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Security

CHART: 17 Years After Oklahoma City Bombing, Right-Wing Extremism Is Significant Domestic Terror Threat

By Guest Blogger on Apr 19, 2012 at 11:30 am

By Ken Sofer and CAP National Security team intern Molly Bernstein

Oklahoma City National Memorial

Seventeen years ago today, Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols detonated 4,800 pounds of homemade explosives under the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building’s daycare center in downtown Oklahoma City. The explosion resulted in 168 dead, 680 injured and over $652 million in damage. The Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attacks in U.S. history until 9/11.

McVeigh said that he attacked the Murrah building, which held the local offices of the DEA, ATF, Social Security, and the Army and Marine recruiting offices, because of his hatred of the federal government, opposition to gun control laws and anger at the FBI for its actions during the Waco Siege of 1993. McVeigh was found guilty on eleven counts of murder and conspiracy in 1997 and was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.

Though the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City happened nearly two decades ago, right-wing extremist terrorism remains a significant domestic threat to American security. The Department of Homeland Security released a report in 2009 stating that the economic and political climate bears important similarities to the conditions of the early 1990s when right-wing extremism experienced a dramatic resurgence. These conditions, including the public debate around hot-button issues such as immigration, gun control, and abortion, along with the election of the first African-American president, present “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” the report said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano eventually ordered the report withdrawn because of significant political backlash from mainstream conservatives. But the report, which was originally commissioned by the Bush administration, also found that “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

A look at terrorist incidents since the Oklahoma City bombing, including both successful and disrupted ideologically-motivated attacks, backs up the conclusions of the DHS report:

Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing.

After DHS withdrew the report, the department cut the number of analysts studying non-Islamic domestic terrorism. Daryl Johnson, the primary author of the report and a self-described Republican, soon left his post at DHS and said in July, 2011 that DHS has “just one person” dealing with domestic terrorism. The Department has largely been silent on domestic terrorist threats ever since.

Although current statistics show that right-wing extremism is on the rise through groups like the Sovereign Citizen and Patriot movements, domestic counterterrorism continues to receive few resources and little public attention. Though Islamic extremism remains a significant domestic security threat, current statistics and incidents such as Oklahoma City show that it is far from the only threat. In order to protect American citizens, we need to match our resources to the reality of our threats, not just the politically expedient narratives we have formed.

Alyssa

Shah Rukh Khan Joins Laura Poitras As Artists With Homeland Security Troubles

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 16, 2012 at 11:37 am

Last week, I noted Glenn Greenwald’s piece on the ongoing troubles that Laura Poitras, a documentarian who’s chronicled the lives of people impacted by the American War on Terror, has had with Homeland Security, which has repeatedly detained her and confiscated her equipment on her return to the U.S. after reporting trips. But she’s not alone. Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan was just detained for the second time by immigration officials on his way into the United States, this time to give a lecture at Yale:

Khan’s arrival for his Yale lecture – preceded by a brief press conference – was delayed by over three hours. The actor did not comment as to why he was detained but before he began his Yale address, Khan smiled and took a witty dig at the incident, “It was nice, as it always happens… Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kick the star out of stardom.” Known for his characteristic humor, Khan further added, “They (immigration officials) always ask me how tall I am and I always lie and say 5 feet 10 inches. Next time I am going to get more adventurous. (If they ask me) what colour are you, I am going to say white.”

You might think that one of the advantages of integrating all of the government’s security functions into a single bureaucracy with unified databases might be that, when you wrongly detain and question someone, you could put a note in their file to so immigration officials who deal with this person in the future know to be polite and careful, and try not to repeat those same mistakes. Hassling artists because they’re brown, or because they question the outcomes of U.S. policy is not an efficient and effective way to ensure the security of America, or to win supporters for American policy.

Security

John Bolton Does His Best To Downplay Obama’s Killing Of Awlaki

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Sep 30, 2011 at 11:53 am

Moments ago, speaking at the retirement ceremony for Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, President Obama said American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki took the lead in “planning efforts to murder innocent Americans” as head of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Obama said it was a “major blow” to al Qaeda.

Former Bush U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, however, tried his hardest to downplay the significance of the Obama administration’s killing of Al-Awlaki in Yemen today, telling Fox News that we shouldn’t “read more into it than there is”:

BOLTON: At the same time, I think it’s important as individual Al Qaeda figures and other terrorists are killed that we not read more into it than there is. Consider this analogy if you were around in the 1920s and somebody said, my God, Vladimir Lenin is dead. The Bolsheviks will never recover from this. [...]

So while Al-Awlaki death is significant, I would not read cosmic consequences into it.

