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91% Fewer Terrorist Sympathizers with Twice the Cash and 48% More Surveillance

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A number of people have pointed to this report showing that the terrorist threat is grossly overblown. Not only does it show that Robert Mueller was overselling the risk of Muslim-American radicalization in the early days of of the War on Terror, and he and Janet Napolitano and Peter King and others continue to do so.

Twenty Muslim-Americans were indicted for violent terrorist plots in 2011, down from 26 the year before, bringing the total since 9/11 to 193, or just under 20 per year (see Figure 1). This number is not negligible — small numbers of Muslim-Americans continue to radicalize each year and plot violence. However, the rate of radicalization is far less than many feared in the aftermath of 9/11. In early 2003, for example, Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress that “FBI investigations have revealed militant Islamics [sic] in the US. We strongly suspect that several hundred of these extremists are linked to al-Qaeda.”1 Fortunately, we have not seen violence on this scale.

[snip]

These and similar warnings have braced Americans for a possible upsurge in Muslim-American terrorism, which has not occurred. Instead, terrorist plots have decreased in each of the past two years, since the spike of cases in 2009. Threats remain: violent plots have not dwindled to zero, and revolutionary Islamist organizations overseas continue to call for Muslim-Americans to engage in violence. However, the number of Muslim-Americans who have responded to these calls continues to be tiny, when compared with the population of more than 2 million Muslims in the United States5 and when compared with the total level of violence in the United States, which was on track to register 14,000 murders in 2011.6

But, as Kevin Drum emphasized, the number of Muslim-Americans indicted for supporting terrorism–rather than engaging in a plot–has declined steadily over the last decade.

But while discussing how overblown the threat from Muslim-Americans in this country is, we ought to look at another report, too–perhaps this one, bragging about how much the FBI has changed in the last decade. Because along with visualizing how much more the FBI is spending–more than twice as much–it also notes the FBI has increased surveillance 48% over the decade (and that’s separate from the surveillance the NSA and Homeland Security and local law enforcement have put into place).

In other words, it’s not just that Muslim-American support for terrorism has declined. But it has declined even while we’re spending far more resources looking for it, and we’re just not finding it, much.

DHS Gutted Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit after Report Leaked

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The Southern Poverty Law Center has an interview with the guy who headed DHS’ domestic terrorism analysis that produced the report on the rise in domestic right wing extremism, Daryl Johnson. (h/t Aravosis) He describes how, after the report was leaked, DHS first backed off its support of the report.

What happened after the leak?

I got to the office, and there were lots of phone calls. Citizens were angry. People wanted to speak to DHS authorities. I was very distraught. I felt I could talk to my peers, but beyond that, I couldn’t speak for myself. The public affairs office was doing all the PR and media response. We weren’t consulted on anything. If I could have responded, I would have said this is why we wrote this. But the response DHS provided just fueled the public’s speculation.

What about Napolitano?

Napolitano initially supported the report. She issued an official press release [on April 14, 2009] that said DHS has the authority to look at all types of threats. And we need to be vigilant. It was very supportive and direct.

Unfortunately, not too many people listened, and they kept applying political pressure. She held a couple of press conferences, trying to put out that same message. And people just kept continuing the pressure, especially after Congress got involved. [Editor’s note: For example, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), then the ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Napolitano to complain about what he called “a shoddy, unsubstantiated, and potentially politicized work.”]

I don’t know whether her staff advised her to, but she eventually backtracked. The DHS press spokesman came up with this story that it was all unauthorized and orchestrated by a rogue group of analysts. DHS caved in.

And then, DHS effectively gutted the unit focused on domestic terrorism.

What happened to your DHS unit?

When the right-wing report was leaked and people politicized it, my management got scared and thought DHS would be scaled back. It created an environment where my analysts and I couldn’t get our work done. DHS stopped all of our work and instituted restrictive policies. Eventually, they ended up gutting my unit. All of this happened within six to nine months after the furor over the report. Analysts then began leaving DHS. One analyst went to ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], another to the FBI, a third went to the U.S. Marshals, and so on. There is just one person there today who is still a “domestic terrorism” analyst.

Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism—whether it’s anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, “sovereign citizens,” eco-terrorists, the whole gamut.

Johnson also reviews that the sole source of sensitivity within DHS came from the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties group, which argued that material support for domestic terrorists did not make one a right wing extremist.

Did your report generate controversy inside DHS?

This is how it happened. I got a tasking from the secretary, which demanded a quick turnaround. We went through all the necessary coordination; many people reviewed the draft and made comments. Several people signed off on the report: two supervisors, the Office of General Counsel, multiple editors, etc. The Office of Privacy signed off, and the Office of Policy had no suggestions.

