[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CONFRONTING VIOLENT WHITE SUPREMACY
(PART II):
ADEQUACY OF THE FEDERAL RESPONSE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 4, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-32
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: http://www.govinfo.gov
http://www.oversight.house.gov or
http://www.docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
36-828 PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
E-mail, [email protected].
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio, Ranking Minority
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Member
Columbia Justin Amash, Michigan
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Harley Rouda, California James Comer, Kentucky
Katie Hill, California Michael Cloud, Texas
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Bob Gibbs, Ohio
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Peter Welch, Vermont Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Jackie Speier, California Chip Roy, Texas
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
Mark DeSaulnier, California Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota
Stacey E. Plaskett, Virgin Islands W. Gregory Steube, Florida
Ro Khanna, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
David Rapallo, Staff Director
Candyce Phoenix, Staff Director
Valerie Shen, Chief Counsel
Kristine Lam, Counsel
Amy Stratton, Clerk
Christopher Hixon, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
------
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Chairman
Carolyn Maloney, New York Chip Roy, Texas, Ranking Minority
Wm. Lacy Clay, Missouri Member
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Justin Amash, Michigan
Robin Kelly, Illinois Thomas Massie, Kentucky
Jimmy Gomez, California Mark Meadows, North Carolina
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Jody Hice, Georgia
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Michael Cloud, Texas
Columbia Carol D. Miller, West Virginia
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on June 4, 2019..................................... 1
Witnesses
Mr. Michael McGarrity, Assistant Director, Counterterrorism
Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Mr. Calvin Shivers, Deputy Assistant Director, Criminal
Investigative Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Oral Statement................................................... 10
Ms. Elizabeth Neumann, Assistant Secretary, Threat Prevention and
Security Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Oral Statement................................................... 11
Mr. Tony McAleer, Co-Founder, Life After Hate
Oral Statement................................................... 43
Ms. Lecia Brooks, Outreach Director, Southern Poverty Law Center
Oral Statement................................................... 44
Ms. Brette Steele, Director of Prevention and National Security,
McCain Institute for International Leadership, on behalf of
Arizona State University
Oral Statement................................................... 46
Mr. Todd Bensman, Former Manager, Couterterrorism Unit,
Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, on behalf of Texas
Department of Public Safety
Oral Statement................................................... 47
Written statements are available on the U.S. House of
Representatives Repository at: https://docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
The documents entered into the record during this hearing are
listed below, and are available at: https://docs.house.gov.
* Detailed description of various cases Mr. Bensman Alluded to;
submitted by Rep. Roy.
* Report, "Hate at School;" submitted by Rep. Pressley.
CONFRONTING VIOLENT WHITE SUPREMACY
(PART II):
ADEQUACY OF THE FEDERAL RESPONSE
----------
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:45 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jamie Raskin
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Raskin, Maloney, Clay, Wasserman
Schultz, Kelly, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Norton, Roy, Amash,
Hice, Miller, and Jordan (ex officio).
Also present: Representatives Tlaib and Malinowski.
Mr. Raskin. The subcommittee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time. We are convening the
second in a series of hearings on confronting white supremacy,
where we will focus on the adequacy of the Federal response.
And I'm going to recognize myself now for five minutes to
make an opening statement.
I want to welcome all of the members, witnesses, and many
guests in the audience, to our second hearing on the deadly
serious topic of the resurgence of violent white supremacy in
America.
Last month we held a hearing to help us understand the
scope of the problem, and we heard from a number of witnesses
about the consequences of the government not acting to meet the
threat, including from Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer,
who was the young woman killed by white supremacists in
Charlottesville two years ago.
We heard also from former FBI and Department of Homeland
Security officials on what the agencies are doing today and not
doing and should be doing be in response.
One message came through loud and clear at that hearing:
White supremacists today constitute the most significant threat
of domestic terror in the United States, but the Federal
Government lacks a comprehensive and cohesive strategy for
addressing the problem.
Last month's hearing left me with three primary concerns.
First, the FBI's data collection and reporting system at best
drastically underreports hate violence in the U.S. and at worst
deliberately obscures the scope of the threat.
Second, the FBI's allocation of antiterrorism resources is
skewed to international terrorism, despite data showing
domestic terror to be the greater threat today.
And, third, the Department of Homeland Security appears to
have no overall strategic plan for how to counter and prevent
white supremacist violence.
It's my sincere hope that our friends at the FBI and
Homeland Security who are here today are prepared to adequately
address all of these concerns today.
The FBI's data reporting on hate-motivated violence, both
in the Criminal Investigative Division and the Counterterrorism
Division is flawed. Every witness before the subcommittee,
whether invited by the majority or the minority, agreed on one
thing, the FBI's hate crimes statistics are inaccurate and do
not reflect the reality of hate-motivated violence in our
country.
The[PC2] numbers that are now familiar to us all, from 2013
to 2017, the FBI reported on average 7,500 hate crimes
annually. During that same time period, the Bureau of Justice
Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey estimated on
average 200,000 hate crimes annually, which means the FBI is
reporting one hate crime for more than 20 hate crimes that are
reported in the National Crime Victimization Survey.
There are data leaks at almost every stage of the hate
crimes reporting process, from the hesitation of victims to
report hate crimes to the police to the failure of local and
state police to report hate crimes to the FBI to the FBI not
reporting hate crimes that they are aware of and filling in for
gaps in the record.
What's more, the FBI's data excludes incidents that any
reasonable person would agree should have been included.
Perhaps the most prominent example was the murder of
Heather Heyer herself in Charlottesville in 2017. Why was her
murder not reported as a hate crime? The best that I can
understand, this baffling omission reflects a problem first at
the local level, as local police did not report it as a hate
crime, but it also portrays a systemic failing by the FBI,
which apparently made little or no effort at all to audit its
own statistics to independently verify the accuracy of the data
being submitted from around the country.
So that is inexplicable and unacceptable, and I know we can
do better, and I hope we can hear from some of our witnesses
about how we can make improvements.
Mr. Shivers, I hope you're prepared today to lay out a
detailed plan for how CID can improve the hate crime collection
and reporting data.
An entirely different issue appears to be playing in the
Counterterrorism Division. While CID lacks the information
necessary to understand the scope of hate crimes, the CID has
detailed data on domestic terror but seems determined to
obscure the scope of white supremacist violence.
For at least a decade, the FBI employed the relatively
straightforward counterterrorism term ``white supremacist
extremists,'' WSE, which is defined as groups or individuals
who facilitate or engage in acts of violence directed at the
Federal Government, ethnic majorities or Jewish persons in
support of their belief that Caucasians are intellectually and
morally superior to other races.
This official category from the FBI and Department of
Homeland Security's joint lexicon was accompanied by at least
nine other specific categories, including anarchistic
extremists, animal rights extremists, antiabortion extremists,
black supremacist extremists, environmental rights extremists,
homegrown violent extremists, militia extremists, sovereign
citizen extremists, and racist skinhead extremists.
But now the FBI has collapsed these prior 10 specific
categories into four combined categories. It now uses, one,
racially motivated violent extremism, which we have been told
is an umbrella term that combines the prior subcategories for
white and black racially motivated extremism; two,
antigovernment/antiauthority extremism; three, animal rights/
environmental extremism; and, four, abortion extremism.
What was the purpose of these changes? At what level of
detail is the FBI still tracking extremist activity?
What proportion of racially motivated violent extremism is
actually perpetrated by white supremacists?
Merging white supremacist extremists, who were responsible
for 39 murders in 2018, with black supremacist extremists, who
are responsible for zero extremist murders in 2018, into a
single amalgamated category called ``racially motivated violent
extremism'' I think obscures the real threat. But I would love
to hear our witnesses opine on that.
Similarly, the transformation of the descriptive
antiabortion extremists category, which was in place for a
decade, into the misleading new category of abortion extremism,
is, it appears to me, a ham-fisted effort to disguise the
nature of the real threat to women's healthcare clinics and
doctors and nurses and staff who work there. I know of no
women's reproductive health workers who are pro-choice
activists who are blowing up clinics or otherwise committing
violence.
We cannot play word games with domestic terror, nor can we
afford to let hate crimes go drastically unreported. The FBI
must collect and report accurate data on white supremacist
violence and effectively measure the real magnitude of the
threat.
The government cannot protect vulnerable communities
without understanding and defining the problem in accurate
detail.
Despite the obvious problems with the data, this much is
clear: White supremacist terror is on the rise, and far right
and white supremacist domestic terror is a far more lethal
threat to Americans in the United States today than is
international Islamic terror. But the FBI's resource
allocations don't reflect this reality.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, from 2009 to 2018,
far-right extremism, which the FBI classifies as a form of
domestic terrorism, was responsible for 73 percent of extremist
murders. Islamic extremism, which the FBI usually classifies as
a form of international terrorism, was responsible for 23
percent of the fatalities during that period.
However, the FBI has testified the Bureau allocates its
resources almost exactly backward from what the problem would
suggest, devoting 80 percent of field agents to stopping
international terrorism, including Islamic extremism, and only
20 percent to stopping domestic terrorism, including far right
and white supremacist extremism.
This allocation of resources, or misallocation of
resources, has real-life consequences. As George Selim
testified at our last hearing, the University of Maryland START
Center found that from September 11, 2001, through 2017,
approximately 71 percent of Islamist-inspired extremists in the
U.S. were interdicted; they were stopped in the planning phase
of terror activity. But with far-right extremists, the inverse
is the case, and over 71 percent managed to successfully commit
violent acts they were planning.
How many far-right extremists attacks could have been
prevented if we had taken that threat as seriously as we had
taken the threat of Islamist fanatical extremism?
According to the Anti-Defamation League, of the 50 domestic
extremist murders committed in America last year, every
perpetrator--every perpetrator--had ties to right-wing
extremists, and 78 percent of the murders, or 39 of them, were
committed by white supremacists.
Meanwhile, there were zero killings in 2018 related to
left-wing extremism, a category which includes crimes committed
by anarchists and black nationalists.
How many lives can we save if we strengthen and focus our
response on white supremacist violence?
Mr. McGarrity, I hope you are prepared to account for CTD's
statistical reporting and resource allocations.
The FBI is not the only piece of the puzzle. We also need
to hear from the Department of Homeland Security to answer a
fundamental question: Do we have an overall strategic plan to
counter and prevent the threat of white supremacist violence? I
fear the answer is no, but I'm very eager to hear from Ms.
Neumann.
News reports indicate that this administration is actually
dismantling DHS' threat prevention framework for domestic
terror without a clear path forward to replace the existing
framework.
George Selim, who testified at our last hearing, was the
Homeland Security Director of Countering Violent Extremism Task
Force, and he testified that when he was at the Office of
Community Partnerships, he oversaw the Countering Violent
Extremism Task Force. They had $10 million in grant funding to
give away. They had 16 full-time employees and 25 contractors
and a total budget of $21 million to try to do proactive work
to counter the spread of terror.
Now, after the office has been renamed and reorganized to
the Office of Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, there
are only eight staff and a budget of $2.6 million. So the staff
has been cut in half, and they've lost 80 to 90 percent of
their funding.
So this development appears to have been aimed--though it's
not clear exactly why it happened, and I hope you can shed some
light on that for us, Ms. Neumann.
And in testimony prepared for today's hearing, Homeland
Security appears to lay out a plan for the path forward, but I
think Ms. Neumann would agree that there's still more questions
than answers at this point. What are the office's precise
functions? Who's in charge? How many personnel will be assigned
to prevent white supremacy violence? What is the budget? There
is no clear answer.
And it's very late in the game for us. The massacre at the
Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston was in 2015, Heather
Heyer died in 2017, where there were another 30 or 35 crimes
committed during those horrific events in Charlottesville. The
Tree of Life massacre took place last year.
Why are we now just getting around to establishing an
office to address the threat? Why are we just now trying to
articulate a nationwide strategy to prevent this threat to
communities across the land?
I know that Ms. Neumann recognizes the enormity of the
problem and the importance of getting it right, and I look
forward to hearing her thoughts about a detailed strategic plan
moving forward.
President Trump has called white supremacists a small group
of people that have very, very serious problems. But real
statistics from third-party groups and his own law enforcement
agencies demonstrate that it's actually a rather large group of
people, in the thousands, and they are causing very, very
serious problems, not just for themselves but for everybody
else, and certainly for everybody who has died at the hands of
white supremacists across the country.
In Congress, we must ensure that the government step up
immediately, speak clearly about the nature of this threat, and
rapidly move to increase and improve law enforcement and public
education efforts to protect our communities against the lethal
perils of white supremacist violence.
And, with that, I'm delighted to turn it over to the
distinguished ranking member of the committee, Mr. Roy.
Mr. Roy. Thank you, Chairman.
And I thank the work of the chairman and his staff on
pulling this hearing together, and I thank the witnesses for
taking the time for being up here to join us to testify and for
you all's service to our Nation. Thank you.
I am gratified that we are working on a bipartisan basis to
conduct meaningful oversight of the work that FBI and DHS are
doing to fight domestic terrorism and hate crimes.
I believe and expect that we will hear testimony today that
prevention of targeted violence should be agnostic to ideology.
I could not agree more. As a former Federal prosecutor, I think
it is imperative that be our approach. I do reiterate my point
from the first hearing that we be mindful of our language and
avoid focus on identity politics, which furthers the division
that causes many of the hateful acts by all bad actors.
But if we're going to have a hearing related to domestic
terrorism, I would like to discuss the different types of
domestic terror threats that the country faces, like sovereign
citizen terrorists in Texas. I want to talk about environmental
terrorism that may have a presence in other areas of the
country. Because the domestic terrorist threat we see in
Maryland may not be the same threats that we see in Texas,
which is why I've asked Mr. Bensman to be here in the second
panel to give us that state and local perspective about what we
saw on the ground when he worked in law enforcement and
counterterrorism in Texas.
The fact is that a crime is a crime, and they should be
prosecuted as such. But to have meaningful discussion with FBI
and DHS today, we should be focusing on you all's holistic
effort to stop all forms of terrorism and hateful violence.
I also want to reiterate the importance of perspective.
Last hearing I discussed the statistic from the Anti-Defamation
League. We discussed their classification of 18 of the 34
extremist murders in 2017 being tied to white supremacy,
obviously all horrific and crimes we would like to stop. Of
course, perspective here is important, because there were
17,000 murders in the United States in 2017.
We should also be cognizant of the reality that we
designate foreign terrorist organization as exactly that. But
we do not have a similar designation domestically. There are
reasons for that, things we should continue to discuss and
debate. There are Fourth Amendment concerns and other issues
involved with how we focus and target American citizens outside
traditional criminal laws and networks.
With those figures in mind and that background, I hope
today we can promote meaningful law enforcement meant to root
out crime regardless of how it's classified and be mindful of
how we allocate our resources. It's a difficult situation that
we all have to do as we try to stop criminal activity
nationwide, regardless of where it comes from or why it's
perpetrated.
My hope is that we can lay down our attempt to score
political points and call out racists for being abhorrent and
figure out how to best support our Federal law enforcement
agencies because as we convene this hearing, both DHS and FBI
are hard at work out in the field protecting this country from
terrorism and hate crimes. As we speak, right now, it's going
on.
For example, earlier this year, the FBI's Joint Terrorism
Task Force in California worked diligently to prevent a terror
attack planned in Long Beach. A JTTF in Ohio thwarted a
couple's plan to commit a mass murder at a bar in Toledo.
I've got a bunch of examples of FBI cases in Texas. A
former Texas State University student whom FBI agents claimed
was plotting mass violence who had embraced white supremacy.
JTTF agents arrested a DACA recipient, Sergio ``Mapache''
Salazar, for alleged threats of bomb-making for the purpose of
murdering ICE agents.
A Texas-based individual involved in an online militia
group burned a Victoria, Texas, mosque to send a message to the
Muslim community.
Two members of a sovereign citizen religious sect living in
central Texas compound robbed a Round Rock, Texas, jewelry
store.
Roger Talbot was arrested in March 2014 following an eight-
month undercover investigation of his so-called American
Insurgent Movement by the FBI Houston Domestic Terrorism Joint
Terrorism Task Force. He was threatening to blow up government
buildings.
Another individual had 500,000 rounds of ammo and was
engaged in white supremacist activity in East Texas. That was
also thwarted.
And I can go through the list. My point is, that activity
is going on. It's important that we recognize how much law
enforcement is working together at the Federal, state, and
local level to thwart these kinds of activities, regardless of
their ideology, regardless of where they come from, regardless
of the race, regardless of a focus on whether it involved
international terrorism. And I think it's critical that we
recognize and thank you all and those that are working in our
law enforcement communities from Federal, state, and local for
their service in doing so.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, from the FBI
and DHS, about the efforts spanning the previous administration
and this one to combat crime, including domestic-type
terrorism, as I understand there have been significant steps
taken to improve it under this administration and learn and
evolve what we've been doing, and in fact many steps that had
not been taken necessarily by the previous administration, not
necessarily to a fault but because we learn and develop.
I also look forward to hearing how the Federal Government
can partner with state and local law enforcement agencies
further to equip them with the right tools to root out domestic
terrorism, as that is the best approach to law enforcement, as
I can attest, as someone who worked as a former Federal
prosecutor within the Department of Justice as part of the
Project Safe Neighbors program in partnership with state and
locals to prosecute gang, drug, and gun violence.
With that, I thank the chairman and yield back such as I
have any time to yield.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Roy, thank you for that opening statement.
Very much appreciated.
