It's Time For Law Enforcement To Control Domestic Terrorism

Domestic terrorism has become the most serious threat facing our nation. Here is part of what Jennifer Rubin writes about it in The Washington Post:

Earlier this month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a largely overlooked — yet damning — report detailing the failures of national security agencies on this front.

“Over the past two decades, acts of domestic terrorism have dramatically increased," the committee reports. "National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland.” The uptick is predominately attributable to “white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” Yet “without better data, it is difficult to evaluate whether federal agencies are appropriately allocating resources and setting priorities.”. . .

The extent of the threat is staggering. The report mentions a 2021 study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that found there were 110 domestic terrorist plots in 2020 alone, a 244 percent increase from 2019. The Anti-Defamation League also reports that over the past decade, domestic extremists have killed 443 people. More than half of the deaths were attributable to white supremacists. Had foreign terrorists committed such crimes, Republicans would have raised a ruckus.

Although FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testified about the threat of domestic terrorism in March 2021 and pledged to work with the Senate committee on reporting, his agency has done little to address it. The committee reports, "the federal government — specifically FBI and [the Department of Homeland Security] — has failed to systematically track and report data on domestic terrorism as required by federal law, has not appropriately allocated its resources to match the current threat, and has not aligned its definitions to make its investigations consistent and its actions proportional to the threat of domestic terrorism.” And even when the feds have accumulated data, “DHS and FBI have not appropriately allocated their resources to match the current threat, despite recent increased investments and efforts.”

Former assistant FBI director Frank Figliuzzi tells me, “The Senate report raises questions as to why the FBI and DHS still don’t have their act together." He also notes that the FBI’s decision to merge data on white supremacy cases with black nationalist cases into a “race-based” category "takes political correctness to a dangerous extreme.” He adds, "This work demands transparency not politics.”

Certainly both the DHS and FBI have many pressing priorities. Border control takes up much of DHS’s attention, and the FBI covers everything from cyberterrorism to white collar crime to foreign espionage. Nevertheless, there’s a nagging sense that the two institutions are uncomfortable with cracking down on domestic terrorists, either because of legitimate concerns for civil liberties or because a handful of agents sympathize with right-wing authoritarianism (as is the case in law enforcement and the military).

“The difficulty with addressing violent domestic terror has all too often been that the ‘bad guys’ look too much like the rest of us,” former prosecutor Joyce White Vance tells me. She adds that the FBI often grouped white supremacist domestic terrorist movements with other, less dangerous groups and insisted they all be treated the same. “We are paying the price for that failure now,” she said. . . .

Congress passed a law in 2019 requiring intelligence agencies to produce a report on domestic terrorism threats, but they failed to do so. The Brennan Center explains, “In reports filed in 2021 and 2022, the FBI argued that while it could provide topline statistics regarding the number of investigations it opened, it couldn’t provide data regarding domestic terrorism incidents because the bureau didn’t collect it and no law required state and local law enforcement agencies to report it.”

Part of the problem is that whenever law enforcement indicates an interest in pursuing such threats, right-wing actors go nuts. When Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed to investigate violent threats against public officials, Republicans wrongly accused him of suppressing dissent and labeling ordinary Americans as “domestic terrorists.” To his credit, Garland created a unit within the Justice Department to combat domestic terrorism, but it must rely on the FBI and other law enforcement groups to track and investigate crimes.

Congress must lead the way for reform. The House Jan. 6 select committee, which is investigating the FBI’s failure to respond to credible threats to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, can address the lapses and make specific recommendations to correct the problem. And in the new Congress, Senate Democrats must be unstinting in holding Wray accountable for complying with information-gathering requirements.

Meanwhile, as Republicans grill (and possibly even impeach) DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Democrats should use their time during such hearings to explore the response to domestic terrorism in Mayorkas’s ranks. A DHS official insisted that domestic violent extremism is a “top priority," that the agency has worked with state and local partners, and has produced 110 “intelligence products.” But despite setting up a domestic terrorism branch within the DHS, the report documents shortcomings in data collection and sharing.

Finally, lawmakers need to take a hard look not only at Twitter, but also TikTok, Facebook and YouTube for providing platforms to violent and extremist individuals and groups. Without infringing on First Amendment rights, Congress should compel these companies to be more transparent about their moderation policies. . . .

If the government had made such little effort to crack down on foreign terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, the political backlash would have been intense. The same must be true of domestic terrorism. Federal agencies and social media companies should not get a pass.