Watch it:

Bolton’s analogy is rather flawed, as Lenin died of natural causes after a period of of semi-retirement from politics, while Al-Awlaki was at the height of his power. Al-Awlaki had a hand in almost all of the high-profile terror attempts in recent years — he helped recruit Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber,” exchanged emails with Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan, communicated with failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and directed the attempted bombing of cargo planes last year.

But as NBC News’ First Read noted this morning, “no president” in over 20 years “has had more foreign-policy successes happen under his watch than President Obama.” Yet, he’s “getting almost no credit from the American public.” Despite the killing of Osama Bin Laden and nearly two dozen other top terrorist, the dismantling of Al Qaeda, and the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi polls show the public still gives Republicans the edge on combating terrorism. That after President Bush failed to capture Bin Laden or even pursue him with much alacrity.

This is likely because conservative media personalities and Republican lawmakers consistently mislead the public on Obama’s foreign policy, suggesting he is weak on terror and maligning his stance as “leading from behind.” There has never been any basis in reality to their attacks, and even less so after the killing of Al-Awlaki. But Bolton’s performance on Fox this morning suggests that even this latest incident won’t make conservatives acknowledge reality.

Politics

On Eve Of 9/11 Anniversary, Cantor Insists On Massive Cuts To First Responders In Exchange For Emergency Disaster Aid

By Judd Legum on Sep 10, 2011 at 12:18 pm

Yesterday, President Obama requested $5.1 billion to provide disaster relief to communities struggling to recover from recent hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and wildfires. The request includes $500 million in emergency funds FEMA needs to continue to operate effectively through the end of September.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, whose home state of Virginia was hit by an earthquake and Hurricane Irene, is demanding more partisan spending cuts in exchange for approving the request. From Politico:

But a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) signaled late Friday that the GOP is likely to insist on offsets for the $500 million in emergency funds Obama requested for 2011…

“The House has passed $1 billion in disaster relief funds that is fully offset, which we will look to move as quickly as possible.”

The funds referenced by Cantor’s spokesperson are contained in the House Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill, which is adamantly opposed by Senate Democrats. Why? The “offsets” contained in the bill are actually massive cuts to first responders. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) explains:

The House bill slashes funding for grants to equip and train first responders by 40 percent. This is on top of the 19 percent cut in FY 2011. The House defense appropriations bill provides $12.8 billion to train and equip troops and police in Afghanistan — yet the House provides only $2 billion for first responders here at home.

Their proposal also slashes the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s operations by 6 percent at a time when the agency has never been busier. Does it really make sense to pay for response and reconstruction costs from past disasters by reducing our capacity to prepare for future disasters?

In December, Cantor opposed a bipartisan bill “to improve health services and provide financial compensation for 9/11 first responders who were exposed to dangerous toxins and are now sick as a result.” Now, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Cantor is pushing for further cuts to first responders in exchange for disaster relief.

Cantor and his staff continue to insist “There will be no delay in meeting the president’s request and providing people the aid they need.” But they have yet to support any such request absent more partisan spending cuts.

NEWS FLASH

Coming Soon: Wearing Shoes Through Airport Security | U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Politico that Americans will be soon be able to again wear their shoes through airport security. “We are moving towards an intelligence and risk-based approach to how we screen,” she said. “I think one of the first things you will see over time is the ability to keep your shoes on.” Napolitano added that the restrictions on liquids are unlikely to be lifted anytime soon. She said extra security measures were in place for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but that the precautions were “not because there’s a specific, credible threat.”

Justice

DC Circuit Upholds New Airport Screening Technology Against Fourth Amendment Challenge

By Ian Millhiser on Jul 15, 2011 at 4:30 pm

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit just upheld TSA’s new screening measures in a unanimous decision:

As other circuits have held, and as the Supreme Court has strongly suggested, screening passengers at an airport is an “administrative search” because the primary goal is not to determine whether any passenger has committed a crime but rather to protect the public from a terrorist attack. An administrative search does not require individualized suspicion. Instead, whether an administrative search is “unreasonable” within the condemnation of the Fourth Amendment “is determined by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.”

That balance clearly favors the Government here. The need to search airline passengers “to ensure public safety can be particularly acute,” and, crucially, an AIT scanner, unlike a magnetometer, is capable of detecting, and therefore of deterring, attempts to carry aboard airplanes explosives in liquid or powder form. On the other side of the balance, we must acknowledge the steps the TSA has already taken to protect passenger privacy, in particular distorting the image created using AIT and deleting it as soon as the passenger has been cleared. More telling, any passenger may opt-out of AIT screening in favor of a patdown, which allows him to decide which of the two options for detecting a concealed, nonmetallic weapon or explosive is least invasive.