The secretary doesn’t oversee agency reports. She couldn’t do it, given the number of agencies generating multiple reports a day. As a result, heads of DHS’ agencies have authority to review work, coordinate with other agencies, approve and disseminate reports.

One office raised issues — the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties [CRCL]. At the time, we weren’t required to give them the report, but my boss thought we should run it past them. They had edits, but the main issue related to the definition of right-wing extremism. That office wanted a narrow definition limited to violent groups and individuals. Our subject-matter experts and management felt the definition needed to be broader.

Under CRCL’s definition, if you were in the Klan, burned crosses, had a terrorist in your house and donated money to groups advocating violence, you still would not qualify as a right-wing extremist. Our attorneys basically told them, “We appreciate your input, but we are approving the more broad definition.” This ended up being a sore point with CRCL once the document was released.

Now, I’m actually sort of glad the CRCL spoke up, if only because it shows that someone is reviewing stuff like this.

But CRCL was essentially advocating a double standard for terrorism, such that peaceniks supporting peace in Colombia could be imprisoned for years for offering less support to terrorists than right wingers did. There’s a reasonable historic legal justification for that standard.

But it–along with the way our government chose to stop tracking right wing terrorists when a bunch of right wingers made noise–shows the fundamental lie at the heart of our concern for terrorism.

Eric Holder Claims Rule of Law Exists in Cyberspace

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Just days after asking Congress not to give the intelligence community a hard deadline to put a basic cybersecurity measure into place, the Obama Administration rolled out a cybersecurity strategy yesterday with great fanfare. The event itself seemed designed to bring as many Cabinet Secretaries into one place at one time–Hillary Clinton, Gary Locke, Janet Napolitano, and Eric Holder, along with DOD Deputy Secretary William Lynn and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt–to give the appearance of real cooperation on cyberspace issues.

The strategy itself is still mostly fluff, with paragraphs like this:

This future promises not just greater prosperity and more reliable networks, but enhanced international security and a more sustainable peace. In it, states act as responsible parties in cyberspace—whether configuring networks in ways that will spare others disruption, or inhibiting criminals from using the Internet to operate from safe havens. States know that networked infrastructure must be protected, and they take measures to secure it from disruption and sabotage. They continue to collaborate bilaterally, multilaterally, and internationally to bring more of the world into the information age and into the consensus of states that seek to preserve the Internet and its core characteristics.

And loaded paragraphs like this, in the section on military goals:

Recognize and adapt to the military’s increasing need for reliable and secure networks. We recognize that our armed forces increasingly depend on the networks that support them, and we will work to ensure that our military remains fully equipped to operate even in an environment where others might seek to disrupt its systems, or other infrastructure vital to national defense. Like all nations, the United States has a compelling interest in defending its vital national assets, as well as our core principles and values, and we are committed to defending against those who would attempt to impede our ability to do so.

Lucky for DOD, there was no discussion of deadlines anywhere in the document, so they didn’t have to admit their plan to “adapt to the military’s increasing need for reliable and secure networks” was a long term project.

And then the strategy had a lot of language about norms, which places our cybersecurity strategy in the paradigm and language of international regime development from foreign relations (interestingly, Hillary started off the parade of Secretaries, further emphasizing this diplomatic approach).

But what struck me most about this dog and pony show, delivered on the day SCOTUS endorsed the executive branch’s efforts to hide torture behind the invocation of state secrets, was Eric Holder’s discussion about rule of law in cyberspace.

In recent months, the Justice Department has announced takedowns of significant criminal groups operating from Romania, Egypt, and elsewhere that had been victimizing American businesses and citizens – including children.  We’ve also brought multiple criminal conspirators to justice for their roles in coordinated cybercrimes that, according to court documents, netted nearly 1.5 million dollars from U.S. victims.  And, just a few weeks ago, we announced an operation to disable an international criminal network that had infected more than two million computers worldwide with malicious software.  Until we stepped in – with the help of industry and security experts, as well as key international partners – this malware was allowing criminals to capture bank account numbers, user names, and other sensitive and financial information online.

While we can all be encouraged by these and other successes, we cannot become complacent.  As President Obama has repeatedly indicated – we must, and we will, take our global fight against cyber threats to the next level.  The strategy that we are announcing today is an affirmation of that promise.  It reinforces our nation’s support for the Budapest Convention –and for efforts to establish the rule of law in cyberspace.   It also reflects our ongoing commitment to prevent terrorists and other criminals from exploiting the Internet for operational planning or financing – or for the execution of attacks. [my emphasis]

We’re going to build rule of law in cyberspace apparently. Sort of like an extraterrestrial colony to preserve a way of life that used to exist on Earth (or at least in the US), but no longer does.