And let's see. The first thing we need to do is to allow
Mr. Malinowski and Ms. Tlaib to participate in today's hearing,
to waive on for the purposes of it. We are delighted to have
them.
And, without objection, I will grant them that status.
And now I want to welcome our distinguished witnesses
today, starting with Michael McGarrity, who is the Assistant
Director of the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Welcome, Mr. McGarrity. We're delighted to have you.
Calvin Shivers--Mr. Shivers, I've been pronouncing your
name that way. I want to make sure that's correct.
Mr. Shivers. That's correct.
Mr. Raskin. Very good. Okay. That was a good guess.
You are the Deputy Assistant Director of the Criminal
Investigative Division, the CID, of the FBI, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
And Ms. Neumann, Elizabeth Neumann, is the Assistant
Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy at the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.
So we've got the key people in the country with us today.
Mr. McGarrity, you are recognized for five minutes.
Mr. McGarrity. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Forgive me. I do need to swear you in.
If all of you would please rise and raise your right hand.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
Let the record show the witnesses all answered in
affirmative.
Thank you very much. Please be seated.
The microphones are sensitive up here, so please speak
directly into them so all of us can hear you.
And, without objection, your written statements will be
made part of the record.
And, with that, Mr. McGarrity, now you are recognized for a
full five minutes to give an oral presentation.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL MCGARRITY, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Mr. McGarrity. Thank you, Chairman.
Good afternoon, Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, and
members of the committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
As the Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterterrorism
Division, I will be providing an overview of the FBI's efforts
to counter domestic terrorism by explaining what we do and how
we do it.
And I want to emphasize upfront that preventing acts of
terrorism in the homeland is the FBI's No. 1 priority. This
includes terrorism from any place and any actor.
In this fight, the FBI is the lead Federal agency for
investigating terrorism. The FBI categorizes investigations
into two main programs: international terrorism and domestic
terrorism, IT and DT. Combined, these two programs are what
make up the FBI's top priority.
International terrorists include members of designated
foreign terrorist organizations--we call them FTOs--state
sponsors of terrorism, and homegrown violent extremists, or
HVEs. Domestic terrorists are individuals who commit violent
criminal acts in furtherance of ideological goals stemming from
domestic influences, such as bias, racial bias, and
antigovernment sentiment.
Despite the many similarities, the FBI distinguishes
domestic terrorism extremists from homegrown violent extremists
in that the latter are global jihad inspired, while domestic
terrorist inspiration emanates from domestic influence--
influences like racial bias or antiauthority.
The FBI seeks to disrupt domestic terrorist actors by
leveraging the full arsenal of investigative techniques.
However, as this committee knows, no investigation can be
opened based solely on the First Amendment protected activity.
For example, the FBI does not investigate rallies or protests,
unless there is a credible belief that violent criminal
activity may be occurring.
The FBI assesses domestic terrorists collectively pose a
persistent and evolving involving threat of violence and
economic harm to the United States. In fact, there have been
more arrests and deaths in the U.S. caused by domestic
terrorists than international terrorists in recent years.
Individuals affiliated with racially motivated violent
extremism are responsible for the most lethal and violent
activity and are responsible for the majority of lethal attacks
and fatalities perpetrated by domestic terrorists since 2000.
Racially motivated violent extremism includes threats
deriving from bias related to race held by the actor against
others or a given population group. The current RMV threat, as
we call it, is decentralized and characterized by lone actors
radicalized online who target minorities and soft targets using
easily accessible weapons.
This assessment is in contrast to the FBI's past
assessments of similar movements in the 1980's and the early
2000's when the RMV threat was composed of hierarchy and
structured groups, nationally organized groups led by
charismatic ideologues.
In recent years, lone offenders have committed the most
lethal domestic extremist violence. These offenders primarily
use firearms and often act without specific guidance from a
group. Radicalization of domestic terrorists primarily occurs
through self-radicalization online, which can sometimes present
mitigation difficulties. It is a challenge for law enforcement.
The internet and social media enables individuals to engage
other domestic terrorists without face-to-face meetings.
We've seen multiple devastating attacks committed by
domestic terrorists in recent months, most recently in the
U.S., these include the shootings at Chabad of Poway synagogue
in Poway, California, and the Tree of Life synagogue in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In 2018, domestic violent extremists conducted six lethal
attacks, killing 17 victims. In 2017, domestic violent
extremists conducted five lethal attacks, killing eight
victims.
Central to our efforts to combat terror attacks is the
Joint Terrorism Task Force, our JTTF model. We work hand-in-
hand with Federal and local agencies to effectively combat the
threat.
In fact, many arrests of FBI domestic terrorism subjects
are conducted by state and local partners in coordination with
JTTFs. We have JTTFs throughout all 56 field offices, which
allow for regular, robust sharing of threat assessments with
our Federal, state and local partners.
In fact, approximately 50 percent of our domestic terrorism
investigations are opened based on information received from
either the public or from referrals provided by our partners at
the local, state, and Federal levels.
In Fiscal Year 2018, FBI JTTFs across the country
proactively arrested approximately 115 subjects of FBI domestic
terrorism investigations before they could mobilize to
violence. So far, in the first half of Fiscal Year 2019, our
JTTFs have disrupted approximately 66 subjects of FBI domestic
terrorism investigations by arrest.
These numbers are more than mere statistics. Undoubtedly,
they represent American lives saved in communities across the
United States.
Despite the successes that result from the hard work of the
men and women of the FBI and our partners on the JTTFs,
domestic terrorism continues to pose a persistent threat.
Our commitment to you and to our fellow citizens is that we
will continue to confront the threat posed by terrorism.
Whether the threat emanates from international terrorists or
here in the homeland in the domestic sphere, we will follow our
oaths. We will and are determined to protect the United States
of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to
uphold the Constitution of the United States.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. McGarrity, thank you very much.
Mr. Shivers for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CALVIN SHIVERS, DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
Mr. Shivers. Good afternoon, Chairman Raskin, Ranking
Member Roy, and members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for inviting us here today. I appreciate the
opportunity to discuss how the FBI addresses hate crimes.
My experience working in the FBI goes back nearly 30 years
when I started my career as a Special Agent in the FBI's New
Orleans Division. Throughout my career, I've had an opportunity
to investigate, lead, and manage a number of important
investigations and programs within the FBI. I'm both proud and
honored to lead the branch of the FBI's Criminal Investigative
Division that oversees hate crime and civil rights programs.
Hate crimes tear at the fabric of our communities and our
country, so we must ensure the civil rights of all persons,
which are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, are protected.
Hate crime laws in the United States are intended to protect
our citizens against biased crimes, motivated by animus against
a protected class of persons.
Current U.S. statutes permit Federal prosecution of hate
crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, religion,
disability, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation,
gender, or gender identity.
Over time, the FBI's ability to investigate these crimes
has expanded as new laws were passed. For example, the Civil
Rights Act of 1968 permitted Federal prosecution of crimes
committed with a bias against race, color, religion, or
national origin.
In 2009, when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate
Crimes Prevention Act was passed, Federal hate crime law
expanded to apply to crimes motivated by a victim's gender,
perceived gender, sexual orientation, or disability.
In order for the FBI to initiate a hate crimes
investigation, there are three key elements we must look for or
must suspect.
No. 1, there must be an act of violence, threatened
violence, or conspiracy to do so.
No. 2, the perpetrator must have acted willfully or
intentionally.
And, No. 3, the perpetrator's actions must have been
motivated by an actual or perceived statutorily recognized
bias.
It is worth noting that hate crimes investigations are
often, by their very nature, reactive. That being said, we in
the FBI understand that we must also be proactive in trying to
prevent hate crimes.
Because hate crimes and domestic terrorism can intersect,
the FBI's Counterterrorism Division also addresses hate crimes
through domestic terrorism investigation. In some instances, we
work parallel investigations. By analyzing and sharing
intelligence, we both hope to prevent hate crime incidents. But
if hate crime does occur, we work diligently to hold those
responsible accountable for their actions and seek justice for
victims.
Hate crimes are not only an attack on victims, but they
often have a wide-ranging harmful impact on communities. Thus,
investigating hate crimes is one of the FBI's highest
priorities.
Although the FBI is the primary U.S. law enforcement agency
that conducts civil rights investigations, we understand the
importance of partnerships with Federal, state, and local law
enforcement, as well as affected communities. Community
engagement, outreach, training, and education are critical to
our success in addressing hate crimes.
The Uniform Crime Report, or UCR, is a nationwide
cooperative statistical effort of nearly 18,000 law enforcement
agencies who voluntarily report data on crimes brought to their
attention.
The UCR program is being transitioned from a summary
reporting system to the National Incident-Based Reporting
System, or NIBRS.
NIBRS collects crime data that is more comprehensive than
the UCR, making it a more effective tool for law enforcement,
policymakers, and analysts to truly understand crime and make
informed decisions to address it. We believe NIBRS will capture
data that helps us better understand the magnitude of the hate
crime threat.
The FBI has been and will continue to be the lead law
enforcement agency addressing hate crime matters.
We are proud of our work, and we look forward to continuing
to be the agency that the American public continues to trust to
serve in this role.
I look forward to our dialog and your questions.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Shivers, thank you very much for your
testimony.
And, Ms. Neumann, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH NEUMANN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, THREAT
PREVENTION AND SECURITY POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY
Ms. Neumann. Thank you, Chairman Raskin.
Ranking Member Roy and members of the subcommittee, I'm
very grateful that you're holding this important hearing on
combating white supremacy.
I want to make it clear at the outset, unequivocally and
without hesitation, that violent white supremacy is abhorrent.
I am grateful that we have the opportunity to discuss the
Department's current capabilities and our plans for advancing
the prevention mission.
Please allow me to first, though, convey my deepest
condolences to the families of the victims of Friday's targeted
attack in Virginia Beach. Twelve lives were cut short. Four
more are in the hospital. We have families grieving, and shock
and grief, again, are rippling through our country.
Whether it's an attack on a school, a night club, a
synagogue, a mosque, a church, or a public space in a
government facility, it really needs to stop. We need to invest
in prevention to bring that end into view.
I have been working on prevention since shortly after the
attacks of September 11, 2001. I served in the Domestic
Counterterrorism Directorate at the White House and worked on
the policies and programs we needed to prevent another
catastrophic attack. We designed measures to address the threat
from al-Qaida, primarily a complex, coordinated attack with
planning cycles ranging from months to years and attackers or
facilitators that entered the U.S. from abroad. These
prevention efforts were primarily the tools of law enforcement,
intelligence, and border security.
The threat morphed multiple times over the past 18 years,
with one of the most concerning trends being the ability of
ISIS to recruit and radicalize to violence in isolation via the
internet and social media.
And now domestic terrorist movements are borrowing from the
ISIS handbook, using social media to recruit, radicalize,
inspire, and mobilize Americans to violence.
This latest evolution in terrorist threats occurs in
relative isolation and involves a smaller window between
radicalization and violent acts, and together these factors
make it extremely difficult for law enforcement, including my
partners at the FBI, to detect and thwart potential attacks.
Our post-9/11 prevention capabilities, as robust as they
are, were not designed to deal with this type of threat. And
while we have made progress in developing the tools necessary
for this new threat, the solutions need to be scaled in order
for them to be effective.
For nearly 25 years, the Secret Service's National Threat
Assessment Center, the NTAC, conducted evidence-based research
on individuals that carried out acts of targeted violence. The
NTAC research demonstrated that there are similar themes
between the perpetrators of workplace violence, domestic
violence, school-based violence, and terrorism. Likewise,
research demonstrates remarkable similarities among the
attackers, regardless of the ideological motivation of the
attack.
So why does this matter? Because it allows us to identify
behaviors and characteristics of individuals prone to violence
and assist vulnerable individuals before they cross the
criminal threshold.
And as Ms. Bro, and all who testified so poignantly during
the hearing last month noted, some of that assistance is best
provided outside of the Federal Government.
What is needed is true--a true whole-of-society approach.
And, thankfully, a growing number of state and local
jurisdictions are adopting a multidisciplinary threat
management prevention strategy.
For the past several years, DHS has worked with law
enforcement, academia, mental health professionals, educators,
and faith leaders to develop prevention strategies. Through the
CVE grant program, the National Governor's Association is
developing prevention strategies in Virginia, Colorado,
Illinois, and Michigan.
Another grant is allowing the Major City Chiefs Association
to develop a law enforcement implementation guide for
prevention.
And last week I saw firsthand how DHS investments in
prevention are yielding dividends.
In Colorado, the combination of grants and a field-deployed
staff member have led to 24 interventions of individuals
desiring to conduct acts of violence. Twelve of those were
motivated by a white supremacist ideology.
While there are excellent prevention efforts underway, a
strategic approach to prevention has been lacking. That is why
Acting Secretary McAleenan created the Office of Targeted
Violence and Terrorism Prevention in April. The office will
coordinate and expand the DHS terrorism prevention enterprise
while also harmonizing our efforts with our Federal partners
who have important roles in the prevention mission space.
This summer, we are developing the prevention framework
that DHS will implement over the coming years. This is that
comprehensive strategy, Mr. Chairman, that you noted is needed.
Drawing on lessons learned from the grants and from recent
research that was funded by the Department from our FFRDC,
Rand, and continuing stakeholder engagement, we plan to build
out that framework in partnership with you all and look forward
to further discussing it with you over the summer.
But in closing, I want to say at the outset that DHS
recognizes there is a lot of work to do, and it is unacceptable
that anyone in the United States be made to feel afraid because
of their race or religion.
We look forward to working with you on this critical
mission, and I look forward to answering your questions.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you all for your testimony.
And now we will begin our question portion of the
proceedings. Each member will be given five minutes to question
the panel.
I'll start just by recognizing myself.
Mr. McGarrity, let me start with you.
We know that America has worked closely since 9/11 with our
allies around the world to try to get on top of the problem of
al-Qaida terrorism, ISIS terrorism.
What are we doing to coordinate with law enforcement and
police around the world to deal with the problem of white
supremacist violence, which exploded, for example, in
Christchurch in New Zealand?
You know, is this an international problem, and are we
dealing with it in an international way?
Mr. McGarrity. Thank you, Chairman.
I would say, yes, it's an international problem, and partly
that's due to the internet, the ability for someone to self-
radicalize or talk to someone, chat with someone, email someone
halfway around the world, or to see a post, an image, and be
influenced by that.
As far as what we, the FBI, are doing, we're doing a lot.
Just within Thursday and Friday, I met with my senior
counterterrorism officials and our top five foreign liaison
partners. We talked specifically about domestic terrorism. We
talked specifically about social media. So envision the
counterterrorism heads for those countries at my level, we sat
together for two days and talked about domestic terrorism. So
it's very much at the forefront of our dialog.
Then, as you go down, it's interesting, actually, because
my counterparts in other parts of the world are just coming on
to the domestic terrorism program. Not every portfolio of
domestic terrorism, as we define it here in the U.S., racially
motivated violent extremism--you can use the term white
supremacists--would necessarily be included in a foreign
intelligence service or domestic law enforcement agency,
Federal law enforcement agency. They're starting to see that
more and more.
Every time we have a case that goes overseas, we share that
information. For example, in New Zealand, during the
Christchurch attacks, we sent people to New Zealand. I sent a
team over there, as did our other Five Eyes partners from
across the world. We did that. I received briefings back. When
we had the synagogue shooting in San Diego, I made sure at my
level I'm engaged with my counterparts across.
We bring in--and that goes all the way down to the working
level, as far as foreign engagements, both here within the U.S.
at FBI headquarters and with our foreign partners overseas. We
have agents and analysts traveling all the time to meet with
our counterparts to work on cases, to share leads.
When we do have a lead, just like on the international
terrorism side, we send that lead to a legal office overseas
for action.
We have stopped terrorist threats, domestic terrorism
threats, overseas, and we do it just like we do on
international terrorism. I think what you're seeing over the
last couple of years is what we have seen with the homegrown
violent extremist threat. With the internet, we are seeing
individuals self-radicalized online in both the international
terrorism and domestic terrorism, and they are engaging and
radicalizing and mobilizing to violence fairly quickly. And
they don't necessarily have to be part of a group, and they can
talk to someone halfway around the world to do that.
Mr. Raskin. That's a very helpful answer. Let me just
clarify one thing.
I think a lot of our listeners who are tuning in for the
first time will be a little puzzled at the formulation ``we've
stopped domestic terrorism overseas.'' And that goes to the--
the kind of curious nomenclature that has evolved in this
field.
Explain what that means. What is domestic terrorism, what
is international terrorism, and why don't we just call it all
terrorism? Can you explain that?
Mr. McGarrity. Well, we do call it terrorism, and within
that, from international terrorism when there are designated
foreign terrorist organizations at the----
Mr. Raskin. Can you just put your mic on, please?
Mr. McGarrity [continuing]. that the State Department
designates, that is in a different bucket because there are
different authorities that come with that that we can use that
we cannot use on the domestic terrorism side.
Mr. Raskin. But when you say, you know, we've worked to
stop domestic terrorism overseas, you're referring there to
white supremacist activity?
Mr. McGarrity. I'm referring to threats overseas on
racially motivated violent extremists who advocate for the
supremacy of the white race overseas, we've given threat
information that we have received here in the United States to
our foreign partners.
Mr. Raskin. Gotcha, gotcha.
