[R-G] Don't Even Think About It: The war against "homegrown terrorism" is on

[Anthony Fenton]

Don't Even Think About It
The war against "homegrown terrorism" is on. Enter the thought police.
James Ridgeway and Jean Casella
January 23, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2008/01/homegrown-terrorism.html

Perhaps no campaign tactic is more effective than fearmongering, and in the
current presidential race the sum of all fears, once again, is radical
Islamic terrorists—or "jihadists," to use the now-ubiquitous term. On
the Republican side, it's a pissing match over who can look toughest
against this shadowy enemy, with John McCain running ads showing masked
Islamic gunmen, while Mitt Romney spouts the old neocon warning about
forces that want to "unite the world under a single jihadist
caliphate." Although the Democrats' rhetoric is more restrained,
Hillary Clinton didn't hesitate to suggest that the new president might
quickly face another terrorist attack on American soil, as part of her
quest to convince voters they need her cool-headed experience. 

Largely ignored
by the mainstream candidates—as well as the mainstream media—are the
latest efforts to bring the fear home by targeting "homegrown
terrorism"—another new catchphrase. Only liberal Democrat Dennis
Kucinich and libertarian Republican Ron Paul have warned that in the
name of stopping domestic terrorist plots before they happen, Congress
is in the midst of passing legislation aimed not at actual hate crimes
or even terrorist conspiracies, but at talking, Web surfing, or even
thinking about jihadism or other "extremist belief systems." Last
October, a piece of legislation called the Violent Radicalization and
Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed through the House
with near-universal bipartisan support; it is likely to reach the floor
of the Senate early this year and appears certain to be signed into
law. 

Meanwhile, a
report released by the New York City Police Department's intelligence
division has been warmly received in Washington and widely distributed
to law enforcement officials and seems sure to influence national
policy. "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat" details
how not only committed terrorists but potential jihadists
think, what they talk about, and where they meet. The report's apparent
goal is to increase surveillance on constitutionally protected
activities. Already, members of the New York City Fire Department have
been enlisted by Homeland Security to be on the lookout for signs of
possible terrorist activity whenever they enter people's homes and to
share this "intelligence" with other agencies. 

Both the
legislation and the report are presented as reasonable, rational
responses to the threat of terrorism from domestic "extremist" groups
and are framed not as plans for action but as efforts to "study" and
"understand" the roots of homegrown terrorism. Both promote precisely
the kind of broad approach—targeting beliefs rather than actions,
assuming that "radicalization" leads to violence, defining terms
loosely and casting a wide net—that has been used in the past by
government authorities to monitor and disrupt legitimate dissent as
well as illegal plots. 

The primary
sponsor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism
Prevention Act is Jane Harman, chair of the House Committee on Homeland
Security's Subcommittee on Intelligence. Harman made a point of
introducing the legislation on April 19, the 12th anniversary of the
Oklahoma City bombing, saying it was "aimed at ensuring such an attack
never happens again." But it was clear from the start that the bill was
not aimed at white supremacists or anti-government militias. In
announcing the bill, Harman also cited a 2005 plot in her Southern
California district, targeting "military bases and recruiting stations,
the Israeli Consulate, synagogues filled with worshipers on Jewish holy
days, and the El Al ticket counter at LAX"—a plot that was foiled when
a local police detective spotted "jihadist extremist material" in the
apartment of a robbery suspect. 

The danger posed
by American jihadists remains relatively small—both in comparison to
domestic threats in Europe and to the threat of attacks on the United
States from abroad. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on "The
Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," released in July 2007, clearly
stated that Al Qaeda "is and will remain the most serious terrorist
threat" to the United States. In fact, the report found that "the group
has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack
capability" from its safe haven in Pakistan, and that the rise of Al
Qaeda in Iraq has helped it raise resources and "recruit and
indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks." Far down in
its threat assessment, the NIE notes that "the radical and violent
segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the
United States," but also finds that "this internal Muslim terrorist
threat is not likely to be as severe as it is in Europe." 


Nonetheless, a
few thwarted conspiracies are more than enough to float a bill like
this. After a couple of hearings—described by OMB Watch as "primarily
one-sided, with the bulk of the witnesses representing law enforcement
or federal agencies"—the bill went to the House floor, where it was it
passed with only six members voting against it—three Democrats and
three Republicans. (Twenty-two others were absent.) Currently, a nearly
identical version of the bill awaits a vote in the Senate's Committee
on Homeland Security, where it has a supporter in chair Joseph
Lieberman. Committee member Barack Obama has gone on record as being
undecided on the bill (after an earlier email to constituents that
seemed to indicate support)—but no presidential candidate is likely to
cast a vote that could be seen as soft on terrorism. 


The legislation
would create a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent
Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism composed of 10 members whose
vaguely defined job would be to "examine and report upon the facts and
causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and
ideologically based violence," and to "build upon and bring together
the work of other entities" including various federal, state, and local
agencies, academics, and foreign governments. The commission is charged
with issuing a report after 18 months. It also directs the Secretary of
Homeland Security to set up a center to study "violent radicalization
and homegrown terrorism" at a U.S. university, and to "conduct a
survey" of what other countries are doing to prevent homegrown
terrorism. 