As Orin Kerr points out, this decision comes from a “pretty Fourth-Amendment-rights-friendly panel.” Judge Douglas Ginsburg is a deeply radical libertarian who once called for a return to a Great Depression-era understanding of the Constitution, but he is also a fairly consistent libertarian who is skeptical of intrusive searches and seizures. Judge David Tatel is one of the federal bench’s leading progressive thinkers. When he was younger, he was considered a likely candidate for promotion to the Supreme Court in a Democratic administration, and his clerks routinely go only to clerk for a justice.

In other words, if this panel would uphold TSA’s practices, it is very unlikely that their decision will be contradicted by a higher authority.

Politics

Reality Check: California Congressman Explains How First Responder Budget Cuts Cost Lives

By Guest Blogger on Jun 1, 2011 at 8:30 pm

Firefighters in the city of Alameda, CA outside of San Francisco were forced to watch a man drown today due to a policy tied to recent budget cuts. First responders and more than 75 onlookers watched as the man committed suicide, drowning himself over the course of an hour in the San Francisco Bay. First responders were called to the scene. But according to interim Alameda Fire Chief Mike D’Orazi, his crews “did not have the training or cold-water gear to go into the water” because of 2009 budget cuts.

While this is a dramatic example of the impact of local budget cuts, it serves as a perfect illustration of the problems Republican budget cuts pose to first responders. This tragedy comes on the heels of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee’s approval of a Republican proposal from last month “to slash funding for first responders by more than $1 billion.” This “included significant cuts to the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) and Assistance to Firefighters (FIRE Act) grant programs,” as well as “slashed funding for nearly every first responder grant program, including the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) and State Homeland Security (SHSGP) grants” by over 50 percent.

Speaking to ThinkProgress, California Congressman Xavier Becerra (D) said the drowning is “a perfect example of why you have to always be prepared.” Firefighters are trained to save people and are “paid to do it. That is why they are the people we respect,” he said, adding, “The Republicans are being extremely reckless in depriving us of the personnel we need to do the work for America”:

BECERRA: You just raised a perfect example of why you have to always be prepared … a firefighter is trained to do that, in fact paid to do that and that is why they are the people we respect and put at a higher standard. I just went to a school about a month or two ago — about six weeks ago — where the principal said to me in a very small elementary school that he had to issue 12 pink slips to 12 of his teachers for the following school year, not knowing if he would be able to hire them back. The same [principal] told me that in the previous year in 2009, he had to do the same thing, but because of the Economic Recovery Act that we passed in 2009, he was actually able to retract some of those pink slips and keep some of those teachers around.

So whether it’s the firefighter who wasn’t around to save that individual who jumped into the water or the teachers who are not around to teach our kids, we need them. The Republicans are being extremely reckless in depriving us of the personnel we need to do the work for America, but it’s going to shortchange our kids for the future.

Watch it:

Such recklessness certainly has precedent. As ThinkProgress’s Zaid Jilani reported, two children in Philadelphia died this year in a fire while the closest fire station was temporarily closed due to the city’s budget issues. As Congress debates potential budget cuts during negotiations to raise the debt ceiling, it is important they protect the services essential to American safety.

– Sean Savett

Security

Rep. Marino Ditches Homeland Security Meeting To Speak To 12 Tea Party Protesters

By Faiz Shakir on Apr 1, 2011 at 4:15 pm

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs’ subcommittee on Africa, wondered whether the U.S.’s intervention in Libya means we might “go into Africa next.” Libya is, of course, in Africa. Jay Leno joked last night, “You see why he’s not on the intelligence committee. Even Sarah Palin’s going ‘get a map!’”

Marino’s office scrambled to respond to our story, telling reporters that the congressman was making a distinction between our aerial bombing of Libya and the potential deployment of ground troops — a point that was not made clear in his original statement. “We are not ‘in’ Africa by any means,” a Marino spokesman said. “We do not have ground troops there and, as far as we know, there are no plans to go into Africa.” In fact, the U.S. has bases in Africa and troops on the ground.

As Marino staffers were undertaking efforts to defend their boss’s competency, they were simultaneously undermining that cause. Yesterday, “about a dozen” tea party protesters showed up outside Marino’s district office in Tunkhannock, PA. At the time, Marino, who also sits on the House Homeland Security, was participating in a hearing on the “U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against Drug Cartels.” Marino decided to ditch the hearing and go talk to tea party protesters instead:

During the rally, Renita Fenick, Mr. Marino’s director of communications, came out to hear what the tea party members had to say. She told them the congressman would appreciate knowing he had that kind of support and would pass on their comments.

Ms. Fenick said after the rally she was able to get Mr. Marino on the phone from Washington to speak with those at the Tunkhannock office.

“We pulled him out of a Homeland Security meeting to do it,” she said.

If foreign affairs and homeland security don’t interest Marino, perhaps he should recuse himself from those committees and devote more of his time to tea party rallies.

