EXCLUSIVE 'Homeland Security' Ignores White Terror, DHS Veterans Say

[DonViejo]

Source: The Daily Beast



As far-right terror attacks mount, DHS is concentrating on a migrant caravan 1000+ miles away—and some FBI veterans say the bureau isn't taking white supremacy seriously enough.

Betsy Woodruff, Spencer Ackerman
10.31.18 1:30 PM ET

On Tuesday, just days after a white supremacist gunned down 11 people at a synagogue and just a week after a terrorist mailed more than a dozen bombs to critics of the president, the Department of Homeland Security—created after 9/11 to protect the United States from terrorism—had a conference call. Attendees were on the department’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, a group of more than two dozen former government officials and insiders who help guide the Department on its thorniest challenges.

The topic: a group of Central American migrants slowly wending their way through Mexico in hopes of seeking asylum in the United States. Some participants were flummoxed: In the face of the most lethal anti-semitic terror attack in American history, was DHS really focused, exclusively, on migrants?

“In the world of homeland security, the common practice is to focus on those threats that present the greatest risk,” said John Cohen, a Rutgers professor and former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security focused on counterterror. “So it’s disconcerting that in a call with national law enforcement and homeland security experts, the focus would be on the caravan versus the increasing number of mass casualty attacks the country’s experiencing, including by white extremists.”

It underscored a weakness at the center of U.S. national security. As the country reels from the latest spate of white supremacist murder, nine law-enforcement veterans say that combating violent white supremacy simply isn’t a top focus for the federal agencies mandated to protect Americans from terrorism.


Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/homeland-security-ignores-white-terror-dhs-veterans-say?ref=home

[guillaumeb]

1. The words "white terror" result in cognitive dissonance for conservatives.

To the right, terror is what their enemies engage in. Their own violence is purely defensive.

[PatrickforO]

2. This is a very close parallel to Weimar Germany

After leading the Beerhall Putsch in the 1920s, Hitler was given a light sentence is a low security facility. Numerous historians I've read have commented that the German justice system of this era tended to wink and look the other way at right wing violence, but react bloodily to anything on the left.

The thing about the right wing terrorists is they are white, which doesn't scare law enforcement people as much. Give 'em brown skin, though, and security is all over them.

Pretty sad what this country has come to. Makes you want to weep. Because, you know, we're headed toward war, because that's the way fascist governments roll. So, either we come awake and drive these racists back under their slimy rocks, or in maybe a decade, those allied against us will pick their way through our irradiated ruins and capture these 'conservatives' so they can be held accountable at an international tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Seriously.

And the rest of us will be forcibly dragged to the internment camps to view the bloody remains of those who came here seeking asylum, while the victors destroy all vestiges of Trump and his party. We will have a period of de-Trumpification, after which we will begin to rebuild.

These people are slime.

[ck4829]

3. K&R

[Amaryllis]

4. THey have to be brown for it to qualify as terror.

[BlueWI]

5. It's good to see this problem observed.

I don't know who has the stature and willingness to directly confront the agency and demand a change, other than citizens.

[paleotn]

6. Oh, that's just wonderful...

Because DHS is taking it's eye off the ball, we could end up with another Oklahoma City.

[sarcasmo]

7. Homeland Security ignores the biggest problem. FUBAR