On the surface
it looks harmless enough, except perhaps as a source of potential pork.
California's Dana Rohrabacher, one of three Republicans to oppose the
bill, told Congressional Quarterly that he saw the creation of
the commission as "the [worst] type of posturing. Is spending $20
million so people can talk more and pay for their hotel rooms and
expenses really going to solve anything? I don't think so." 

On the
Democratic side, however, the legislation's three nay votes included
Kucinich, who refers to it as the "thought-crimes bill." At campaign
stops in New Hampshire, Kucinich cited the bill as yet another sign of
government intervention in civil liberties. Earlier in his campaign, he
said it "sets the stage for further criminalization of protest." 

The bill raises
the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part
through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says
that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting
or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating
ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social
change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as
an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation
according to the prevailing political winds. 

In addition,
simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief
systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves
into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington
legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the
bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to
worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who
harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme." 

The United
States already has ample federal and state laws against violence of all
kinds, and against conspiracy to commit violence. Participants in the
handful of "homegrown terrorist" plots that have hatched since 9/11 are
being prosecuted under these existing statutes. Certain kinds of direct
incitement to violence are already illegal, as well, but within strict
limits. 

Robert Peck of
the Center for Constitutional Litigation points out that some of the
most significant First Amendment battles have been fought over
precisely when "speech transgresses the line from mere advocacy, which
is protected by the First Amendment, to incitement, which is not."
Through the early twentieth century, when "incitement" was defined
broadly as speech that had a "tendency" to cause illegal acts, it was
used to prosecute nonviolent abolitionists, anarchists, socialists, and
draft resisters. Gradually, the Supreme Court narrowed the definition,
so that speech is protected unless it will "intentionally produce a
high likelihood of real imminent harm." 

What the
Homegrown Terrorism bill does is bring back into the equation not just
violent actions, and not just violent plots, but the words and ideas
that may (or may not) inspire or encourage them somewhere down the
road. It moves toward designating people as terrorists based not on
what they do, but on what they say and what they think. 

Other red flags
appear in the bill's initial "findings"—among them, the charge that
"the Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization,
ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in
the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of
terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." "If Congress
finds the Internet is dangerous, then the ACLU will have to worry about
censorship and limitations on First Amendment activities," says the
ACLU's Fredrickson. "Why go down that road?" 

It's the "road"
the bill lays out that worries civil libertarians. "This measure looks
benign enough, but we should be concerned about where it will lead,"
Kamau Franklin of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights said when
the bill passed the House. The National Commission it creates will have
broad power to conduct investigations; one commentator dubbed it the
"Son of HUAC"—the House Un-American Activities Committee—because it is
supposed to travel around the country, holding hearings and questioning
people under oath about their ideological beliefs. Wherever it may
ultimately lead, the bill seems clearly part of a growing push toward
expanding domestic intelligence operations—spying that is aimed not at
any Al Qaeda members who may have slipped across the border, but at
U.S. citizens and legal residents. The great civil libertarian Frank J.
Donner, in his book The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System,
argued that the true goal of domestic intelligence was not to prevent
or punish criminal activity, but to protect existing power structures
and suppress dissent. Unlike law enforcement, which deals with illegal
actions that have already been committed, domestic intelligence is by
nature "future-oriented": It is not looking for criminals, but
potential criminals, and it does so by relying on "ideology, not
behavior, theory not practice." Anyone who thinks the wrong way could
at some point act the wrong way—so they have to be watched. 

Donner was
writing in the late 1970s, following congressional investigations that
exposed the abuses of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence
Program), which for more than a decade had conducted surveillance and
planted informants to spy on and disrupt what J. Edgar Hoover had
decided were "enemies of the American way of life"—including civil
rights, anti-war, student, and women's liberation groups, as well as
the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, the
bureau tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes
and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued
on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national
emergency." In the end, the Bureau conducted more than half a million
investigations of so-called subversives and maintained files on well
over a million Americans—all of this without a single conviction for a
criminal act. 


Plenty of people
will argue that the "subversive" groups targeted during the McCarthy
era or the COINTELPRO period were nothing like today's Islamic
radicals—and there are, of course, differences, not least in terms of
new tactics like suicide attacks and dirty bombs. But the Weather
Underground set off at least a dozen bombs, which is a dozen more than
the homegrown jihadists have managed so far. And just as the FBI spied
on Weathermen and anti-war activists alike, it will be unlikely to
distinguish between active jihadists and Muslims who are simply ardent
or angry. What's more, anything that can be applied to one "extremist"
group—laws, policies, law enforcement strategies, domestic intelligence
operations—can be applied to others. A case in point is offered by
Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corporation terrorism expert who served
as a consultant on the NYPD's report. In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves,
Jenkins wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will
seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization
forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a
mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather
than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent. 

The bill does
include a provision that all activities "should not violate the
constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United
States citizens or lawful permanent residents," and must observe
"racial neutrality" policies. They are also to be audited by Homeland
Security's Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer. But as Mike German
of the ACLU told In These Times, an internal review does not
constitute real independent oversight. "Nobody should be fooled that
such an office would have authority to address policies that are
approved at a high level of the administration." 