Mr. Shivers, let me ask you. I think one of the themes
running through all of the testimony there was that--that we
may be in a different phase now of trying to counter terrorism
because of the internet and some of the people who go out and
shoot up churches, like the Mother Emanuel Church, or
synagogues like Tree of Life, are kind of lone wolves; they are
people who get radicalized or indoctrinated online, but they're
not part of a hierarchical organization necessarily where they
can be identified as a group.
What can be done about that, if anything? What are the
efforts that you're evolving in the FBI to address that threat?
Mr. Shivers. So I will start to answer the question, but I
will also go back to Mr. McGarrity.
One of the things to understand about working hate crimes
and domestic terrorism is they're not mutually exclusive.
And so there are times where an incident may occur and the
FBI is not sure, is it purely a hate crime, or is it an act of
domestic terrorism? So, when responding, you have
representatives from the civil rights squad as well as the
domestic terrorism squad.
And so our main priority is addressing the investigation.
And so one of the things that we try to do is to be proactive.
And what we do is not only collaborate on the investigation but
ensure that we share intelligence. Because one of the things,
to your point, it may be a lone actor, but at the same time,
there may be communications with other individuals or groups
that we would necessarily need to try to shed a little bit of
light on.
And I'll go back to Mr. McGarrity.
Mr. McGarrity. Sure. We work it just like any other--
whether it's international terrorism or criminal gangs, we work
our sources. We work our undercover operations. We work other
collection that we can do through court-authorized wiretaps.
I think what--Chairman, what you have to understand is,
we're not playing with the numbers here. We arrest more
domestic terrorism subjects left of attack in the United States
than we do in international terrorism. So--and we've done that
for the last couple of years. So more domestic terrorism
subjects that we have open investigations on, we are arresting
left of attack. And that's more than we do on the international
terrorism.
Mr. Raskin. You mean before the attack takes place?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes, yes.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. So that was not the information that I
got at the last hearing. So I would love to see that----
Mr. McGarrity. Can I address that?
Mr. Raskin. Please.
Mr. McGarrity. I don't know who--I think I know who you're
talking to. But if you're talking to an FBI agent who has been
out 15 years, that's like talking to someone who works--people
who rob banks before the internet, right? I mean, the threat
has changed with the internet. These people are self-
radicalizing online and can act and can go get a weapon.
So that's the difference. We are doing the same thing on
the domestic terrorism side with our undercovers, both in the
virtual space--because I'll be honest with you, that's where a
lot is happening, more than the physical space. We do that. And
you see them time and time again in the press releases from the
Department of Justice for those arrests, both on the
international terrorism side and the domestic terrorism side.
So we're in the virtual with domestic terrorism, and we're in
the physical space.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. That's useful. My time is up.
But I'm going to recognize Mr. Hice for five minutes.
Mr. Hice. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Neumann, in your opening statement, you refer--made
reference to Rand. And it is my understanding, at the
administration's request, they did an exhaustive study on
terrorism prevention and among other things found that
prevention works but at the same time found that the effort and
energy that goes into terrorism prevention is minuscule
compared to that that goes into other law enforcement and
counterterrorism type programs.
So can you kind of explain the difference between the two?
What are we talking about in reference to terrorism prevention
versus counterterrorism?
Ms. Neumann. Thank you for the question, Mr. Hice.
Absolutely. The Rand study, we asked them specifically to
assess the amount that is being spent on prevention. And in
particular, we asked to compare that to our international
counterparts, those who are similarly equipped to be able to do
things through law enforcement and other counterterrorism
means. And the results did indicate that we are spending less
than many of our European partners. That could be because the
challenges that they have faced with ISIS recently are much
more significant than we have faced, not that our challenges
aren't still great. But the numbers are--kind of speak for
themselves.
They found that FBI and their law enforcement activities,
their assessments, their investigations, about 165 million a
year. And to give you a snapshot, it costs about 1 million
for--from assessment to post release supervision for each
individual with a 15-year sentence.
On the Federal prevention side, we're spending about 12 to
13 million annually. That's an estimate. And their
recommendation based on our--based on the threat that we're
facing--was 20 to 50 million, is what we should be spending.
And according to the population that we have here in the United
States, maybe something like 150 to 450 million.
So that gives us a bit of range as we're starting to build
out a prevention framework and put together budgets and have
conversations with Congress, gives us a sense of what we should
be doing.
I think the other thing I would mention is the practical
side of this. The cost of cleaning up a terrorist attack can
range anywhere from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of
dollars. I believe the Boston Marathon bombing was in the $330
million range. That doesn't even account for the lives that are
lost or permanently changed and all of the grief and emotional
toil that the families go through.
For the cost of a field representative, which when you add
benefits and travel costs, let's say $200,000, and a small
grant that might be a quarter of a million to a million dollars
to a state or to a police department or to--whatever--however
the state decides to structure their prevention efforts, that
might save us--you know, so you're talking just a little under
a million dollars.
In the state of Colorado, we had 24 interventions in less
than a two-year period. If just one of those individuals had
been successful in committing an attack, we would be cleaning
things up for tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of
dollars. So the return on investment is definitely documented
in the Rand study. It was very helpful.
Mr. Hice. So would you consider that, then, the biggest
takeaway in that study?
Ms. Neumann. There are a number of things. It's a 300-page
report. They identified best practices, areas and lines of
effort that the Federal Government should do. It told us very
clearly that the concept of terrorism prevention is not our
state and local partners' top priority. Their top priority is--
--
Mr. Hice. We only got about just listen--left[PC12]. But
should it be a top priority? I mean, obviously, it works. It
sounds like a pretty----
Ms. Neumann. I think by opening the aperture to address
targeted violence in terrorism prevention, it helps our state
and local partners with what they care about, which is all
violence, as opposed to a particularly type of ideology.
Mr. Hice. Should terrorism prevention be part of the
counterterrorism strategy?
Ms. Neumann. It is. It is in the national strategy, and
we're actually working on the DHS counterterrorism strategy.
That's what this prevention framework will be nested in, and we
hope to release it in the fall.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Thank you very much.
Appreciate it, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Raskin. The chairman yields back. Thank you, Mr. Hice.
And I now recognize Mrs. Maloney for five minutes.
Mrs. Maloney. And I thank the chairman and ranking member
for calling this important hearing and all of the participants.
And I would like to ask Mr. Shivers about the FBI hate
crime statistics.
All the reports I've seen indicate that the FBI's official
uniform crime reporting hate crime statistics are deeply,
deeply flawed and severely underreported, the actual numbers of
hate crimes and incidents in our country.
For example, in 2017, the FBI reported over 7,000 hate
crime incidents. But the Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime
Victimization Survey estimates 200,000 hate crimes each year on
average.
And, Mr. Shivers, is that consistent with your
understanding?
Mr. Shivers. No, ma'am. Couple of things I would like to
point out.
Mrs. Maloney. Okay.
Mr. Shivers. So the reporting to the UCR with state and
local law enforcement agencies is voluntarily. And so one of
the things that the FBI has done over the last couple of
years----
Mrs. Maloney. Excuse me. Why is it voluntary? Hate crimes
should be reported. They should be required. Why is it
voluntary?
Mr. Shivers. And so reporting to the UCR in general is
voluntarily. And so one of the things that we have done is we
have tried to take a proactive stance in going out to train
state and local law enforcement agencies relative to hate
crimes so they have an opportunity to recognize hate crimes.
Mrs. Maloney. But my question was, the FBI's statistics was
7,000 and the Bureau of Justice statistics was 200,000.
Mr. Shivers. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Maloney. So is that true? That's the point that I want
to make.
Mr. Shivers. So I am not aware of where the 200,000 came
from. But the only reason----
Mrs. Maloney. Can you check that? Because I know about your
training efforts. And it seems like there's a problem with
accuracy. And at our last hearing, it was pointed out, when
Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed in
Charlottesville, argued passionately about the need to improve
the accuracy of hate crime reporting, and she said, and I
quote: A doctor cannot diagnose a patient without knowing the
full set of symptoms. I don't see how we are expecting you as
Congress Members to know how to prescribe allocations of
personnel and money without knowing the full set of symptoms,
end quote.
And so, Mr. Shivers, would you agree with Ms. Bro, about
that statement?
Mr. Shivers. Ma'am, the reason I brought up the UCR was to
talk about the transition to NIBRS.
And so one of the reasons that NIBRS is coming online is to
provide more accurate reporting.
Mrs. Maloney. But I have a specific question.
Heather Heyer's death, I am told, and the other assaults--
the horrific assaults that were committed in--by white
supremacists in Charlottesville, did not even appear in the
2017 FBI hate crimes statistics report.
Is that true?
Mr. Shivers. Yes, ma'am. And the reason is----
Mrs. Maloney. Well, can you explain how in the world did
that happen? This was a graphic, terrible, terrible assault and
death all over the papers, everywhere. Everybody knew about it.
How did it not end up in your statistics?
If that didn't end up in your statistics, it points out
something is really being underreported in our country,
wouldn't you say?
Mr. Shivers. So what I was trying to explain is the
transition from UCR to NIBRS, UCR used what's called the
summary reporting system. And what that means is only the most
egregious offense is reported in the UCR.
So the example would be if you had an armed robbery and a
homicide, it's only the homicide that is reported in the UCR.
So, with NIBRS, you will have more granularity, where you're
able to now see all of the associated crimes that have been
committed. So that's one of the reasons that we are
transitioning from the UCR to NIBRS.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, I think you had better transition
pretty fast because your statistics are not accurate.
And does the FBI have an overall strategic plan of how to
improve your--the reporting of your hate crimes?
I find the fact that different reporting systems are so
different, the fact that probably the most horrific hate crime
in the whole country did not even make it into the--into your
reporting system is showing that it's terribly flawed.
And then I read also that Alabama reported there were no--
only one hate crime in the whole year in Alabama. People are
alleging that that was very underreported.
Any comments on that?
Mr. Shivers. Well, again, we will have more accurate
roaring when we can move from the summary reporting system,
which has the hierarchy rule----
Mrs. Maloney. So when are you going to move to the other
system?
Mr. Shivers. That process is ongoing right now.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, can you send us a report exactly how
it's happening, and why is this going to improve it? And I--I
think that--that the fact that the crime in Charlottesville did
not even make it into your hate crime statistics shows how
flawed it is. And how can we have good policies if we don't
have good data?
My time is up.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Maloney.
The gentlelady from West Virginia, Mrs. Miller, is
recognized for five minutes.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Chairman Raskin and Ranking Member
Hice, and thank you all for being here today.
I know your agencies are on the row line in combating
domestic terrorism, racism, and hate crimes, as well as
providing critical support for our first responders. This role
is critical, and we must ensure that we're empowering our
Federal agencies in their efforts to stop hate and to keep
Americans safe.
People who commit these crimes and hold such hate in their
heart have absolutely no place in our society.
We must stop and condemn these actions at every level.
Mr. McGarrity and Mr. Shivers, the question is a little
similar to the last ones.
A few weeks ago, this subcommittee held a hearing on this
issue, and we heard from our witnesses that there are many
current shortfalls that exist in data collection for hate
crimes and domestic terrorism. Was wondering if you might be
able to elaborate on this topic from the agency perspective?
Mr. McGarrity. From the domestic terrorism perspective, we
certainly--we don't have a domestic terrorism statute that--
like a material support statute for terrorism. So when a
prosecutor charges something, he is going to use--he or she is
going to use other title 18 U.S. Code violations, maybe
possession of a weapon, some other commission of a crime.
Or in 50 percent of our crimes--50 percent of our subjects
that are arrested are actually arrested on state/local charges
in coordination with the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
So, right there, the narrative as far as some of the
subjects--now, these are open subjects, under investigation by
the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are arrested by state/
local crime or by other Federal crimes that do not have the
word ``terrorism'' in there. So, right there, the narrative in
the American public would not necessarily see that.
What we do, we push out to all of our Joint Terrorism Task
Force, through the executives, updates on those types cases
obviously. Where we can, we like to use domestic terrorism in
the press release with the Department of Justice. Or in our
comments, if we're allowed to, at a point in the case in the
charging document, we will do that.
You have seen that more recently in a case in Baltimore
where the U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, charged with a drug
charge, with possession of a weapon, and then in the detention
hearing memo, it was referred to as domestic terrorism. So
that, I think, is part of the issue.
We certainly come and brief the House Homeland committee,
and anytime we've been asked to come brief any of the
committees, we come and we brief what the threat is. So we're
constantly doing that to your staffers as well as to different
committees here on the Hill.
What we also do is to--because really it's our state/local
partners who are most important. The International Association
of Chiefs of Police, the major city sheriffs, I've been in
front of both of those committees briefing on domestic
terrorism.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Shivers, do you have anything?
Mr. Shivers. Just to--to further address some of the issues
and the discrepancies.
In relation to the Charlottesville case, that case was
actually prosecuted as a hate crime. And also I would like to
draw a distinction between a hate incident and a hate crime.
Obviously, if someone yells a racial slur at someone, you
know, they are protected by the First Amendment. And what
happens is in many instances, those incidents may be thought of
by the victim to be a hate crime when it's more of a hate
incident. A hate crime occurs if you have that similar
incident, but it evolves into a criminal act directed at a
victim based on his or her protected characteristics.
And so, when we talk about statistics, one has to make that
distinction between a hate crime and hate incident.
Mrs. Miller. That's good. What changes would you make to
improve the data collection?
Mr. Shivers. Well, again, I believe that the transition to
NIBRS will give greater clarity, because again in the case that
was cited earlier, it was the homicide and not the hate crime
that was captured.
Under NIBRS, you will have the ability to capture a number
of criminal acts pertaining to one specific arrest.
So, if there is an assault, if there is a hate crime or
some other crime that is committed, all of those crimes would
now be captured in NIBRS, where historically, with the
hierarchy rule, only the most egregious crime was captured.
So we are in the process of continuing to roll out NIBRS.
The rollout has been underway since 2015. But some of the
challenges are providing our state and local partners with the
hardware and software where they need to map their criminal
violations to NIBRS and then also go through the training and
become certified.
So, again, we anticipate NIBRS completely being rolled out
by 2021, but it's an ongoing process, and there are--roughly 45
percent of the law enforcement agencies that report to the UCR
have all transitioned to NIBRS.
Mrs. Miller. Okay. One other quick question.
Mr. McGarrity, how have you seen domestic terrorism and its
threat to the country evolve over time?
Mr. McGarrity. Sure. I mean, both on the domestic terrorism
side and the international terrorism side, with the homegrown
violent extremist threat, I've seen an evolving threat with
more self-insular actors, lone actors that we've seen self-
radicalized online, seen them mobilized by themselves on the
internet and radicalized by themselves on the internet and
mobilize to violence in shorter periods of time than we've seen
in the past.
I've been in this since 9/11, literally that day. And you
have in the U.S. our threat, both on the domestic terrorism
side and international terrorism side, is a lone actor. What
you saw after 9/11 of who we arrested here in the United
States, different conspiracies that you saw, we're seeing less
and less of those type conspiracies, larger groups, five to
seven, and more single actors.
So of those approximately 115 arrests on the domestic
terrorism side, most of them are not conspiratorial, those are
single-defendant subjects; and the same thing on the
international terrorism side. So right there is an evolving
threat.
It's the internet. It's the internet. It's your ability to
communicate with someone anywhere in the world and find a
justification, whatever that justification is, whatever that
ideology is, it's almost irrelevant, to justify the violence
you want to commit.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, I yield back.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
[Presiding.] Thank you.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr.
Clay.
Mr. Clay. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Let me share with the panel some of my thoughts and
concerns.
The FBI's Black identity extremist designation could
potentially categorize and criminalize Black activists and
supportive organizations and people seeking to hold police
accountable for unconstitutional policing practices.
We should all oppose terrorism in every form, but the FBI's
decision to use the color of someone's skin as a tool to
identify terrorists takes our country back to dark days.
As the name suggests, the unique feature of this contrived
threat is the color of a person's skin. While the FBI should be
redoubling its efforts to combat violence inspired by White
supremacists, the concern expressed by Members of the
congressional Black Caucus who met with the FBI in 2018 is that
the Bureau may end up targeting those seeking to defend the
rights of racial minorities, not those who are actually engaged
in terrorism.
Just this morning, I heard from constituents about the
uptick in hate crimes in Missouri, and these crimes were not
relative to any Black extremist.
So I suggest the FBI review the allocation of funds,
personnel, strategic planning and grant programs. The dollars
must follow the emerging threat.
In 2006, the FBI warned of the potential consequences of
White supremacist groups infiltrating local and state law
enforcement, indicating it was a significant threat to our
national security. The bulletin indicated this infiltration
would lead to the disruption of the investigation and the
recruitment of fellow White supremacist followers.
A recent study by the Plain View Project examined the
social media accounts of 3,500 current and retired police
officers from across the country; 1.5 out of five officers had
public posts reflecting bias, applauding violence, disregarding
due process, or using dehumanizing language.
In my own congressional district in St. Louis, over 400
racist, violent, or bigoted Facebook posts by current or former
St. Louis Metropolitan Police were also revealed.
Let me ask you, Mr. McGarrity, that FBI bulletin was issued
in 2006. Would you agree that recent data and public social
media posts indicate that infiltration by White supremacists is
still a national security threat?
Mr. McGarrity. First, I haven't read the 2006 report you're
referring to, but you used the term Black identity extremists
and then you used the term White supremacist. And the term I'm
using is racially motivated violent extremist, by the very fact
that we're focused on the violence. We're not focused on the
skin of anyone; we're focused on the violence. And from a
domestic terrorism point of view, that's what we focus on,
because that is what allows us to predicate a case.