So rest assured, if this cyberstrategy is successful, we can expect rule of law in cyberspace as compensation for the fact that the government has destroyed rule of law in meatspace.

Oh, on that note, there was no discussion of any investigation into how it was that a media outlet, Wikileaks, was attacked with a sophisticated DDOS attack, ultimately damaging free speech.

Darrell Issa Complains that Janet Napolitano Took a Whole Year to Change Michael Chertoff’s Inefficient FOIA Process

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Darrell Issa has no credibility when it comes to matters of transparency. We’ve seen Issa’s rank hypocrisy in the past. He dismissed concerns about Karl Rove doing business on RNC emails as a political stunt. And he suggested that apparently deliberate attempts to dismantle email archives at the White House was all about technology.

So I’m not surprised his loud complaints that Department of Homeland Security politicized the FOIA process turned out to be oversold.

As it happens, both Issa’s and Elijah Cummings’ reports on this seem to miss the forest for the trees.

At issue is the process by which top DHS officials review–and are alerted to–sensitive FOIA releases. The policy in place up until July 2010 was put in place in 2006. That is, under Michael Chertoff. As I understand it, when certain high level issues were due to be released, the Secretary’s office (whether it be Chertoff or Janet Napolitano) would be emailed the materials for review. In some cases, that review identified additional information that, for legal FOIA reasons, needed to be redacted. In other case, this review process simply alerted the Secretary to something he or she would be asked about in the press.

In other words, Darrell Issa is complaining about a process–and a burdensome email review process–inherited from Michael Chertoff. Since then, DHS has introduced an intranet system that has gotten the Secretarial review time to one day.

In addition, Issa appears to ignore how DHS has gotten rid of the largest FOIA backlog in history. In 2006, according to Mary Ellen Callahan’s testimony, DHS had a backlog of 98,000 requests. When Napolitano took over, that backlog was 74,000 requests. The backlog is now 11,000.

This is the kind of thing Darrell Issa is bitching about.

Now I do have certain questions about what sparked all of this. Issa first latched onto the issue after this AP report–the most serious allegations of which the AP subsequently admitted they could not confirm. Call me crazy, but given the centrality of bad blood between a few career staffers here, I’d suggest the original article came right out of that bad blood. (And perhaps not coincidentally, the article came out in the same month as DHS switched to the more efficient Intranet process.)

But it also sounds like the Napolitano was particularly concerned about being alerted to sensitive requests in the early years of the Administration.

Unless I missed it, no one mentioned this debacle, Napolitano’s embarrassment with the release of a Bush-initiated report on right wing domestic extremism. Mind you, witnesses admitted that part of the concern arose from the release of information that had been generated under the Bush Administration, so it’s possible that this report was the reason for the sensitivity.

But I wonder whether part of the problem here all stems from the fact that the Bush DHS initiated a study on right wing extremists that was subsequently spun as a Napolitano project.

Did Brennan and Napolitano Have Advance Warning of the UK Arrests?

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Now that I’ve fetched Mr. EW from his 48 hour trip to Philadelphia from Dublin, my entire family will be in one place for the next day or so, so don’t expect much posting from me in that period.

But I did want to point to this detail about the alleged terrorists arrested the other day in the UK: they were allegedly plotting to hit the US Embassy.

The U.S. embassy in London was a target of a group of men arrested last week in Britain and charged with conspiracy to cause explosions and preparing acts of terrorism, the U.S. State Department said on Monday.Twelve men were arrested on December 20 in what British police said were counter-terrorism raids essential to protect the public from the threat of attack.

Which brings me back to my point of the other day: the possibility that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did not know of the investigation and arrests before they happened. One possibility I suggested, for example, is that the British didn’t share details of the investigation with us because they had been burned (by Dick Cheney and Jose Rodriguez) in the past.

Only, this detail sort of extends my point. While it’s clear John Brennan and Janet Napolitano knew of the by then widely-reported arrests by the time Diane Sawyer asked James Clapper about them, had they known the US Embassy was a target (and that the news would be published in the next few days), they probably wouldn’t have claimed there was no tie between those terrorism arrests and threats to the US. Indeed, there’s some indication the entire government had no clue about that fact, given that ODNI’s statement about Clapper suggested that Clapper wasn’t immediately briefed because it didn’t appear there was a “homeland nexus.” Now maybe “homeland nexus” is a weasel way of saying we no longer consider our embassies overseas–not even the one in our closest ally’s capital–to be a target (if so, someone should tell Ahmed Ghailani’s lawyers, and all the other terrorists convicted in the US of striking US embassies overseas).

