This is going to come as a shock, so brace yourself: Chris Christie isn't telling the truth about his national security record. The New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate likes to play the fear card and it might just be working for him, as he's inching up in the polls. But his claims to be the only guy in the field who has really fought the terrorists are very much overhyped.
At the first Republican debate in August, Mr. Christie called himself "the only person on this stage who's actually filed applications under the Patriot Act, who has gone before the Foreign Intelligence Service Court." Similarly, his campaign website says "Christie's office" secured authorization from that court, which is actually called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for the surveillance of terrorism suspects.
While the court, which is also known as the FISA court, did approve national security wiretaps in New Jersey on Mr. Christie’s watch, neither he nor his office secured them. Only the Office of Intelligence at the Justice Department’s headquarters drafts and submits applications for surveillance and then litigates them before the court.
Mr. Christie's campaign website credits his office with obtaining an indictment against the kidnapper of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted and killed in Pakistan, and notes that the defendant, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, was "sentenced to death." It does not mention a key fact: The trial took place in Pakistan. Mr. Christie's office had no role in it.
Christie also continues to imply a much greater role for himself on September 11, 2001, endlessly repeating the claim that he "was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on September 10th, 2001." He wasn't. He was notified that day that he was under consideration for a nomination but would be undergoing a background check before the nomination went forward. He was nominated three months later, and confirmed and actually in office in January 2002, where he didn't actually go before the FISA court and didn't actually have anything to do with the prosecution and sentencing of Ahmed Omar Sheikh.
He also likes to talk about "two of the biggest terrorism cases in the world" that he oversaw and prosecuted. Both cases, as the Times reporters, were actually "stings by the F.B.I., which used confidential informants to create the situations in which the defendants implicated themselves," and "neither of the two New Jersey prosecutions involved actual attacks," and "did not involve plots that almost succeeded without law enforcement knowledge." In other words, no, they were not among the "biggest terrorism cases in the world."
It's probably true that Christie would be tough enough to keep Syrian widows and orphans from finding refuge in the U.S., but so far that's the only national security claim he's made that passes the smell test.