Outside of civil
liberties groups, most criticism of the bill seems to be coming from
the libertarian right—including presidential candidate Ron Paul, who
gave a shout-out to his diverse base of supporters when he warned that
"otherwise non-violent anti-tax, antiwar, or anti-abortion groups
[could] fall under the watchful eye of this new government commission."


For an
indication as to where the initiatives outlined in the bill could lead,
we can look to the NYPD report on the "homegrown threat" that was
released in August 2007. Prepared by two senior analysts in the
department's intelligence division, it compiles information from case
studies of successful attacks and thwarted plots by domestic terrorists
in the United States and other Western nations, and uses them to create
what the authors call "a conceptual framework for understanding the
process of radicalization in the West." 

 
The NYPD
report, like the House bill, starts out with a definition of terms. But
unlike the bill, it is frank about which "extremist belief system"
poses what it calls "the homegrown threat" (although it often avoids
referring to Islam and instead uses the term "jihadi-Salafi ideology"):
"What motivates young men and women, born or living in the West, to
carry out 'autonomous jihad' via acts of terrorism against their host
countries? The answer is ideology. Ideology is the bedrock and catalyst
for radicalization. It defines the conflict, guides movements,
identifies the issues, drives recruitment, and is the basis for action.
In many cases, ideology also determines target selection and informs
what will be done and how it will be carried out." 


The lines
between thought and action are blurred. And the report states
explicitly that both are dangerous and need to be policed: "Where once
we would have defined the initial indicator of the threat at the point
where a terrorist or group of terrorists would actually plan an attack,
we have now shifted our focus to a much earlier point—a point where we
believe the potential terrorist or group of terrorists begin and
progress through a process of radicalization. The culmination of this
process is a terrorist attack." 


Central to the
report is an analysis of the four phases of this "radicalization
process": pre-radicalization; self-identification with the jihadist
cause; indoctrination following exposure to jihadist literature or
arguments; and finally, "jihadization." None of these phases involves
any violent acts, although the last, in the report's definition, will
"ultimately" lead to "operational planning for the jihad or a terrorist
attack." The way that one phase leads into another suggests a kind of
seamless continuity between thought and action, a sense of
inevitability—as if once an individual admits the ideology into his
mind, he will eventually end up with a bomb strapped to his body. 

The report
acknowledges that individuals destined to follow this trajectory do not
fit any particular profile. They can be citizens or resident aliens
(legal or illegal); immigrants or second- and third-generation
Americans; Muslim-born or converts. The "radicalization incubators"
where they gather, the report says, "can be mosques," but also "cafes,
cab driver hangouts, flophouses, prisons, student associations,
nongovernmental organizations, hookah (water pipe) bars, butcher shops
and book stores." Or they may meet on the Web, which the report calls
"a virtual incubator of its own" and New York police commissioner
called "the de facto training ground" for terrorists. 

Future
jihadists, the report says, "look, act, talk and walk like everyone
around them," and "in the early stages of their radicalization, these
individuals rarely travel, are not participating in any kind of
militant activity, yet they are slowly building the mind-set, intention
and commitment to conduct jihad." In other words, as Spencer Ackerman
writes on TPMMuckraker, "most of what we learn about potential
homegrown jihadists is that their pre-radical behavior is...a lot like
that of non-jihadists." How, then, can we identify these people? Only
by keeping an eye on everyone who might remotely fit the bill. 

"The NYPD must
have the tools it needs to investigate and combat terrorism, but this
report lays the foundation for blanket surveillance of the entire
Muslim community," said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil
Liberties Union. 

The NYPD report
outlines no concrete strategies for combating "jihadization," but these
would presumably involve the same kinds of tactics that have been used
to track "dangerous" and "subversive" groups in the past, the basic
tactics of domestic intelligence work: electronic surveillance,
recruiting informants, placing agents—and sometimes agents
provocateur—inside suspect communities, and taking up other
opportunities to watch, look, and listen. 

The report also
seems to have inspired renewed calls for ordinary citizens to join in
the task of rooting out potential jihadists by spying on their
neighbors. "They can live next door," warned the New York Post, which also declared that the report "underscores the relentless efforts by civil libertarians and leftist groups—with the New York Times at the head of the line—to thwart counterterrorist efforts" by the NYPD. 

Interestingly, the NYPD's "counterterrorist efforts" to which the Post
refers had nothing to do with crushing jihadist plots; instead, they
involve one of the most blatant crackdowns on legitimate dissent in
recent memory, and show why the police force honed by Rudy Giuliani
needs no more weapons against constitutional liberties added to its
arsenal. Before and during the 2004 Republican National Convention,
with no credible threat of violence, the NYPD conducted not only mass
arrests of peaceful protesters (almost three times as many as Chicago
1968), but widespread preconvention surveillance of activists with
"anti-Bush sentiment," from anti-war organizations to church groups to
street-theater companies. "The police action helped to all but
eliminate dissent from New York City during the Republican delegates'
visit," said the New York Times editorial that aroused the Post's wrath. "If that was the goal, then mission accomplished. And civil rights denied."