Politics

Texas Airport Security Insults India After Wrongfully Demanding To Search UN Envoy’s Turban

By Tanya Somanader on Dec 13, 2010 at 4:48 pm

The paranoid environment created by the 9/11 attacks has allowed for a myriad of civil rights infringements under the guise of national security. Airport security especially ratcheted up racial profiling, marking any Middle Eastern sign or symbol a suspicious target, particularly the turban. Even turbaned individuals with no affiliation with Islam or the Middle East, such as Sikh men, have become “a superficial and accessible proxy for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks” and a “target of discriminatory conduct,” including employment discrimimation, harrassment, and violence.

But now, this long-permitted prejudice is creating diplomatic tension between the U.S. and India. Today, the Indian press reported on an incident last month in which Houston, Texas airport security officials detained Indian’s UN envoy Hardeep Puri in a holding room for 30 minutes because he was wearing a turban. As a Sikh, Puri is obliged to keep all hair intact and his head covered in public at all times. The turban symbolizes self-respect and piety — “touching of the head dress in public is not allowed” and can only be removed “in the most intimate of circumstances.”

However, as officials present during the incident told Turtle Bay, airport security officials ignored Puri’s religious requirements and long-standing protocol exempting dignitaries from such treatment and demanded to physically check his Turban themselves until Puri informed them that TSA regulations allow him to check himself:

Airport security agents in Austin pulled Singh aside into an enclosed glass holding room for questioning after he refused a request to remove his turban or allow inspectors to touch it, an Indian official who witnessed the incident told Turtle Bay. “He said no, you cannot check my turban,” according to the Indian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I won’t allow you to touch my turban.”

The Indian official said Singh offered to touch the turban himself and to allow the security agents to run a check of his hands for traces of explosives, but he said that one security official refused. Singh insisted that the security official had no right to check his turban, citing TSA regulations for searches of foreign diplomats. “Obviously you don’t know your own rules. Please check your rules,” he told the security agent, according to the Indian official. “The person insisted that he had to do it. He said, ‘Don’t tell me the rules.’”

The Indian official said that the security officials finally checked the security regulations and issued an apology to the Indian ambassador. He said he was unaware of whether his government had filed an official complaint with the United States over the issue.

This is the second incident in which a U.S. airport security gaffe has insulted the Indian government this month. Earlier, Mississippi airport officials created another diplomatic row when Indian ambassador Meera Shankar was picked out of a security line at an international airport in Mississippi and subjected to a pat-down simply because she was wearing a Sari. After the Indian government’s strong rebuke, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Mississippi’s Gov. Haley Barbour (R) both issued statements assuring Shankar that they will make sure such treatment does not happen in the future.

As for the Puri incident, the Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna said today that they have “taken it up with the U.S authorities and the matter is at that stage.” Former Indian diplomats, however, have “reacted aggressively” to the incident, saying that “if Washington does not change its policy on searches, diplomats from the U.S. should also be ready to face such security in India.”

Featured

zxbe: But would they dare search a Texan’s Stetson?

Security

Angry About Congress Passing ‘Left-Wing Agenda Items,’ 45-Year-Old Parolee Opens Fire On Cops

By Zaid Jilani on Jul 19, 2010 at 3:46 pm

Yesterday, 45-year-old parolee Byron Williams opened fire on Highway Patrol officers in Oakland, California. After a brief shootout, Williams, who was wearing body armor, was shot and is currently in an emergency room in stable condition at a local hospital.

In an interview with the local news, Williams explained that her son was unemployed, angry at “left-wing politicians,” and upset about Congress “railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.” Williams went on to say that she kept guns in her house which her son stole. She also warned of a coming “revolution”:

She said her son, who had been a carpenter and a cabinetmaker before his imprisonment, was angry about his unemployment and about “what’s happening to our country.” Williams watched the news on television and was upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,” his mother said. [...]

Janice Williams said she kept the guns because “eventually, I think we’re going to be caught up in a revolution.” But she said she had told her son many times that “he didn’t have to be on the front lines.”

ABC News 10 talked to Mrs. Williams and investigated the crime scene. She told the station that her son was “upset with the direction the country is going.” Watch it:

Earlier in the year, disgruntled software engineer Joe Stack used his plane to launch a suicide attack against an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Stack left behind a suicide note detailing his grievances against the government. Right-wing hate radio hosts and pundits have denied that their rhetoric is provoking violence against the government.

Update

Given that Williams had already committed two felonies before the shooting, the San Francisco Weekly speculates that California’s Three Strikes law — which places criminals behind bars for life after their third felony — may have escalated the amount of violence Williams used. The Weekly writes that the law “might have led him to attempt to go out in a blaze of glory rather than face a lifetime in prison.”

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