So when that Black identity extremist, since I've been here
we have not used that term. But also, you're not hearing me
saying White supremacist as a group. I'm focused on the
violence. And so there's a First Amendment issue of us going
trolling on the internet looking at different posts from
people. We can't do that.
Mr. Clay. Okay. Well, is it a problem if local law
enforcement and state law enforcement is infiltrated by White
supremacists? Is that a problem in carrying out justice?
Mr. McGarrity. That would be a problem if they are looking
to use that ideology for violence and, obviously, they're in a
position of trust. So yes, I would be suspect on that.
But, again, I would go back. Ideology in itself is a First
Amendment right.
Mr. Clay. I'm not disputing that.
Anyway, Mr. Shivers, does the FBI provide training and
resources to state and local law enforcement agencies to help
them identify and prevent infiltration by these groups of local
and state law enforcement?
Mr. Shivers. So the training that we provide to our state
and local partners is comprehensive. It's not designed to look
at any particular group.
Again, we're concerned that our law enforcement partners
have a good understanding and ability to recognize hate crimes.
And one of the things that we hope is that through the
training and education, that now, as we had discussions about
the accuracy of reporting, there may be incidents that state
and locals may not have thought was a hate crime, but based on
the training that we provide they have the ability now to
recognize some of those hate crimes and potentially have some
of those prosecuted federally.
Mr. Clay. And my time is up, Madam Chair.
But looking at almost 25 percent of local and state law
enforcement posting hateful things on social media, that tells
me there's a culture problem in law enforcement in this
country.
I yield back.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you.
And the chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Florida,
Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Neumann, my questions are going to be for you.
On April 19, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security
announced the establishment of a new Office for Targeted
Violence and Terrorism Prevention, TVTP. However, we really
have very few details about its exact mission, its budget, and
its staffing.
Under the Obama Administration, its predecessor office had
a budget of more than $21 million with 16 full-time employees,
25 contractors, and managed $10 million in grant funding to
community organizations to prevent domestic terrorism.
That office was then replaced by the Office of Terrorism
Prevention Partnerships, which had a reduced budget of $9
million, a staff of only seven full-time employees, and zero
dollars in contracts.
So I have a series of questions about the shift and would
like to try to get some detail on what is going on with the
replacement office.
Can you explain why DHS decided to make significant cuts to
the office intended to prevent terrorism? Where were the rest
of the funding and resources diverted to at DHS from the
predecessor office? For what purpose were those funds
reallocated?
Can you tell us what the current total budget and number of
staff for this new office, TVTP, is, and have there been
additional cuts? And who is the head of this office? Who do
they report to in the chain of command?
Ms. Neumann. Thank you, ma'am. Yes, Congresswoman, I will
do my best to try to dig into all of this.
In regular appropriations, in Fiscal Year 2016, the
predecessor office that you referenced, Office of Community
Partnerships, had approximately $3 million in their budget.
There was separately a one-time appropriation of $10 million
for the Countering Violent Extremism Grant Program.
That money is still--it was a two-year grant program. It's
still underway. The grant program will end this summer. And
then there was a separate reprogramming of $8 million for
additional contract support for the office, and that's how you
end up to the $21 million number. The $3 million number for the
office has stayed relatively static over the course of the last
four fiscal years.
The current office--and you're right, it was rebranded a
couple of times, and, if I may, the rebranding was, in part,
there was a general recognition by both--by all sides that the
countering violent extremism moniker had become fairly tainted.
There was a dialog in 2016 under the Obama Administration about
perhaps changing that. And when the----
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Let me drill down on my question a
little bit more clearly.
Ms. Neumann. Sure.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It very much seems like--I mean, you
certainly spoke poignantly about your concern about addressing
White supremacy and domestic terrorism. Yet actions speak
louder than words. I'm a show me person, not a tell me person.
So the actions that this administration has spoken, by
shifting resources elsewhere, by reducing the budget that was
previously appropriated and spent for combating domestic
terrorism sends a signal that you don't care about it as much
and you're not making as much of an effort to combat it,
further evidenced by the details and facts that my colleagues
who have asked questions before me.
So where did the money that was previously being spent for
this office to fight domestic terrorism, where is it being
spent now? Who's in charge of the office? What's the current
total budget? And how many staff does this have?
Ms. Neumann. So let me start with the $3 million has stayed
the same. So we're only talking about the $8 million that was
done by reprogramming. It wasn't in a standard budget process.
So you asked, where did it go?
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I'm an appropriator, so I'm very
familiar with the reprogramming process.
Ms. Neumann. Okay. Got it. I am not, so I will defer to you
on that.
Then the 10 million, the grant program, is still underway.
You are correct that the administration did not request for the
grant to be renewed in Fiscal Year 2017 or 2018, in part
because we were looking to see the results of the grant. It was
fairly controversial at the time that it was awarded. There
were critics that prevention shouldn't be funded because it
didn't work.
I think we've proven that it does work. The grant program
is still being evaluated, but we have enough anecdotes and good
statistics----
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Didn't ask for it 2019 either. What
about 2020?
Ms. Neumann. So we're getting--we got these results I would
say late fall. We missed the Fiscal Year 2020 budget cycle. The
Secretary is very committed to working with the Congress and
working through our budget processes to get this addressed.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Who's the head of the office?
Ms. Neumann. The head of the office is an Acting Director,
David Gerstein. He's a senior----
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Is there anyone in the Department of
Homeland Security that isn't acting? There's a lot of acting.
Ms. Neumann. I am not acting, ma'am.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Okay. Well, then I'm glad that you
are here, because at least there is some permanence with
someone who is answering questions.
Who does the head of this office report to in the chain of
command?
Ms. Neumann. Mr. Gerstein reports to my Deputy, Nate
Blumenthal. He's the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Threat
Prevention who reports to me. I report to the Under Secretary
for Policy, who reports to the Secretary.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Okay. Unfortunately, that's a fairly
low prioritization in terms of the chain of command as far as
the expression of significant commitment that combating
domestic terrorism requires.
I have other questions, but, like I said, I think the
evidence demonstrated by the answers to my questions show that
actions are not matching the words. And it would be nice if
there was a convergence between your verbal commitments and the
administration's verbal commitments and the actual actions that
you propose and implement.
I yield back.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Thank you.
As chair, I will now recognize myself for five minutes of
questioning.
We had a hearing a few weeks ago, the first in a series on
White supremacy and its growing role in the United States right
now. And at this hearing we discovered, through expert witness
testimony, that not all of these incidents seem to be treated
with the similar consistency.
But we've also heard from experts that whether the FBI
classifies extremist violence as, quote, domestic terrorism or
a hate crime has major implications on resource allocation and
prioritization within the Bureau.
Mr. McGarrity, the FBI considers preventing terrorism its
No. 1 priority. Isn't that right?
Mr. McGarrity. That is correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And, Mr. Shivers, what about civil
rights violations, such as hate crimes, how do they rank among
the FBI priorities?
Mr. Shivers. Within the Civil Rights program it is the No.
1 priority.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So within the Civil Rights program. But
the FBI overall, doesn't it seem that FBI agents would have
more of an incentive to pursue domestic terrorism cases over
hate crime cases?
Mr. Shivers. Well, again, sometimes those cases overlap.
And so in a number of instances you may have a civil rights
investigation and a domestic terrorism investigation open.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And I do see here that the Civil Rights
program policy instructs agents to open parallel terrorism
investigations whenever a suspect of a hate crime has any nexus
to a White supremacist group, correct?
Mr. Shivers. Correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. We've seen White supremacist attacks
that were clearly domestic terrorism. Experts, in fact, the
Acting AG, Jeff Sessions, even called some of these incidents
domestic terrorism incidents. The Emanuel A.M.E. Church
shooting of Black Americans in Charleston and the Tree of Life
Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh of Jewish people, those were
only designated and charged as hate crimes, not domestic
terrorist incidents.
Mr. McGarrity, why did the FBI not believe that these
incidents were domestic terrorist incidents?
Mr. McGarrity. That's not correct. I don't know who told
you that we didn't. But we certainly had cases open on them in
both those cases. And I wasn't here for the Dylann Roof case,
but certainly in our own Department of Justice Civil Rights,
about three, four weeks ago in their testimony actually stated
that it was a domestic terrorism event, charged through the
Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice for a hate
crime.
I was here for the Tree of Life. I will tell you I remember
that day distinctly. It was worked as both a domestic terrorism
case and a hate crimes case, and it's still worked that way.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And so you are disputing that the
A.M.E.--you're saying that A.M.E. was charged with domestic
terrorism, Dylann Roof?
Mr. McGarrity. So you're using the word ``charge.'' So, as
I said before, there's no domestic terrorism charge, like 18
U.S.C. 2339A, B, C, D, for a foreign terrorist organization.
So what we do, both on the international terrorism side
with homegrown violent extremists and domestic terrorists,
we'll use any tool in the toolkit to arrest them, hopefully
left of attack.
Should it be after, likely that hate crime statute will
come into play through the Civil Rights Division as a charge,
because it's a good Federal charge for us to use in those
cases.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And the Tree of Life----
Mr. McGarrity. It shouldn't be stated that it's not
domestic terrorism. In fact, on the record, it's stated it's
domestic terrorism.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. And the same thing with the synagogue
shooting?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Okay. So we have two conflicting
testimonies.
Mr. McGarrity. Well, I mean, I can go back to May 8, 2019,
from the Department of Justice on the record, that statement,
called it domestic terrorism cases involving civil rights
charges, too, including some of the most serious attacks in
recent years: Dylann Roof, African American parishioners
engaged at the Emanuel African Methodist Church; James Field at
the Unite the Right rally in Virginia; and then also Robert
Bowers. All three events were domestic terrorism.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So that's the statement, but the actual
charge, was it--was the actual charge domestic terrorism?
Mr. McGarrity. You're not going to find an actual charge of
domestic terrorism out there. If you look at Title 18, right,
if you're looking for----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Well, it says here that--but at the San
Bernardino shooting or the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting,
they were designated and charged as domestic terrorist
incidents.
Mr. McGarrity. They were charged--I'd have to go back and
look--they were charged likely with--if there was a connection
to a foreign terrorist organization, it would likely fall under
18 U.S.C. 23A or B.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So because the perpetrator was Muslim,
they are--doesn't it seem that because the perpetrator is
Muslim----
Mr. McGarrity. That is not correct. That has nothing to
do----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.--that that designation would say it's a
foreign organization?
Mr. McGarrity. No, that's not correct. That is not correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Okay. Can you explain why?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes. Homegrown violent extremists, who we--
most of the people we arrest in the United States, homegrown
violent extremists, self-radicalized, born in the U.S., it
doesn't matter what religion----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. But the Orlando Pulse club shooter meets
those qualifications, and he is--you're implying----
Mr. McGarrity. He was worked as an international terrorist
because he was following, under the definition of how we work
homegrown violent extremist cases----
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. But he was homegrown and self-
radicalized.
Mr. McGarrity [continuing]. how we work homegrown violent
extremist cases, under the global jihad, we worked it under
international terrorism, that is correct.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Is White supremacy not a global issue?
Mr. McGarrity. It is a global issue.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. So why are they not charged with foreign
terrorism?
Mr. McGarrity. Because the U.S. Congress doesn't have a
statute for us for domestic terrorism like we do on a foreign
terrorist organization, like ISIS, al-Qaida, Al Shabaab.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Could you see how this could create
issues and discrepancies with how violent extremism by Muslim
perpetrators could potentially, even if it's unintentional, but
that there are holes and there are gaps here, not through your
fault or any one specific person's fault? It could be our fault
as Congress.
But could you see how one could see how the way that we are
pursuing and charging White supremacy, particularly if they
tend to be charged with hate crimes, and where that same type
of violence committed by a Muslim extremist could be charged
with domestic terrorism.
Hate crimes and domestic terrorism are treated and
charged--they're different crimes and they could be pursued
differently with different resource allocations. Can you see
how people would say that these are being treated differently?
Mr. McGarrity. Some of the definitions we're using, I think
we're talking past each other. But I will tell you from the
domestic terrorism side and on the international terrorism
side, on the domestic terrorism side, we don't charge--of those
115, approximately 115 arrests we did last year, not all of
them were hate crime charges. We're going to charge someone
left of attack with any charge we have under Title 18 in the
U.S. Code or a state and local charge.
So predominantly, I would say--I'd have to go back and
look--most of them are not hate crime charges on the domestic
terrorism side.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Okay. Thank you very much.
I will now move to recognize the gentlelady from Illinois,
Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis is the only
office in the U.S. intelligence community statutorily charged
with delivering intelligence to state, local, tribal,
territorial, and private sector partners.
During a DHS briefing for the committee, it was noted that
an I&A unit focused exclusively on the threat from homegrown
violent extremists and domestic terrorists was disbanded by the
administration and moved to the National Counterterrorism
Center. Additionally, some field agents were reassigned to the
FBI, where they would allegedly be better suited to work on
this issue.
Ms. Neumann, how important was the work of this I&A unit in
preventing White supremacist terrorism?
Ms. Neumann. Thank you for the question, Ms. Kelly.
My office is distinct from the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis. We are customers of I&A. The office you're referring
to is in the process of working toward a mission center model
approach, which is an approach that's been recognized in the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence as the best
practice.
As part of that, they are forward deploying analysts to
places where they can better collect intelligence, including
the FBI is the predominant place since we don't collect
intelligence the way that we do foreign intelligence. It's
their cases that tell us the most within the Federal Government
about the environment within the domestic terrorist various
movements.
So it's my understanding that's the intent there. They are
still doing the work. They are still producing intelligence
products. I read a few of them last week. So I don't know if
that answers your question, but that's my level of knowledge
about I&A's decision.
Ms. Kelly. So is this why the staff was reassigned, because
it was felt that this would be a better way to get information
and do their jobs----
Ms. Neumann. Yes.
Ms. Kelly [continuing]. more efficiently?
Ms. Neumann. I'd like to--if it's helpful, I can go back
and ask I&A to provide an answer in writing for the record.
Ms. Kelly. Okay.
Ms. Neumann. I know they testified on this recently.
But yes, in general, it's to be able to get closer to where
the good data is, yes.
Ms. Kelly. Do you believe collaboration and information
sharing between Federal agencies and state and local law
enforcement agencies is crucial to preventing domestic
terrorism?
Ms. Neumann. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Kelly. What is DHS currently doing to coordinate with
state and local law enforcement information sharing and how
does this work without funding?
Ms. Neumann. I'm sorry, the last part of your question?
Ms. Kelly. How does it work without funding?
Ms. Neumann. Without funding.
So the Department has a number of mechanisms in place to
share information. Most of the formal intelligence products
that are shared, particularly around domestic terrorism, are
going to be done in partnership with the gentlemen at this
table. So I'll defer to them here in a moment on aspects of how
those products are produced and when they're pushed out.
The Department supports state and local fusion centers. We
have agents or analysts in fusion centers. We provide training.
We provide access to classified equipment.
And on the funding piece, all of that takes funding. So the
information-sharing infrastructure, which in my previous part
of my career I was part of designing and implementing, is very
robust. We've worked on it for 18 years. I think it's solid,
solid pipes to be able to flow the information.
Ms. Kelly. On May 8, 2019, during the House Homeland
Security Committee's hearing on domestic terrorism, DHS
Principal Deputy Under Secretary Brian Murphy for the Office of
I&A testified there has been no reallocation of resources, just
a reevaluation within the agency to eliminate any duplication
of efforts.
Ms. Neumann, was the DHS I&A domestic terrorism unit
supposedly disbanded because it was duplicative?
Ms. Neumann. Again, my understanding is that it's not a
disbanding, in that it's moving people to where they can get
better access to data. But I'm happy to go back and get
clarification from my colleagues.
Ms. Kelly. Would you agree that redundancy in intelligence
and law enforcement is a good thing?
Ms. Neumann. Yes. When there are resources available for
it, you always look for red teaming and alternative analysis.
Ms. Kelly. Do you know how many employees were part of this
unit?
Ms. Neumann. I do not.
Ms. Kelly. Do you not believe the urgency of this threat
warrants these additional employees?
Ms. Neumann. Again, I don't know what their current
resourcing is. And I will tell you that Secretary McAleenan--
yes, ma'am.
Ms. Kelly. Mr. McGarrity, are these employees still with
the FBI, the employees we're talking about, are these employees
still with the FBI?
Mr. McGarrity. Which employees are you talking about
specifically?
Ms. Kelly. I'm talking about the employees that were
disbanded but then supposedly went--some--they were assigned to
different units.
Ms. Neumann. Detailed.
Mr. McGarrity. We have DHS analysts detailed to our
Domestic Terrorism Section, that is correct.
Ms. Kelly. And they're still with you?
Mr. McGarrity. We do have--I'd have to go back in the
numbers. But I have talked to Brian Murphy, who was here when
we testified a couple weeks ago. We have some. We might even be
getting some more.
Ms. Kelly. So this change has worked?
Mr. McGarrity. We have a very good relationship with DHS.
I'll tell you, when we put out--I think what you're getting at
is, what are we doing to put the intelligence out to the state/
locals law enforcement partners?
So we do it through a joint intelligence bulletin. Every
joint intelligence bulletin that we put out on domestic
terrorism or international terrorism, any type of terrorism, we
do jointly with DHS I&A.