But the more likely possibility, given what Brennan, Napolitano, and Clapper have said is that the US–the entire government–was left out of the loop on this investigation. That’s certainly Britain’s prerogative. You never know when some Dick Cheney figure is going to sabotage a British investigation on them, after all.

But it does seem to be a notable data point.

The Real Terrorists

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I’ve started reading through J. Edgar Hoover’s files the reports a contractor developed for PA’s Department of Homeland Security that describe political activism as a terrorist threat; Governor Rendell has made them publicly available here. I’ll have more to say about them later (though feel free to add comments on them below).

But for the moment, I’d like to unpack the underlying premise.

The whole idea behind collecting this information and sharing it with private sector entities like oil drilling lobbyists arose as part of efforts to protect our critical infrastructure from terrorist attack after 9/11. US DHS describes the imperative to protect critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) this way:

Why is CIKR Protection Important?

  • Attacks on CIKR could significantly disrupt the functioning of government and business alike and produce cascading effects far beyond the targeted sector and physical location of the incident.
  • Direct terrorist attacks and natural, manmade, or technological hazards could produce catastrophic losses in terms of human casualties, property destruction, and economic effects, as well as profound damage to public morale and confidence.
  • Attacks using components of the nation’s CIKR as weapons of mass destruction could have even more devastating physical and psychological consequences.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 provides the primary authority for the overall homeland security mission. This act charged the Department of Homeland Security with primary responsibility for developing a comprehensive national plan to secure CIKR and recommend “the measures necessary to protect the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States.” This comprehensive plan is the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), published by the Department in June 2006. The NIPP provides the unifying structure for integrating a wide range of efforts for the protection of CIKR into a single national program.

And here’s what the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security considers critical infrastructure, which is how the ITRR organized the reports it gave to PA’s DHS:

So you see, because “attacks on CIKR could significantly disrupt the functioning of government and business alike and produce cascading effects far beyond the targeted sector and physical location of the incident,” PA (and surely other states) are collecting information about the lawful political organizing of anti-drilling and animal welfare activists, among others.

What I want to know is why we regard terrorist attacks to be the greatest threat to our transportation system? To our water? To our food system?

And most of all, to our banking and finance system?

Just to take one example, who do you think is a greater risk to our oil and gas infrastructure? A bunch of hippie protesters trying to limit drilling in the Marcellus Shale and thereby protect the quality of their drinking water (which is, itself, considered critical infrastructure)? Or PG&E, which sat on knowledge of an extremely high risk pipeline for three years even after setting aside the money to fix it?

Three years ago, PG&E asked state regulators for permission to spend $4.87 million to replace a section of the pipeline associated with the pipe that exploded in San Bruno last Thursday. The 1.42-mile section that ran under South San Francisco, which is more heavily populated than San Bruno, was considered extremely high risk and in need to replacement. Last year, the utility company made a similar request to replace a larger section of the same pipeline, at a cost of $13 million. Rate increases were approved and the plan should have gone forward. Sadly, nothing was done and lives were lost.

The South San Francisco pipeline replacement project was dropped down on the priority list and the money allocated for the work was spent elsewhere. Many experts and laypersons alike are now asking, why didn’t PG&E replace pipes they knew to be extremely dangerous?

And while multiple layers of government make sure the PG&Es of the world know about those hippie protesters, they can’t be bothered to require the utilities or pipeline operators to actually return the favor by revealing where the pipelines at risk of explosion are.

In a letter sent Friday, the executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission, Paul Clanon, sought the location of each pipeline segment on the list as well as a “detailed description of the criteria PG&E uses in deciding which pipeline segments to characterize as high-priority projects.”

Clanon defended the delay in seeking the list, whose existence PG&E disclosed as early as 2007, saying the agency didn’t see the need for the information before. Just because a site is on the list doesn’t necessarily mean it is dangerous, he said, adding that it’s not his agency’s role “to run the day-by-day activities of the utility.”

Leave aside our wholesale neglect of these elements of critical infrastructure themselves–the crumbling of our pipelines and roads and financial system because neither the public nor the private sector want to spend the money and time to keep them together–and focus on the information gathering part of it.

Because terrorism is somehow a greater threat to our country than PG&E’s neglect or Wright County Egg’s negligence or Lehman’s greed, we collect and share information on hippies. But not on the pipelines that will explode of their own accord, with action from neither hippies nor terrorists.

Updated to fix typo, “Communities” instead of “Communications.”

