm very, very proud that we have Speaker Johnson. He's exactly what we need. He is the constitutionally principled faith-based warrior that we need to help, you know, heal, reconcile, unify and start leading a more constitutional

America First agenda. I mean, just today, he's been elected in 24 hours and we're already bringing appropriation, single-point appropriation bills to the floor, exactly the type of leadership that we need and exactly the type of thing that needs to happen. He's already explained to President Biden, as well as for the administration that we will not see bundled aid bills. We will take everything and separate it out and look at the true needs of what we want and what the American people need. He is keen on the number one issue, which is securing our border, and that cannot be more emphasized on the significant importance.

I mean, the same incidents that we saw in 9-11 of our failure from our intelligence community to act or on what's occurred recently in Hamas with their attacks in Israel could happen here at home if we're not securing our border, especially noting that over 200, and 70, I believe, people who were on the terrorist watch list were captured just this administration. That's not saying how many were not captured. And so I think there are priorities are straight. I think that we're looking at the aid packages in a very responsible way. And we'll continue to prioritize the safety of American citizens. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. And again, thank you for your service and the work your team is doing. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

It's an honor. That was Congressman Corey Mills. And this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.