So we've actually had a significant increase. So far in
Fiscal Year 2019, we have surpassed already what we did in
Fiscal Year 2018 for domestic terrorism joint intelligence
bulletins, and they go directly to the state/locals. We also go
through the Joint Terrorism Task Force executive committees and
our task force partners to push that information out.
Ms. Kelly. My time is way over. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin.
[Presiding.] Thank you very much, Ms. Kelly.
And I yield to Mr. Roy for five minutes.
Mr. Roy. I thank the chairman.
And I apologize to the witnesses that I had to step out for
a little bit to go to another hearing. Such is the state of the
way things operate here sometimes we have competing hearings.
Ms. Neumann, a quick question with respect to funding. Do I
understand correctly that the funding levels that are currently
being allocated for purposes of combating domestic terrorism
broadly are relatively similar to what they were previously,
but there were some different buckets that kind of conflate
those numbers? Could you expand on that really quickly?
Ms. Neumann. Sure. Thank you for the question.
Yes, the amount of money that was associated with the
office that is now called Targeted Violence and Terrorism
Prevention has remained relatively the same. We have the $10
million grant program that was a two-year period of performance
coming to a conclusion. We're evaluating it and assessing
internally about future requests for funding associated with
that.
And there was an additional $8 million reprogramming
request to provide contractors in the field. Again, we were
evaluating whether the concept of field staff worked and, if
so, if a contractor model was the way we wanted to go.
That is one of the things that the RAND study also looked
at for us, was field staff. And we still have some more
internal deliberations to consider, but I don't think we're
going to be looking to contractors to be doing this kind of
prevention work in the future.
Mr. Roy. And is it true that the previous administration
had a fairly significant focus, appropriately, on foreign
terrorist efforts, including ISIS and otherwise, and then how
that connected back to those that are homegrown?
Ms. Neumann. Yes, sir. The countering violent extremism in
general was focused on, if you go all the way back to 2008, al-
Qaida. And then with the rise of the homegrown violent
extremist with ISIS, it shifted to focus on the lone individual
radicalizing to violence.
So yes, appropriately, the Obama Administration was focused
on designing prevention programs to address that threat. Around
2017, it was Secretary Kelly that noted--you may remember there
was a series of incidents at Jewish cemeteries in March 2017,
and he directed, since we were reviewing the grant program, to
make sure that the grants could be--the grantees, potential
grantees, were using their funds for more than one ideology, to
try to be as broad as possible. So that opened the aperture to
address domestic terrorism, and many of our grantees do that
now.
Mr. Roy. So to be clear--and this is, by the way, no
criticism at all on the previous administration--there was some
focus there with respect to foreign terrorist organizations and
the networks here in the United States. But then the current
administration, Secretary Kelly, looked at some of the threats
that we are now looking at and made a change to address that,
true?
Ms. Neumann. Yes.
Mr. Roy. In addition, we talked a little bit about the RAND
study. And it is true that the Trump administration requested
the RAND study on the terrorism prevention and is now
implementing the results of that study to have an objective
third-party view?
Ms. Neumann. Yes.
Mr. Roy. And then, in addition, with respect to--maybe this
might be better for Mr. McGarrity--with some of the questioning
you had from my colleague from New York just a moment ago, it
is true, right, that there is not a United States Code fill in
the blank domestic terrorism statute to prosecute crimes in the
United States under, correct?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes. There is a statute, but it defines what
domestic terrorism is. It's not a statute you could charge----
Mr. Roy. Right.
Mr. McGarrity [continuing]. like 2339 on the other, for
foreign terrorists.
Mr. Roy. Correct. So that's why you were describing there
were no charges under it, because there was nothing to charge,
correct?
Mr. McGarrity. Right. So the narrative is not out there,
correct.
Mr. Roy. However, there are numerous crimes in which you
can--under which you can charge people who are engaged in
criminal activity, and that happens all the time, whether it's
hate crimes or other crimes, right, engaged in criminal
activity, Federal, state and local, correct?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes.
Mr. Roy. And that happens all the time on a daily basis.
Mr. McGarrity. We use 2332, weapons of mass destruction
against a Federal building. We use a variety of gun charges,
drug charges, whatever it is to arrest the person prior to the
actual attack.
Mr. Roy. And along those lines, with respect to those kind
of criminal charges, is it safe to say there's a distinction
when we're talking about foreign terrorist organizations and if
you're talking about the concept of a domestic terrorist
organization or entity, that there are some constitutional
questions that arise, right, that are distinct between our
focusing on our intelligence gathering and our efforts in
criminal activities when we're focusing on foreign terrorist
organizations, communications they have with American citizens,
how we surveil that information, what we do with that
information, versus targeting domestic only American citizens
or at least those who have permanent legal status?
There's a distinction there that complicates a bit how we
would set up a criminal structure to target, quote/unquote,
domestic terrorism. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. McGarrity. That's right. Yes.
Mr. Roy. And then one last statement, one last question
along these lines for Ms. Neumann again.
Is there anything that you would like to add with respect
to what you think the positive steps that have been taken under
this administration, under what you've seen and acted upon, to
advance the ball with respect to domestic terrorism?
Thank you.
Ms. Neumann. Thank you for the question.
I'd like to point out that this administration's CT
strategy is the first strategy that incorporated domestic
terrorism into it. The previous strategies were focused on
international terrorism.
There's a recognition in the CT strategy, there's a pillar
that's called countering radicalization and recruitment, and it
point blank says we're just not doing enough.
So there's an acknowledgement by CT practitioners, by
prevention experts, I mean, you had an entire hearing a month
ago on this topic, we know we're not doing enough.
Part of the reason we haven't done enough is because things
have not--it's bureaucratic. It's boring. Things haven't been
institutionalized.
In order for government to work, you have to
institutionalize it. You either need to authorize it through
Congress or you need to get it in executive order or National
Security Presidential Memoranda. That was never done in the
previous administration. And now we're working to figure out
how do we do that so that the budget process can work and we
can get proper funding for prevention efforts moving forward.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much. The gentleman yields back.
Thank you for your candor, Ms. Neumann. I appreciate that.
It is refreshing to hear it.
And I yield now to the gentlelady from Massachusetts, Ms.
Pressley.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to pick up on my line of questioning from the last
hearing and also some of the comments from Representative Clay.
So since 1995, Black Americans have been victims of 66
percent of all racially motivated hate crimes. And, again, I'm
sure that's a, you know, underreported count.
In 2017 alone, Black Americans were targeted in more than
half of all hate crimes reported. That's what we know. So what
we know is that the numbers don't lie. And Black Americans
continue to find themselves at the greatest risk. Which is why
this designation of Black identity extremism seems particularly
absurd.
We had a former FBI official on the record who said that
Black identity extremists pose no threat to our public safety.
Would you agree with that, Mr. McGarrity?
Mr. McGarrity. I would pose any extremist who wants to
commit violence is a threat to society, whether it's White or
Black.
I wasn't here when the Black identity extremist assessment
was written, but it was written back in 2016 during a horrific
time of July 2016, July 7 and July 17, two events on July 7,
targeting of police officers.
Ms. Pressley. Excuse me. I'm so sorry. Reclaiming my time.
I'm aware of that incident. And I think that the
designation was created in the wake of six isolated and
unrelated incidents of violence. The only common denominator
there is that they were Black. Is that correct?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. Reclaiming my time.
Mr. McGarrity. And so very similar to the racially
motivated violent extremists.
Ms. Pressley. I'm sorry, reclaiming my time.
So those were six unrelated incidents where the only common
denominator was race.
So in order for a group to be categorized as extremist or
as a credible threat, how many hate-related incidents need to
take place? Is there a number? How many hate-related incidents
need to take place in order for a group to be designated as
extremist and a credible threat? Because this was six, right?
And the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, I just met with
them. They count 32 White supremacist extremists who murdered
individuals in the U.S. since 2016.
I just want to make sure that our investment and our
surveillance is commensurate with those that are actually
disproportionately most being victimized and we're not creating
categories as another excuse to target and racially profile one
of the most vulnerable communities.
So what is the criteria that determines a group is a
credible threat? This was 6 incidents, and I just talked to you
about 32.
Mr. McGarrity. So to be clear from my last testimony, we
don't work groups. We don't work ideologies. We don't work
movements. What we work are those individuals who have an
ideology, are using an ideology to commit violence.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. So how----
Mr. McGarrity. If we have six individuals who are looking
to commit violence and they are together, we will have six
cases on those----
Ms. Pressley. Reclaiming my time. They were unrelated. So
how many extremist killings has the FBI linked to Black Lives
Matter or similar Black activist groups?
Mr. McGarrity. We don't work Black Lives Matter. It's a
movement. It's an ideology. We don't--that's--we don't work
that.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. So the answer is none. So can you just
say that for the record? There's been no extreme--there's been
no killing that the FBI can link to Black Lives Matter or
similar Black activist groups, to your knowledge?
Mr. McGarrity. To my knowledge--I'd have to go back--but to
my knowledge right now, no.
Ms. Pressley. None, Okay. All right.
So, again, going back to what created this absurd
designation, these were six incidents. And I don't want to look
at those tragedies lightly, but they were unrelated. So there
was nothing organized there.
You said that you are intentionally not using, until Rep
Clay brought it up, the term ``Black identity extremist.'' So
you're not using the term, but we still have the designation,
correct?
Mr. McGarrity. No. I've been in this job 17 months. We
don't have that designation.
Ms. Pressley. The designation no longer exists?
Mr. McGarrity. Hasn't existed since I've been here for 17
months.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. So no one is being surveyed or
monitored under the category of Black identity extremist?
Mr. McGarrity. No.
Ms. Pressley. Okay, great. Thank you.
I just want to make sure, because, again, we have some
conflicting information here. I know there are a number of
organizations, including the National Organization of Black Law
Enforcement Executives, which have asked that this category be
rolled back.
So I just want to make sure again on the record we're clear
that this no longer exists. There is not a Black identity
extremist category and there is no surveillance happening based
on that designation?
Mr. McGarrity. I can tell you there's no surveillance on
that activity, because we don't work that as a group. And I can
also tell you I had a phone conversation myself with NOBLE
about that months ago.
So I don't know where the information is coming from. I've
been here 17 months. We are not using Black identity extremist
as a term or for a group.
Ms. Pressley. And was this announced publicly or is this
the first time you're saying this on the record?
Mr. McGarrity. No, I said it a couple weeks ago when I
testified up on the Hill as well.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. I yield.
Mr. Raskin. The gentlelady yields. Thank you very much, Ms.
Pressley.
I come now to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia,
Representative Norton, for five minutes.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much.
Mr. McGarrity, I am curious, between the mid-1980's and
2005, the FBI published something which it called ``Terrorism
in the United States.'' This was an unclassified annual report
summarizing terrorist--what it said--activities in this
country.
Do you believe that that report, ``Terrorism in the United
States,'' provided valuable information to be shared with the
public?
Mr. McGarrity. I was not aware of it at that time. I was
still a field agent. But I've spoken to Chairman Thompson, I
believe, who's been asking for that.
We do a monthly rollup of both domestic terrorism and
international terrorism arrests, the numbers, back to his
committee, the House Homeland Committee. I've looked at that.
What we'll look to do is where we can take those monthly
reports and see how we can summarize them for some type of
national product. We're looking into whether that's feasible.
Ms. Norton. You're trying to recreate what you were doing--
--
Mr. McGarrity. Back in 2005.
Ms. Norton [continuing]. in those years.
Mr. McGarrity. We're already doing that on a monthly basis
for the House Homeland Committee.
Ms. Norton. So is that being published as I speak or as you
speak?
Mr. McGarrity. We've given him at least one monthly report.
I think we owe him another one coming up, per our discussions
with him when I testified.
Ms. Norton. Would you see that this monthly report is
available to the chair of this subcommittee?
Mr. McGarrity. I would be careful--you know, one of the
things I think it's important for everyone to understand, both
on international terrorism and domestic terrorism, when we say
we're arresting individuals, they are subjects. Most of time it
may not come up in the international terrorism that this person
was even a subject of the FBI, because we're arresting them on
a gun charge, because that's the charge that's available to us
at the time to stop the threat.
You might see Joint Terrorism Task Force on the arrest. You
might see in the complaint or the charging document some
reference to terrorism, but you may not.
So certainly on some of these cases and cognizant of
labeling people terrorists, we want to make sure that we're
charging them with crimes under Title 18, because those are the
charges available that we need at that time to stop that person
from acting.
Ms. Norton. All right. I'm trying to make sure that this
new, if not report, this new document you're coming up with
will be accessible to the public. This report, I indicated,
between the mid-1980's and 2005 was accessible to the public.
It was unclassified. This will be unclassified? Anybody can
pick it up?
Mr. McGarrity. I would still have to determine that, what
the dissemination of that report will look like.
Ms. Norton. Oh, it's very important, because if you're
giving it to the committee, this committee--or the committee,
the Department of Homeland--which committee are you giving this
to?
Mr. McGarrity. House Homeland.
Ms. Norton. Homeland. Are you telling them not to make this
available either to other----
Mr. McGarrity. I'd have to go back and look at the--
certainly, Representative Norton, and I think you've seen that
in the last couple months, we are pushing more information,
more statistics out on both international terrorism and
domestic terrorism. And I think you've seen an increase in that
through our threat briefings up here on the Hill.
Ms. Norton. But we just heard about this report for the
first time, this monthly report.
Mr. McGarrity. It's only--I think it's going into our
second-month iteration on it. But we're committed, I'm
committed to doing a monthly report for the House Homeland.
Ms. Norton. And making it public to--and making it public.
That's what you did before. That's what the FBI did before.
That's why I'm trying to establish whether or not this is a
report that's classified. Remember, I said unclassified. That's
what I'm trying to establish.
Mr. McGarrity. And point well taken. And we'll look to see
what that would be, whether it's classified or unclassified.
But I agree with you, we do need to give the American public
and Congress----
Ms. Norton. Would there be any reason to classify--you
didn't classify any such thing when you had a report that was
regularly published, ``Terrorism in the United States.''
Why in the world should there be any doubt, given the
history of generating unclassified reports, what in the world
would lead this to possibly be classified? Give me a reason.
Mr. McGarrity. I could say in some cases and in today's
world that there could be an actor that is arrested here from
the Joint Terrorism Task Force who's related to a state sponsor
of terrorism, that at that point in our strategy for disruption
we may not want to----
Ms. Norton. Well, Mr. McGarrity, I must say to you, I
believe that would have been the case in the report that I just
indicated.
Mr. McGarrity. That's what I'm saying, we have to work
through those things. And certainly I want to be more proactive
in giving information. So I'll look at it.
Ms. Norton. All I can say is nobody will interfere with an
ongoing investigation. And I'm sure that the report that for
decades the FBI did publish made sure that that didn't occur.
And, again, I'm going to ask it to the subcommittee chair.
Mr. Raskin. Congresswoman, thank you very much for that
line of questions.
And, Mr. McGarrity, I want to echo the Representative from
District of Columbia. Certainly, we would like a copy of that
report if you're producing it for Congress, and we would
encourage you to think about making it public. If not, we can,
you know, continue that dialog elsewhere. But at the very least
we would like to be able to look at it and then we can talk
about making it public.
Ms. Norton. Yes. Before I yield back, I would like to say,
if you're giving it to one committee in the House, it seems to
me automatic it should come to another committee. And I ask
that that be provided as soon as possible to the chair of this
subcommittee, particularly since you're already providing it to
Congress. We're all on equal footing here, sir.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back.
And I recognize now the gentlelady from Michigan,
Representative Tlaib, who's with us today.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you so much
for allowing me to be here.
This is pretty complex, the more I hear about this. And as
an attorney as well, you know, I'm always constantly looking at
specific actions and words and some of the other circumstantial
evidence in regards to whether or not. And it's very
intriguing. Mr. Shivers, you talked about hate incident versus
hate crime and so forth.
I believe that the government's priorities and resource
allocation should be in coordinance with the magnitude and
nature of the violence extremism threat in the United States.
Do you all agree with that?
Ms. Neumann. With one caveat. I would say risk is how we
evaluate application of resources. We take into account threat,
vulnerability, and consequence.
Ms. Tlaib. Do you all agree?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes. We go through a threat review process,
both at headquarters and in the field, to do that, to make sure
our resources are properly aligned against our threats.
Ms. Tlaib. And I just want you to know many of my next
questions, I know that you don't get to make these decisions,
but I'm trying to educate the public but also put in the
congressional Record.
So, Mr. McGarrity, the FBI has indicated that approximately
20 percent of the FBI's pending counterterrorism cases are
characterized as so-called domestic terrorism investigations,
which roughly parallels resource allocations of
counterterrorism special agents in field offices working on
domestic terrorism. Is that correct?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes.
Ms. Tlaib. How many pending domestic terrorism cases does
the FBI have currently?
Mr. McGarrity. Approximately--and, again, it's a point in
time it's static--approximately a month ago, it was
approximately 850.
Ms. Tlaib. That's the number I have. Thank you.
And White supremacist extremism cases, would all fall under
so-called domestic terrorism, correct?
Mr. McGarrity. Yes.
Ms. Tlaib. My understanding is that the remaining 80
percent of the FBI's pending counterterrorism cases would be
characterized as the international, you called them H--I hate
these labels, by the way, it drives me--as a Muslim, like I
just hate them because it automatically makes me feel like
people are targeting those of different faiths and colors and
so forth. But called HVE cases.