Nixon The Obama Campaign Goes to China

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One of the most telling anecdotes in this must-read Edward Luce skewer of the way a small circle of Obama advisors (Rahm, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Gibbs) dominates his Administration is this story about his trip to China.

On Mr Obama’s November trip to China, members of the cabinet such as the Nobel prizewinning Stephen Chu, energy secretary, were left cooling their heels while Mr Gibbs, Mr Axelrod and Ms Jarrett were constantly at the president’s side.

The White House complained bitterly about what it saw as unfairly negative media coverage of a trip dubbed Mr Obama’s “G2” visit to China. But, as journalists were keenly aware, none of Mr Obama’s inner circle had any background in China. “We were about 40 vans down in the motorcade and got barely any time with the president,” says a senior official with extensive knowledge of the region. “It was like the Obama campaign was visiting China.”

Coming as it does in an article that compares Obama’s Administration to Nixon’s…

And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

The story really highlights the dangers of such a close-knit group dominating Administration policy: on a visit to China, our relationship with which is one of the most challenging policy issues we face, we’ve got tourists dominating the policy, not experts.

As much as I’m thrilled the story repeats calls to replace Rahm, I think the real story is the suggestion that Obama’s cabinet members are growing tired of being treated as “minions” by Rahm. The story names four by name: Kathleen Sebelius, Ken Salazar, Janet Napolitano, and (above) Steven Chu.

Perhaps the biggest losers are the cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama’s health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. “I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,” says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently.

With the suggestion that Sebelius, for example, has been “excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill,” are we to understand that all of these cabinet officials are not intimately involved in setting policy? We’ve got Steven Chu, one of the best cabinet picks in the Administration, cooling his heels rather than the climate? And what are Sebelius, Salazar, and Napolitano advising that is not being heard? Is Sebelius growing tired of Rahm fucking up what should be her portfolio (after which, as happened last week, she has to go to Congress and get grilled on it)?

And then, of course, there’s an even more notable cabinet member that goes unmentioned: Hillary Clinton. She showed up prominently in the pictures from China, but she is not mentioned in this story as either one of those (like Joe Biden) who regularly gives Obama counsel but is not part of this inner circle, or one of those prominent cabinet members that Rahm treats like a minion. But the story does note how Arab-Israeli peace took a back seat to Rahm’s failed attempt to pass health care reform. Whether or not Hillary (or, more likely, her inner circle; John Podesta is one of the few named sources for it) is a source for this article, I can imagine how seeing a failed attempt to pass healthcare stall attempts to bring peace to Palestine would rankle Secretary Clinton.

So, yes, this is another story pointing to growing dissatisfaction with Rahm from allies both inside and outside the Administration. But note clearly, it appears to be very high level dissastisfaction.

Democrats versus the Satellites–Democrats Win!!

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I’ve been writing about the National Applications Office for close to two years–since the time Michael Chertoff tried to sneak through the satellite surveillance program without telling Congress or having the legally required privacy review completed. At that time, Bennie Thompson wrote Chertoff a sternly-worded letter.

Through media reports I learned of the Department’s intent to create a National Applications Office (NAO) that will purportedly be tasked with facilitating the use of “spy” satellites for domestic homeland security and law enforcement purposes. Unfortunately, I have had to rely on media reports to gain information about this endeavor because neither I nor my staff was briefed on the decision to create this new office prior to the public disclosure of this effort.

[snip]

Turning to the matter at hand, I understand that the target date for NOA operation is October 1, 2007. With less than six weeks remaining until the anticipated “roll out” of this effort, I am concerned that several fundamental issues have not been adequately addressed. For instance, the Department’s failure to include its own Chief Privacy Officer and the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the initial planning stages for the NAO raises serious concerns about the extent to which valid privacy and civil liberties concerns raised by the domestic use of this technology may have been considered and addressed prior to this projected roll out date.

After learning in a hearing that the program was as bad as perceived, Thompson called for a moratorium on the program.

Then, just two weeks ago, Jane Harman caught DHS trying to sneak the program through Congress in its classified budget.

But Siobhan Gorman reports that–after the nation’s police chiefs told Janet Napolitano a bunch of satellite feeds really weren’t going to help them do their jobs as much as old-fashioned information sharing–Napolitano is killing the program.

The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security, according to officials familiar with the decision.

[snip]

"It’s being shut down," said a homeland security official.

The Bush administration had taken preliminary steps to launch the office, such as acquiring office space and beginning to hire staff.

The plans to shutter the office signal Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s decision to refocus the department’s intelligence on ensuring that state and local officials get the threat information they need, the official said. Read more →