Mr. McGarrity. So I think you're----
Ms. Tlaib. The 80 percent left from that budget, the
resources are going to. No?
Mr. McGarrity. No. So we have approximately 4,500 to 5,000
terrorism cases.
Ms. Tlaib. Okay.
Mr. McGarrity. Of that, approximately 850 domestic
terrorism cases. So take the rest, those are international
terrorism cases.
Ms. Tlaib. Okay. So----
Mr. McGarrity. So we have approximately 1,000 homegrown
violent extremist cases, approximately 1,000 ISIS-affiliated.
Ms. Tlaib. So the HVEs, those folks are falling under
this----
Mr. McGarrity. International terrorism.
Ms. Tlaib. Okay. So one of the things that came up--and
it's a good question to you, Mr. McGarrity, or anybody else
that would like to answer--do you think we should have a
domestic terrorism statute?
Mr. McGarrity. I will say as a former prosecutor, as a
former investigator, I want every tool in the toolbox and I
want options.
Ms. Tlaib. But, Mr. McGarrity----
Mr. McGarrity. So if I can have more options, I would say I
want another tool in the toolbox, but I'll defer to the
Department of Justice----
Ms. Tlaib. Of course.
Mr. McGarrity [continuing]. to work with Congress if
there's a statute needed.
Ms. Tlaib. So the tools we have, is that enough? I mean, if
somebody is threatening to kill people based on their faith, to
kill people based on their beliefs, or just, you know, that
kind of sort of--you know, I loved how you said any violence is
a threat to society, right, any form of violence. And I
appreciate that. But there's not enough right now to give you
all power?
So I want to give an example. So I've been in office for
about six months. And when you get something like this:
Attention Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ragheads
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, I was totally excited and pleased
when I heard about 49 Muslims were killed and many--many more
were wounded in New Zealand. This is a great start. Let's hope
and pray that it continues here in the good old USA. The only
good Muslim is a dead one.
How is that enough--not enough--to fall under domestic
terrorism if they're targeting solely based on my faith and
others in saying that a good Muslim is a dead one, obviously
directed to me.
By the way, they copied, in this threat to my office, they
copied the U.S. Department of Justice, the President, the
Department of Homeland Security, and so forth. And we get so
many of them. And I keep asking, what happens, what happens to
these individuals?
Are they--you know, I'm being sincere. I'm not trying to--
I'm really sincere. I'm a mother, so I want to go home to my
two boys.
Mr. McGarrity. So first, my empathy.
I'm in charge of domestic terrorism and international
terrorism. I don't differentiate either when the threat comes
in, nor does the FBI. We work them both the same.
Ms. Tlaib. I appreciate that and I hear that throughout
your testimony. It's very consistent, Mr. McGarrity. But how
come we don't have enough tools right now to pull these people
in? Because this is a form--and you can see there's a pattern.
Mr. McGarrity. Well, there's two parts to that. So I can
tell you the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, we are
working hard, as was said earlier, we are working hard.
If there's another statute that you think is needed, come
talk to the Department of Justice, absolutely. I mean, I think
they've said that during their last testimony back in May.
Those type charges, as you're explaining that, I want to
arrest that person before they do something. I have to, right?
Ms. Tlaib. Right.
Mr. McGarrity. What am I going to do? I'm going to look at
any charge I can do. Probably in that case, if it gets a little
more specific with the violence and targeted violence, I'm
going to use 18 U.S.C. 875, interstate communication threat.
That's what I'm going to do.
And we do that every day. And we actually do it more. And
I'm not trying to be argumentative here either. I'm just
telling you the men and women of the FBI are out here working
this threat hard. And we arrest more of our subjects on
domestic terrorism than we do international terrorism. And
we're doing it as much as we can.
Ms. Tlaib. We don't have enough resources I think being
spent on that.
Mr. McGarrity. It's not an apples-and-oranges.
Ms. Tlaib. And, you know, Mr. Shivers made a great point,
because I am for, and I want my colleagues to know, I have my
coffee hours, I have people protest. I absolutely welcome
freedom of speech. I welcome anybody that has an opinion, even
about my faith. But to get to the point where they pass it
toward a threatening life, I mean, to me that is enough.
Sometimes I--you know, the protected speech, and that's
something we have to be very careful and tread very carefully,
very, very carefully with that.
But to that point where this person--where I feel like if
it came from somebody of different--no matter what--as we try
to proceed we say that's not true, but I feel like if they were
Muslim or Black that it would be handled differently.
Even the threat that we had in Florida, they released him
on a tether. I had to go to Florida the same weekend. I
couldn't believe they released him on a tether.
And I've been on the other end, you know, defending many
people that were wrongfully accused and wanting to--I couldn't
get them on bail for the smallest incident of, you know,
attempted assault and so forth, right? Serious offenses, I
believe.
But in many ways, these kinds of incidents, when it comes
to threats of life toward other people based on, you know,
somebody of Jewish faith, Muslim, being Black in America, this
anti-Blackness movement that we have, when do we take those so
seriously as a movement that is obviously pushing violence? I
mean, when do--I mean, at this point you're letting the person
out on a tether.
Mr. McGarrity. I'm not.
Ms. Tlaib. I know you're not. I know you're not, Mr.
McGarrity.
And like what scares me about your, you know, kind of not
requesting, but you're saying. Do you think we should have a
domestic terrorism statute? What scares me about that is that
we're expanding--and I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman--that we're going
to allow this big balloon of--then we're still going to be
leaving people out.
I feel like if they're threatening the life of someone
else, that alone should be just enough for us to get them on it
if it's based on--and it's based on hate, because they're
mentioning a faith, if it's based on color and so forth, sexual
orientation, that should be enough.
And, I mean, I commend you all on trying to keep our
country safe, but I feel like almost like we need to be
proceeding in a way that we're spending enough resources and
money with the people that are here now that are threatening
lives of fellow Americans.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Ms. Tlaib. With that, I yield. I'm so sorry. Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Ms. Tlaib. I was so mesmerized by
your statement I lost track of time there, so that was my
fault.
I come now to Mr. Malinowski. I yield to you for five
minutes.
Mr. Malinowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And let me just say, in my congressional district virtually
every synagogue now has armed security. Every mosque when I go
for Friday prayers there is state police outside. And
thankfully law enforcement is doing everything it can. But this
is an ever-present fear for everybody who is worshipping in New
Jersey. So these questions about resource allocation are
absolutely legitimate.
Let me begin with actually where the chairman started at
the beginning, the question of cooperation with our allies
around the world.
Mr. McGarrity, you talked about this as, yes, a
transnational threat in the sense that these people are
communicating online, but isn't it more than that? They're
traveling. They're meeting each other.
The shooter in Australia, New Zealand, traveled to Europe
and met people in similar groups. We have Americans going to
Ukraine to fight for militias there, coming back with military
training, joining neo-Nazi groups.
My question to you, much more specific, if we can drill
down on this intelligence sharing, is do you feel like you have
the authorities with respect to sharing intelligence with our
allies on members of neo-Nazi White supremacist organizations,
so-called domestic terrorists, that you have if, for example,
an American citizen is chatting online with al-Qaida in Yemen
and then getting on a plane to Europe, in terms of contacting
your counterparts in those law enforcement agencies so they can
surveil, so they can contribute to our work?
Mr. McGarrity. If I have an open case on someone, it
doesn't matter whether it's international terrorism, domestic
terrorism, or criminal, I can charge----
Mr. Malinowski. Open case, yes. But you don't necessarily
have an open case if someone hasn't done anything yet, right?
Mr. McGarrity. No, no. Of course, we do, yes. So I mean, if
we have an open case where someone is looking, whether
international terrorism or domestic terrorism, looking to do
violence, right, looking to do something.
So what the Congresswoman said, plus looking to do
violence, not just hate but targeted hate, you know. And I can
open a case. I can share that information and work with my
foreign counterparts, and we do that every day.
Mr. Malinowski. So despite the fact that we don't designate
domestic groups--and I'm not suggesting we do--but----
Mr. McGarrity. I can share that.
Mr. Malinowski. Are you suggesting that you have
essentially the same authorities with respect----
Mr. McGarrity. To share, yes. If we're working an
investigation and we would do a lead to that legal attache
office to share with the local counterparts. We may not get the
same response----
Mr. Malinowski. Understood.
Mr. McGarrity [continuing]. to be quite honest, depending
upon the country.
Mr. Malinowski. Now, Ms. Neumann, Mr. McGarrity said at one
point--well, several times--that he is focused on violence, not
ideology, and I think that's probably the right answer from the
FBI's point of view.
But in terms of a national strategy for dealing with this
threat, if violence is animated by ideology, isn't it important
that we understand it, that we counter it, and above all that
nobody in a position of authority legitimize or echo that
ideology?
Ms. Neumann. Sir, the studies that have been done by the
National Institute of Justice, by the Secret Service's NTAC,
have identified that ideology is certainly one of about five
components of an individual that's been radicalized, but it is
not significant enough that you have to know it in order to be
able to see those behaviors and indicators of somebody on a
pathway to committing an act of targeted violence. Meaning you
usually don't even discover what that ideology is or that
motivation is before you might have clued in that somebody was
trying to do something. That is specific to----
Mr. Malinowski. Okay, but there are motivations here.
Ms. Neumann. Yes.
Mr. Malinowski. And with regard to the White supremacist
individuals and groups, that there is a belief that is driving
those actions, a belief that White people are being replaced,
that they are being threatened by something.
And, you know, looking at the recent cases, isn't it fair
to say that one of the common threads is that these people are
animated by a conspiracy theory with regard to immigrants to
America? I mean, they're all talking about it. Is that fair?
Ms. Neumann. So I think that the current rise of White
supremacy that we're seeing is abhorrent. I'm very sorry, Ms.
Tlaib, at what you have endured.
I believe that the prevention tools that we're trying to
put in place will help identify those individuals as they're on
their radicalization process. But that does not take away from
the fact that we need to have a better understanding of every
ideology that is posing a threat.
That said, that's not my office's job. That's where I refer
to the intelligence community.
Mr. Malinowski. No, I understand. I'm asking based on your
expertise.
I mean, the guy--the shooter in Pittsburgh said explicitly
he acted because immigrants were invading America, and he
blamed Jewish Americans for abetting that because of Hebrew
Immigrant Aid Society. The shooter in Christchurch said
immigrants were invading Western countries. This is a common
thread.
So let me just ask, you know, all of you. From the
perspective of people who are charged with dealing with this
threat, is it helpful if in our public discourse in America
authoritative figures are themselves talking about immigrants
invading the United States of America, threatening our way of
life, threatening our culture? Does that not create--contribute
to an environment in which these people who spout these
conspiracy theories feel legitimized?
Mr. Raskin. The gentleman's time is up. But did anyone want
to take a shot at answering this question?
Mr. McGarrity?
Mr. McGarrity. I'll take a shot.
So it's usually--it's never one sole issue, but there's
certainly many. And with the internet, it is you can find
whatever ideology you want to justify your action. I can leave
it at that.
And that is just because we're seeing cross-ideologies. In
other words, there could be someone who is a racially motivated
violent extremists, but also their ideology might be anti-
immigration.
And then there's--everyone has got a little bit different--
we're seeing that more and more over the last couple of years
than we did in years past, which were more stovepipe
ideologies, if you will, more organized.
Mr. Malinowski. But you wouldn't want me echoing that
ideology, would you, from my position as a----
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Neumann, did you want to answer that
question?
Ms. Neumann. What I was going to suggest is the fact that
we live in a 24/7 news cycle now, the fact that the way that we
get attention is through retweets and clicks, it leads us to
more passionate rhetoric.
And as government officials, our job is not to worry about
the rhetoric or police the rhetoric. It does make our job
harder. But the focus is on identifying the individual before
they commit that act of violence and getting them the help that
they need and hopefully being able to get them out--hopefully
to avoid the FBI having to investigate because we've gotten
them the help they need to be able to see things clearly.
Mr. Raskin. All right. We very much appreciate all of your
contributions today. We will continue the dialog and we'll
continue to work with you.
Ms. Neumann, Mr. Shivers, Mr. McGarrity, thank you all.
And we're going to bring up our second panel now. You are
all dismissed.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. The subcommittee is called back to order.
I want to again thank the first panel of witnesses for
their testimony, and they should be aware there may be
questions for the hearing record.
We will now swear in our first--or rather our second panel
of witnesses. And we're still waiting for Ms. Brooks. Here she
comes.
So the second panel is Tony McAleer, who is the co-founder
of Life After Hate; Lecia Brooks, who is the outreach director
of the Southern Poverty Law Center--welcome; Brette Steele, the
director of prevention and national security at the McCain
Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State
University; and Todd Bensman, who is the former manager of
counterterrorism intelligence at the Texas Department of Public
Safety in the Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division.
Welcome to you all. And if you would stand and raise your
right hand, I'll swear you in.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony that you're about
to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you God?
Great.
Let the record show the witnesses have answered in the
affirmative.
Thank you. Please be seated.
Please speak directly into the microphone so we can capture
all of your remarks. And, without objection, your written
statements will be made part of the record. And I'm going to
recognize each of you for five minutes. And, of course there
will be active questioning by the distinguished members of the
panel. So you have an opportunity to expand further.
With that, Mr. McAleer, you are now recognized first, and
it's good to see you again. And you are recognized for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF TONY McALEER, CO-FOUNDER, LIFE AFTER HATE
Mr. McAleer. Thank you.
Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, members of the
committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today.
Life After Hate was founded in the summer of 2011 by former
members of violent White supremacist groups. Our goal is to
help people caught up in the destructive cycle of hate from
which we were able to free ourselves.
Within a year of our founding, a former U.S. Army soldier
with ties to White supremacists and neo-Nazi groups killed six
innocent people and injured four others at the Sikh temple in
Oak Creek in Wisconsin.
A little less than three years later, in 2015, another
White supremacist walked into the A.M.E. Church in Charleston,
South Carolina, with the same goal. He was armed and primed for
murder and killed nine people on that day.
That same year, Life After Hate answered a call from a
troubled veteran. He'd done tours to Iraq and Afghanistan and
was becoming preoccupied with his local Muslim community.
Thankfully, he reached out to us. Within 24 hours, two of
our team members were on a flight to meet with him. They spent
the next 72 hours together, culminating in a powerful meeting
with the imam from the local Muslim center.
To this day, that vet is still engaged with his local
Muslim community, a community that is safer as a result.
Our team prides itself on our ability to assess and, where
necessary, respond quickly to situations where delays can prove
costly.
Fast forward five years to August 2017. A White supremacy
rally draws the who's who of violent extremist groups to
Charlottesville, Virginia. Attended by the KKK, White
nationalists, and neo-Nazis, the subsequent violence claimed a
young woman's life and was broadcast to a national television
audience.
We saw it again in October 2018 at the Tree of Life
Synagogue in Pittsburgh with nine more people being senselessly
murdered.
In April of this year, at the Chabad of Poway, California,
we saw another innocent person murdered by violent White
supremacists. Thankfully, his gun jammed.
The expert team at Life After Hate are often referred to as
``formers,'' meaning former violent extremists. Just as
important as our unique firsthand experience within violent
extremist groups is our collective professional training and
experience. Collectively, the Life After Hate team has worked
with hundreds of men and women who were able to successfully
exit the White power movement and build more positive lives.
Our founding group has undergone extensive personal and
professional development, and today the Life After Hate team
has three decades of professional counseling experience between
them. There is no other organization that's able to perform
this unique work that Life After Hate does and that has the
credibility to encourage members of violent extremist groups to
reach out to them and, just as importantly, to work at scale.
Life After Hate has built a successful model that combines
our unique experiences, professional training, and evidence-
based practices. We're now teaching this model.
This in-person training empowers local professionals--law
enforcement, mental health, and social services--to recognize
emerging threats within their community and to effectively
engage with that person or group.
The outcome of this first contact from local professionals
can define the success or failure. So it's vitally important
that they receive this specialized training.
Since Charlottesville, Life After Hate has received more
than 240 requests for help from individuals and families. This
is almost two-and-a-half times the number of people that we
helped in the six years prior. In the last three months alone,
we have opened 45 new cases.
Life After Hate is committed to continuing our work and to
sharing the unique understanding and knowledge that we've
developed in assisting nearly 400 members of White supremacist
groups to leave that movement.
I come before you today to urge the government to recognize
that, if left unchecked, White supremacist ideology inevitably
expresses itself in murder. This ideology is deadly and fueled
by social media. The threat to society is growing
exponentially.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
Ms. Brooks, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF LECIA BROOKS, OUTREACH DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN POVERTY
LAW CENTER
Ms. Brooks. Thank You, Chairman Raskin. And thank you,
Ranking Member Roy and committee members. Thank you for being
here.
In our country today there is without question an
escalating crisis of hate-related violence. There are no longer
isolated incidents. There are no lone wolves. We are well past
the point of cautionary tales. Each senseless act after
senseless act is intertwined and connected by bigotry's sinew,
woven by callous disregard for human life.
On the last day of Passover, a 19-year-old nursing student
in San Diego murdered Lori Kaye inside the Chabad of Poway,
while injuring three others. In a manifesto posted online,
easily located by anyone with a passing familiarity with the
internet, the killer cited as his role models Adolf Hitler and
two other men, one in Pittsburgh and one in Christchurch, New
Zealand.
In March, two mosques in Christchurch were attacked by one
of these men, killing 51 people, with another 50 injured. One
of the worshippers, Naeem Rashid, was killed as he charged at
his assailant.
Five months prior to Poway, the other man in Pittsburgh
murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue, including
brothers David and Cecil Rosenthal. The city's top FBI official
called it the most horrific crime scene he had seen in 22 years
on the job.
It is not a coincidence that these atrocities are carried
out in houses of worship. This is deliberate.
In June 2015, as was mentioned, a 21-year-old White
supremacist, who posed in pictures with handguns and the
Confederate flag, murdered nine worshippers at the historic
Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during their
prayer group meeting.
These killers want to attack people when they are at their
most vulnerable, practicing their religion, laying their
burdens before their God.
These killings are not happening in a vacuum. White
supremacy and White nationalism are allowed to grow unchecked.
They remain underestimated by law enforcement and unnamed in
the media, because we as a society are not able to properly
identify them or are just too scared to say them aloud.
The falsehood of White genocide is pervasive. The people
behind these murders share a common fear of the end of a White
majority in the U.S., and this dangerous myth has seeped into
the mainstream, just as easily heard on the evening cable news
as it is seen on fliers defacing college campuses across the
country. This radical and racist idea is now the animating
principle of many of our elected leadership and the guiding
light of the current administration.
We've seen this idea become mainstreamed for three reasons.
One, in the mid-1980's, 77 percent of the U.S. population
was White. It's roughly now 60 percent. In 30 years, it will be
under 50 percent. This kind of change creates an existential
anxiety that, after being fed a steady media diet of xenophobia
and fear, metastasizes into hate.
Two, the internet is a highly effective tool for spreading
propaganda and indoctrination. It would be impossible to
overstate the sheer volume of misinformation that foments
extremism available to all of us on our smartphones.
And three, the President of the United States is actively
stoking these anxieties, demonizing immigrants, spreading
conspiracy theories, and lying every day about the cause of
society's challenges.
The Southern Poverty Law Center offers the following
recommendations.
First, support a bill called the Domestic Terrorism Data
Act. This bill would help to determine what resources are
actually being applied to this threat and would improve
interagency coordination on domestic terrorism.
Second, support the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer Hate
Crime Reporting Act, which would help to improve the reporting
of hate crimes and data collection.
And Congress must also compel tech and social media
companies to more adequately address hate on their platforms.
To date, they have demonstrated an insufficient and
irresponsible lack of understanding of the vast scope of the
problem. Their inaction suggests that they are either not up to
the task or lack the will to do so.
Finally, in order to help communities deal with the impact
of hate-inspired violence, we urge Congress to fully fund the
Community Relations Service within the Justice Department. The
administration's proposed 2020 budget recommends that the
program be eliminated.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.
The Southern Poverty Law Center remains ready and willing to
work with you to address White nationalism and White supremacy
in our country.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Brooks, thanks so much for joining us.
Ms. Steele, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF BRETTE STEELE, DIRECTOR OF PREVENTION AND NATIONAL
SECURITY, MCCAIN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP, ON
BEHALF OF ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
Ms. Steele. Thank you.
Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify on the
adequacy of Federal responses to violent White supremacy.
I am Brette Steele, director of prevention and national
security at the McCain Institute for International Leadership
at Arizona State University, and I am honored to appear before
you today.
When a professed White supremacist intentionally drove his
car through a crowd of peaceful protestors in Charlottesville,
Virginia, Senator John McCain called on all Americans to unite
against hatred and bigotry. The McCain Institute continues that
call.
My testimony today outlines three concrete steps Congress
can take to address hatred and violence. First, invest in
prevention. Second, improve hate crime reporting. And third,
establish parity in domestic terrorism charges.
First, the United States Homeland Security's Office of
Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention faces dual pressures
of an expanding mandate and shrinking resources.
As was acknowledged earlier today, and as George Selim
testified, its predecessor office once managed a total budget
of approximately $21 million, including $10 million in grant
funding. Two years and two reorganizations later, the total
budget is only $2.6 million, and the Department expanded the
office's mission to include not only terrorism but school
shootings and workplace violence, among others. This budget is
woefully inadequate to meet the expanded mission.
We position the McCain Institute to fill in gaps in the
Federal prevention infrastructure. For example, the Federal
Government launched the Peer-to-Peer: Challenging Extremism
Program to empower university students to counter extremism and
hate through the development and deployment of dynamic
campaigns.
Since the spring of 2017, the Federal Government has failed
to fund universities here in the United States to participate
in this program. The McCain Institute and Arizona State
University will relaunch this program in January 2020 as the
Peace Mavericks Peer-to-Peer Challenge.
The McCain Institute also plans to build a national network
of practitioners who will share promising practices for
preventing hate and targeted violence. Through these
initiatives, the McCain Institute hopes to realize Senator
McCain's vision and build the capacity of local nonprofits to
work together to prevent hatred and bigotry.
Despite the expanding role of civil society in preventing
hate and terrorism, the Federal Government remains best
positioned to fund scalable programs and coordinate technical
assistance.
Congress should require an interagency strategy and
implementation plan to prevent all forms of targeted violence,
including violent White supremacy.
Congress should also codify an office tasked with, one,
establishing a grant program for locally led initiatives to
prevent targeted violence; two, funding independent academic
evaluation of representative grant projects; and, three,
expanding technical assistance to local community-led
initiatives to ensure that programs are evidence-informed and
protective of privacy and civil liberties.
These critical functions require line item funding and
should not be left to the discretion of Department leadership.
The second point was improving hate crime reporting. Even
with the expanded investment in targeted violence prevention,
unaddressed hate will continue to fester into hate crimes. The
government should, one, encourage hate crime reporting of all
citizens; two, train local law enforcement; and, three,
consider mandatory hate crime reporting.
My third point was creating a domestic terrorism charge.
Finally, individuals who commit violent acts that violate
criminal laws with an intent to intimidate or coerce civilian
populations should qualify for a charge of terrorism,
regardless of which violent ideology inspires them.
The American people deserve parity in our rhetoric, our
resources, and our response, and Congress should take the first
step toward parity by creating a criminal offense for domestic
terrorism.
Congress must invest in scaling up local efforts to prevent
targeted violence, improve reporting of hate crimes, and
establish parity in terrorism charges.
Thank you for affording me the opportunity to discuss these
important concrete steps that the Federal Government and
Congress must undertake in order to effectively confront and
defeat the ongoing threat posed by violent White supremacy. I
look forward to any questions the subcommittee may have.
Mr. Raskin. Ms. Steele, thank you very much.
Mr. Bensman, you're recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF TODD BENSMAN, FORMER MANAGER, COUNTERTERRORISM
UNTI, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERTERRORISM DIVISION, ON BEHALF OF
THETEXAS DEPARTMENT OF SAFETY
Mr. Bensman. Chairman Raskin, Ranking Member Roy, and
subcommittee members, thank you for inviting me to discuss this
important issue.
I served in the Texas Department of Public Safety's
Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division for a decade
countering domestic extremism. I helped build and manage a
counterterrorism unit of intelligence analysts for one of the
country's most muscular fusion centers, the Joint Crime
Information Center in Austin. We worked as one team with the
FBI, DHS Intelligence and Analysis officers, and many other
Federal agencies.
Texas certainly has its share of racially motivated
extremists, and we worked hard to learn their criminal
intentions. Neither FBI nor DPS ever dismissed the domestic
extremist threat or violent White supremacists, as some have
suggested, but faced them at every turn during my decade-long
experience. I personally ensured that analysts were always
dedicated to this threat.
We worked hand-in-glove with the FBI's five joint terrorism
task forces in Texas, each of which maintained its own domestic
terrorism squad. For an idea of how closely we worked, Texas
DPS investigators were assigned to all five JTTFs, usually to
the domestic terrorism squads. Information flowed both ways in
our system.
What I can tell you from my experience is that our
collaborative arrangements remained in place after the 2016
election. At the line level, we created intelligence, passed
information to the FBI on their e-Guardian system or in person,
and filled the requests for their case needs. Good things
happened as a result.
For a number of years after 2010, DHS Intelligence and
Analysis was not as helpful due to an order under Secretary
Napolitano for the domestic threats group to stand down
research and analysis. This was due to controversy over a
leaked 2009 paper that returning military veterans might join
extremist groups. In recent years, however, DHS I&A did begin
to provide value.
The number of racially motivated criminal events is now
higher than in the past. A pivot is necessary to reverse the
trend. But any effort must account for the fact that not all
dangerous domestic extremists are motivated by racist or
religious animus. In Texas, antigovernment extremists, not
animated by racism, threaten public safety, too.
As evidenced by Black nationalist extremists, in one term,
who have murdered and wounded 25 police officers since 2016,
including five in one horrific Dallas ambush, it would be a
mistake not to recognize this fact.
We certainly worked on cases involving racial motivations,
though, like the Atomwaffen Division. These are neo-Nazis who
think violence will ignite a race war to establish national
socialism in the United States. Some have been implicated in
murders, building a dirty bomb, and wanting to destroy
infrastructure, and some of that group's national leaders are
based in Texas.
We worked on others not squarely in the White supremacist
rubric, such as the sovereign citizen movement, which features
antigovernment, antitax extremists who largely reject
government authority.
Antigovernment militias. Texas residents have been linked
with antiFederalists who carried out the 2014 Bundy Ranch
standoff in Nevada and the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge standoff in Oregon.
Anarchist extremists, sometimes known as the Antifa
movement. From November 2016 through the spring of 2017, masked
anarchist extremists continually assaulted DPS troopers and
peaceful demonstrators at the Texas State Capitol, harassed
businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods, trained in live-fire
military assault tactics, appear on terror watch lists, and
some are currently fighting with communist Kurdish groups in
Iraq.
As FBI pivots to meet upcycling domestic extremism, it
should be remembered that a national fusion center
infrastructure with well-oiled collaborative practices was put
in place as a result of 9/11.
I recommend that the homeland security enterprise mobilize
the Nation's 78 fusion centers to focus them on increased
support to FBI JTTFs on this problem set.
Conduct a national risk assessment of bias-motivated
criminality to build knowledge of the problem set.
Require police agencies to report bias crimes to the FBI's
Unified Crime Report system. It's voluntary right now, and
reporting is not reliable enough to be effective.
Require military services to collect and share disciplinary
case information and suspicious behaviors as a potential early
warning. Service is a common background for certain extremists.
And with that, I'll yield and be available for questioning.
Thank you.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Bensman, thank you very much for your
testimony.
I'm going to go to Mr. Roy first for the first round of
questions.
Oh, fair enough. Then I will start them with Ms. Kelly.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to go to the area of education and schools.
The FBI found 10.5 percent of all hate crimes in 2017
occurred at schools or colleges. According to the Chronicle of
Higher Education's examination of data from the Department of
Education, hate incident crimes on college campuses increased
by 25 percent from 2015 to 2016 and incidents of hate are still
on the rise, as I think you have said.
Ms. Steele, in your written testimony you mentioned that
the Department of Education must be a part of the conversation
to prevent the rise of violent White supremacy. What role
should the Department of Education play in addressing this
threat?
Ms. Steele. Thank you for that question.
I agree, as I said in my testimony, that the Department of
Education should absolutely play a role in developing a
comprehensive strategy as well as implementation plan. They
played a role on the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force
that now exists in name only but that it was my pleasure to be
deputy director of.
Their role is----
Ms. Kelly. So they dismantled the task force?
Ms. Steele. The task force was not dismantled, but it no
longer has dedicated personnel, it no longer has full-time
personnel serving on the task force.
Ms. Kelly. Might as well be dismantled. Okay.
Ms. Steele. So the role of the Department of Education is
in advising on policies in providing support to--oftentimes
teachers, administrators are asking for guidance on what to do.
They issued guidance in the face of bullying incidents on
campus, for example.
And so to provide that support to the educators around this
country who are looking for guidance on how to respond to this
growing threat, not just on college campuses, but on high
school campuses as well.
Ms. Kelly. Sounds like more needs to be done in that arena.
You also wrote that the Department of Health and Human
Services should be working to counter violent White supremacy.
Again, what role should HHS play in addressing this threat? To
your knowledge, what are they doing?
Ms. Steele. Yes. So the Department of Health and Human
Services was also a member of the Countering Violent Extremism
Task Force. Some of the most helpful programs out of the
Department of Health and Human Services come from the Center
for Disease Control, which takes a public health approach to
violence prevention. And so their literature has been very
helpful in informing. We see common risk factors across
targeted violence, violent White supremacy, and other forms of
violence that the Center for Disease Control already works to
prevent. So guidance on public health approaches to violence
prevention.
Ms. Kelly. And let's move to the Department of Labor. What
role should they play, and what role are they playing?
Ms. Steele. So the Department of Labor also sat on the
Countering Violent Extremism Task Force. You're seeing a theme
here.
Ms. Kelly. Yes, I am.
Ms. Steele. And their role historically, for example, when
there was employment programs, summer internship programs that
the Department of Labor was rolling out that could be part of a
holistic wraparound service approach to prevention, I made sure
that United States Attorneys were aware of those programs in
their districts that again could be leveraged for preventative
approaches to violence generally.
Ms. Kelly. So it doesn't sound like anyone is doing much
now, from what you're reporting. I know you all sat on
something, but that's not functioning anymore.
Ms. Steele. I left the Department in January and left the
Countering Violent Extremism Task Force in 2017, so I can't
speak to current affairs.
Ms. Kelly. So what should Congress do to make sure the
Departments of Education and Labor and HHS are doing their
part?
Ms. Steele. I think we need to start with a strategy and an
implementation plan that clearly spells out the roles for each
department and agency. We also need to be mindful of not
creating unfunded mandates, that any responsibilities assigned
to these departments and agencies also come with associated
funding so that they can be faithfully executed.
Ms. Kelly. So just ending, you do believe that there's a
role for agencies outside of law enforcement, that it really,
as they say, is going to take a village?
Ms. Steele. Absolutely. I think it's essential.
Ms. Kelly. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much.
I yield to myself for five minutes.
Mr. McAleer, let me ask you. We spend billions of dollars
in counterterror operations around the world, military and
intelligence operations. If you had a billion dollars to try to
deal with the threat of terror in America, violent White
supremacy, domestic terror, what would you do with it?
Mr. McAleer. That's a great question.
I think, you know, we have to recognize that this is a
whole-of-society problem that requires a whole-of-society
solution. And I think I would be begin to empower local
communities that are trying to grapple with this problem. That
includes helping law enforcement, mental health, social
services, and those type of things to understand and recognize
what the problem is and to be able to interface with it better,
primarily in the precriminal space.
I think that's where the real work of prevention is done.
That's where Life After Hate works. But I know that there is a
large number of communities that just lack the resources to be
able to respond in an effective way.
Mr. Raskin. So would the investment be generally of the
kinds of things that bolster communities, like job training and
education and after-school work and mental health counseling
and helping young people who are alienated or marginal, or
would it explicitly try to address the ideologies of the group?
I mean, are we learning from you that the ideology is
really secondary to just sort of the sense of social isolation
and marginalization that certain young people are experiencing
and therefore makes them vulnerable and susceptible to these
kind of groups?
Mr. McAleer. In Life After Hate's experience, when we peel
away the labels, we find vulnerable human beings. And they are
human beings. And when we're talking about, you know, hate
crimes that are happening in schools, we're talking about
children, too. And I think we just--we really need to take a
comprehensive approach to address those things in an effective
way.
Mr. Raskin. And can you give us one good example of
somebody who actually was in one of the groups, was committed
to violent White supremacy, hurt people, but got out?
And, I mean, in other words, is there some reason to hope
that the people who are in it can come through it?
Mr. McAleer. Absolutely. And I would use myself as that
example. I spent 15 years in the White supremacist movement. I
was a skinhead. I was a neo-Nazi. I eventually moved to a suit
and tie and was involved in the White Aryan Resistance.
And I committed a lot of violence, a lot of violence that I
have a lot of shame for, a lot of healthy shame. And part of
this work that I do is the accountability, the holding myself
accountable for the horrible deeds that I've done.
But it was other people that reached out that gave me a way
back in. And I think we have to keep the door open. As much as
it's important to call people out when they're doing this
stuff, we also must be in a position to call people in.
Mr. Raskin. So the position you take now is that it's
important to have muscular, strong law enforcement efforts to
counter the violence that is happening at the same time that
you try to remember the humanity of the people who are in
there, that they were vulnerable, impressionable young people
who got pulled into it, and to try to find a pathway out to
them?
Mr. McAleer. Yes. We're not saying we are the only solution
to this. We are part of a much greater holistic solution.
And I think compassion is an extremely powerful tool, but
it has to be married with healthy boundaries and consequences,
and that's kind of the role of law enforcement. We have to have
both together, otherwise it's an invitation for further abuse.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Ms. Brooks, then let me turn to you and
ask the same question. I mean, if you had, you know, a big sum
of money to try to spend to really make progress on this so we
don't see any repeat of Tree of Life or the Mother Emanuel
Church or any of these episodes of explosions of gun violence
with a White supremacist motivation behind it, what would you
do?
Ms. Brooks. Thank you.
I think that I agree with my fellow panelists, is that we
need wraparound services. And I guess I would point out that it
is in some cases, in some instances, vulnerable populations,
people who are living on the margins. But I'd also point out
that, especially as it relates to White nationalists, who call
themselves alt-right or whatever on college campuses, these are
well-to-do young men in their thirties. So some people are
purposely joining that movement.
And so I'm just reminded of the conversation that you all
were having in the earlier panel, and I was just struck by
people's hesitancy to talk about whiteness and race. And if we
don't have those kinds of conversations, then we won't address
the problem fully.
The fact of the matter is, is that what animates it most,
this fear of a White genocide, this lie of a White genocide, is
the demographic shifts.
And so I have worked with, you know, young White kids who
have no one to talk to, you know, about what it means to be
White and what it means to be becoming a minority in their own
country.
And this is a real issue. But if we're not talking about
race explicitly, then we can't get to it, right?
So I think that it's very important for us to acknowledge
that education around diversity, equity, and inclusion,
including kind of a very intentional race equity lens, that
this happens at the elementary school level, this happens K
through 12.
I have had occasion to work with many college-age students
who are literally lost on college campuses. And this is why you
see a lot of pushback and alt-right presence on college
campuses, because these young White men feel like they're not a
part of it, you know, they're not a part of the diversity on
campus and then they break up into their own little group.
And these things are real. So if we don't address them in a
more holistic fashion, we'll just continue down this path.
Mr. Raskin. And I want to thank you for making that very
powerful point. It's important that we wrestle with that
serious issue, but also, as you observe, take care to notice
that there are real racist movements around the world,
especially in Europe where they have political presence and
influence.
And so, you know, maybe we can prevent some young people
from losing their lives in this way. But we also have to
confront it at the level of politics and ideology.
Ms. Brooks. If I could just add, I would add literacy
around kind of the use of the internet, and we just need to
educate young people from an early age on how to use that as a
tool.
Mr. Raskin. Okay. Very good.
I am coming to Ms. Pressley for five minutes.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you to all of our witnesses. You reiterate and
remind us that hate begets hate and violence begets violence,
and there's just far too much of it in the world. And the more
silent we are about it, the more complicit we are in it. And so
we can't work on it if we can't talk about it. So thank you all
for being here.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing on
this important subject, to discuss the unique perspectives on
the growing dangers of White terrorism.
Ms. Brooks, according to your organization's website, there
are more than 1,000 terrorist groups operating across the
United States. I represent the Massachusetts Seventh. In the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2018, there were 14 terrorist
groups.
Can you just speak to, you know, how these trends have
changed in recent years and why?
Ms. Brooks. Thank you, Congresswoman.
The trends have been going up since the year 2000. We've
marked about a 52 percent increase in the number of active hate
groups in the United States since 2000 to 2018. Over the last
couple of years, I would say it's been about a five to six
percent increase.
I think it's important for us that are convened today to
note that there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of
White nationalist hate groups. And it's important to note that,
as someone mentioned earlier, we note an increase in hate
groups, but we also note an increase in activity by
individuals.
So, again, going back to the internet and how these
messages of hate are spread, they're not solely confined to
just groups. But I would say in answer to your question, that
it's been on the increase since 2014 at least.
Ms. Pressley. Okay. All right.
And then just picking up on Congresswoman Kelly's line of
questioning around schools. Ms. Brooks, your organization
recently released a report entitled ``Hate at School,'' which
exposed the surge of racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and
Islamophobic incidents taking place across our Nation's schools
following the 2016 election.
Mr. Chairman, I would actually like to request unanimous
consent to have this report included in the record.
Mr. Raskin. Without objection.
Ms. Pressley. The report links this phenomenon to a quote/
unquote, Trump effect. Can you explain this Trump effect and
the impact it has had both on children and educators at schools
across our country?
Ms. Brooks. Thank you so much.
As we all know, the 2016 Presidential campaign was ugly. It
was just ugly. The rhetoric that went out from then-candidate
Trump was echoed in our Nation's schools. And that's just a
fact. Our research just bears it out.
So on the Presidential campaign trail, when things are said
about immigrants--and I believe candidate--I know candidate
Trump entered the campaign vilifying immigrants, and Mexicans
in particular. And so the language and the rhetoric that's used
in the public square was then echoed on school campuses.
Teachers reported to us, and we must have researched about
10,000 teachers at least that reported to us, without
attribution to any candidate, that they had never seen anything
like it before. So there's an increase in anti-immigrant
rhetoric, there's an increase anti-Muslim rhetoric, there's an
increase in anti-LGBT.
And as my colleague said, schools--and I'm a former fifth
grade teacher--schools have done a lot to push back against
bullying and harassment on school campuses, but it just all
flipped during the Presidential campaign. And teachers, as I
say, didn't know how to handle it because they didn't want to
offend the parents.
So we see this trend kind of--well, continuing. The
Southern Poverty Law Center, through our Teaching Tolerance
program, sent out resources that would help teachers address
hate and bias on campus. So we always want to be able to help
educate teachers and make a safe place, create a safe place for
students.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you. Thank you for that research and
also for that resource.
And just before my time ends, Ms. Brooks, in your opinion,
how might designations like Black identity extremism reinforce
racial stereotypes and perpetuate racial tensions?
Ms. Brooks. A few months into the President's
administration then Attorney General Sessions--who, as you
know, was the Senator in Alabama--identifies as the biggest
threat to our country domestically was Black identity
extremists.
The research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, ADL, any
other group that maintains records and keeps up with and tracks
and monitors hate and extremism, will tell you that that's just
not true. There is no organized threat from Black extremists or
Black identity groups or anything of the sort.
The reference that the panelist made to the murders in
Texas, the Southern Poverty Law Center tags that ideology to
sovereign citizens. It's interesting that when a Black person
is the perpetrator, then they automatically become a Black
identity extremist and not allowed to hold a sovereign citizen
identity as if it were a White person.
So a White person that is tagged with sovereign citizen
ideology gets to remain just that. They don't then become a
White supremacist. Do you know what I mean?
Ms. Pressley. I do.
Ms. Brooks. So I think it's unfortunate. We've tried to
push back against it. The Southern Poverty Law Center two years
ago on our website wanted to be clear that the Black Lives
Matter movement was not--we did not identify Black Lives Matter
as a hate group, and we were not--our information about Black
extremist groups--because we do identify Black nationalists
groups, we do--that they were not to be confused or conflated
with the FBI's list at all.
Ms. Pressley. Thank you for clarifying.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you so much, Ms. Pressley.
And, Ms. Tlaib, you're recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So, Ms. Brooks, thank you.
And thank you all so much for being here.
I got a little text message from my staff: ``Ms. Brooks
speaks to my soul.'' So it's just appreciated what you were
talking about in regards--probably some people know who that
was.
The one thing that I heard from the previous panel, Ms.
Brooks, is they talked about--one of my colleagues brought up
the whole ideology. And then someone from Homeland Security
said, well, there's five components to so-called terrorism and
ideology is only one part of that.
Do you know what the other four--like how do they come and
decide, okay, this is a group that we need to maybe put on a
list or target or so forth?
Ms. Brooks. I have no idea what they do. I can tell you
what we do.
Ideology drives or animates participation in the movement,
right? People are not--they don't--they don't align themselves
with the alt-right movement, say, for example, unless they
adopt a White nationalist or White supremacist ideology.
So to adopt that ideology kind of brings you down a rabbit
hole of extremism that, as Tony mentioned, can lead to real
violence.
And I want to point out that I just think it's important to
speak to the truth of what happens to individuals, because if
we don't they will end up creating--acting out violent racial--
they'll act out, you know, violently. Sorry.
I just feel so strongly about it. You can't erase the
ideology from who these folks are. They wouldn't be involved in
any of this.
I mean, it's easy for us to assign ideology across the
groups. And I'll just bring it up again in terms of people of
color. But when it comes to saying that some young White men
adopt a White supremacist ideology, we seem to want to stop.
And I don't do it to attack White men. I do it because I
want to help them. This is what they are believing, this is
what they are fed, and this is what is animating their actions.
And if we don't recognize it, we cannot help them.
Ms. Tlaib. Thank you so much.
And, Mr. McAleer, I really appreciate your courage in
coming forward. And just a tremendous amount of respect for you
to do that.
And I love what you talked about regarding compassion. You
talk about leading with compassion. Even as a Member of
Congress, always approaching people, many--I mean, I want to
say I think close to 60 percent of Americans have never met a
person of Muslim faith before. And so just kind of coming from
that school of thought and, again, leading with compassion.
I'm just curious--and you don't have to share, you know,
this is a public setting--but when was that moment, when was
the moment where you said, ``I have to change''?
Mr. McAleer. It was a moment that started a process. So it
wasn't a moment where it all happened. But it started in the
delivery room with the birth of my daughter. And I had a son 15
months later. And at that point in my life, at that point in
the movement, I was completely disconnected from who I came
into the world to be as little Tony, right? And I had become
numbed.
And with children, it is--they're infectious. You know,
they're----
Ms. Tlaib. You become so much more focused.
Mr. McAleer. Yes. But it's also safe to love a child,
right?
Ms. Tlaib. That's right.
Mr. McAleer. The reason we shut down and the reason, you
know, we get disconnected is because we learn somewhere along
our lives that it's not safe to be open. And they provided a
place, a safe place for me to be able to thaw and allow my
heart--to become connected to my heart again.
Ms. Tlaib. That's very beautiful. Thank you so much for
providing that.
And, Mr. Bensman, I'm so glad you mentioned this in your
testimony about there's these groups that are just
antigovernment. You know, I see that as antidemocracy, you
know, trying to push forward and not wanting everyone to be
able to participate.
And one of the things that I'm worried about, though, is
when you do that there are people that are expressing their
First Amendment right of freedom of speech and wanting to,
``Look, I don't like this form of government.''
But when do you decide when it turns into more of a--does
it turn into some sort of type of like hate versus--because I
know people that are like, ``I don't want to vote, I don't want
to participate, I think this whole system is, whatever, broken,
whatever.'' I mean, I've participated in actual college campus,
like, protests, where it's like, ``Not until we're all truly
free will I''--you know.
When do you decide when antigovernment kind of groups are
past that line and lead into some sort of violent group? Just
curious.
Mr. Bensman. Sure. Well, to start with, just coming from a
purely law enforcement perspective, one of the other earlier
panelists made this point, that protected speech includes hate
speech. So speech--and speech that references a desire to
change the government. So hate speech is protected speech.
But from a law enforcement perspective, we are governed by
Federal rules and our own internal policy, 28 CFR Part 23. I
don't know if you've heard that. But that restricts us from
monitoring groups without criminal predicate. So we are very
limited in what we can do in terms of even opening up a
Facebook page, okay?
So what we look for from law enforcement is some sort of
predicate that looks like--that would rise to reasonable
suspicion that a crime is about to occur or has occurred. And
at that point, we can get involved. So it has to cross a line
of criminality.
So if we're looking at somebody who is saying something
like--I think you were reading from your--an email. I didn't
hear the predicate in that. If the email would have said, ``I
am going to kill you tomorrow at noon,'' then of course
everybody would be--you know, you'd have SWAT teams on that
guy's house. It would be something like that. But if they just
sort of generally say that----
Ms. Tlaib. Like ``I want New Zealand to happen here.''
Mr. Bensman. Okay. Well, you know, that is expressing a
general aspiration----
Ms. Tlaib. To kill Muslims.
Mr. Bensman. Right. But what law enforcement is looking for
in that circumstance is, ``I'm going to do it and everybody
else should do it'' on this such-and-such a date.
Now, we saw that sort of thing ahead of the Garland terror
attack a few years ago when the two guys drove from Phoenix to
Garland, Texas, to attack the draw the Muhammad cartoon. There
were a lot of social media postings that were very specific
about murder, and it was inciting violence. And you can't
incite violence. That would cross the predicate line there.
So that's kind of--I don't know if that gets at the answer,
but that's how we look at it. You have to cross that line.
Mr. Raskin. Great. The gentlelady's time has expired. Yield
back.
And thank you for that explication of the constitutional
standard, too, which is the Brandenburg standard of specific
incitement to imminent lawless action. And I think that's what
law enforcement does.
Mr. Roy, I will recognize you for the final five minutes.
Thank you for your patience.
Mr. Roy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it, and
appreciate the questions here today.
And thank you all for your patience. It's been a long
afternoon with two panels and for your commitment to public
service and in whatever walk of life you each are in. So I
appreciate it.
A couple of quick questions. Mr. Bensman, you conveyed some
information about some of the--and I alluded to it in my
opening statement earlier on about some of the cases the FBI
has dealt with in Texas. And I think you shared some
information. I just wanted to see if you could expand on that
just a little bit because one of the things that I want to make
clear today is--and I think everybody is in agreement here,
right? But I just want to make sure it's clear that there are
issues here we're trying to address and figure out. And I think
everybody has been consistent in that point, in trying to
figure out how we can pivot from a focus on one particular kind
of terrorist threat and then, you know, use resources, to
allocate them and deal with the different threats, and all of
that's ongoing, but that our law enforcement communities are
working within the resources they have to go stop a lot of bad
actors, right? And can you just go into just maybe 30 seconds
or a minute and kind of summarize just a few of the ones that I
know you're aware of in Texas.
Mr. Bensman. Sure. There's one that just wrapped up
recently. That's the case, a former Texas State University
student. I think you mentioned that earlier. This is a young
man who made online postings, messaging that he wanted to
commit mass murder and kill minorities. That individual also
had some other crime problems, so they used that to get him off
the street right away. But he has pled guilty. That's Benjamin
Bogard of New Braunfels.
Then we had a student, a DACA recipient, who made threats
against--to kill ICE agents. He is now deported into Mexico. He
chose deportation rather than standing trial.
We've had a number of I would say sovereign citizen cases.
We've got sovereigns all over Texas of different varieties. Two
members that are living in a compound in central Texas. I think
that case may be going on, so I can't talk too much about it.
But some of it broke into the public record, and there are
police reports that they committed armed robbery of a jewelry
store in furtherance of their ideology and their enterprise.
Mr. Roy. Let me ask you one question: In your experience as
a law enforcement--in law enforcement, resources are always an
issue, right? I mean, in terms of trying to figure out how we
go after bad actors. In other words, there's more than enough
to go around, right? And we're just constantly trying to go
figure out how to stop bad actors, you know, ahead of time and/
or deal with a crime after the crime has been committed.
So, really, this is extraordinarily a resource allocation
between Federal, state, and local. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Bensman. Absolutely.
Mr. Roy. And so, without objection, I'm going to introduce
into the record a detailed description of the various cases
that Mr. Bensman alluded to.
Mr. Raskin. Without objection.
Mr. Roy. The one thing I'll end with, and I want to make
this a positive, not a negative, because we're wrapping up the
day, and it's been a long day, and I appreciate everybody's
time, but I do think it's important, is something, Ms. Brooks,
you alluded to that caught my ear, and that is the question
about demonizing immigrants, for example. Because this gets to
the heart of, for me, when you get into hate speech and when
you get into what people are kind of, you know, impugning
somebody's motives about what they may be saying or not saying.
Without getting into the specifics of what you allege the
President did something along those lines and without getting
into that game or identifying specific, you know, tweets or
statements or anything like that, I've been a fairly outspoken
critic of our current immigration policy and border policy.
And I think my question is, is, what is the line, right?
Because, you know, when someone says that we're, you know,
demonizing immigrants is that, you know, too often I find that
people are saying you're demonizing immigrants simply because
you believe the border laws ought to be enforced, right, that
you believe that that's actually better for migrants seeking to
come here so they're not being held in stash houses in Houston,
so they're not being abused by cartels, there's not little
girls getting abused on the journey through Mexico, so cartels
aren't making $2 billion dollars like they did in 2018, and
that if you're standing up and saying, ``I think the border
ought to be secure, it's better for our country, it's better
for migrants,'' that somehow that's demonizing immigrants,
right?
And then how does that then translate to what we're talking
about in terms of hate, which I think gets to the heart of, you
know, from a civil libertarian standpoint and not wanting to
have the government, you know, policing every statement you
make? So my question is, is what would constitute demonizing
immigrants relative to saying, I just want a secure border?
Ms. Brooks. That's fine. I believe that we need to have a
conversation about comprehensive immigration reform. I don't
want people, you know, sleeping under a bridge on the border
either. I think when you call people subhuman, when you refer--
when you lose your humanity for a person, when you start
identifying them as just--as drug dealers, when you don't see
people as people or just calling them out of their name, that's
just not necessary.
It's not necessary at all to have--to engage in
intellectual discourse about immigration in our country. We
don't have to resort to name calling. And it has an effect,
sir, it does, because, as I mentioned, children will pick that
up, and then the next thing you know there's bullying that's
happening on school campuses. And hate incidents do lead to
hate crimes, they just do.
Mr. Roy. Well, my only point--and I'm over my five minutes,
and I do want to wrap it up. I would say this, is that it is
also true that the Southern Poverty Law Center has suggested
that CIS, which Mr. Bensman works, is a hate group. And I know
Mark and I know Todd and I know some of the folks there who are
trying to fight for a secure border.
I would suggest to you that that designation heightens the
tension quite a bit about groups that are trying to I think
work hard to come to a consensus on what a strong secure border
is.
I yield back.
Ms. Brooks. Understood. We can all do better. Thank you,
sir.
Mr. Raskin. Well, I want to thank all four of you for your
superb presentations and for a very civil, productive, and
enlightening exchange of views and ideas today. And we will
collect everything that we did in this set of hearings and move
forward in the legislative process with it. And so I want to
thank all of you guys for being part of this.
And, Mr. Roy, I want to thank you for holding up that side
of the dais and Ms. Tlaib for joining us, even though you're
just a member of the general Oversight Committee, being part of
the subcommittee today. Thank you all for coming.
The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]