Defending Torture, Bombing Iran (Video): Dick Cheney on Fox News Sunday (30 August)

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney — 7 More Points to Note
Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney

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Apologies for not mincing words, but the US in the midst of a sustained public-relations effort to whitewash the torture stain of the Bush Administration by 1) arguing that it wasn't torture and 2) if it was, it helped win the War on Terror. After the release this week of the damning 2004 CIA internal report on the Administration's authorisation of torture and its ineffectiveness, Dick Cheney has been at the front of the campaign to save his legacy, if not America's standing in the world. Fox News set him with the softball questions this morning.

(An important side note for Iran-watchers. Check out the passage late in the transcript where Cheney comes out as a strong supporter of an airstrike on Iran in 2007-8):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CfFiBy8jLM[/youtube]

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: Mr. Vice President, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday."

RICHARD CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's good to be back, Chris.

WALLACE: This is your first interview since Attorney General Holder named a prosecutor to investigate possible CIA abuses of terror detainees.

What do you think of that decision?

CHENEY: I think it's a terrible decision. President Obama made the announcement some weeks ago that this would not happen, that his administration would not go back and look at or try to prosecute CIA personnel. And the effort now is based upon the inspector general's report that was sent to the Justice Department five years ago, was completely reviewed by the Justice Department in years past.

They made decisions about whether or not there was any prosecutable offense there. They found one. It did not involve CIA personnel, it involved contract personnel. That individual was sentenced and is doing time. The matter's been dealt with the way you would expect it to be dealt with by professionals.

Now we've got a political appointee coming back, and supposedly without the approval of the president, going to do a complete review, or another complete investigation, possible prosecution of CIA personnel. We could talk the whole program about the negative consequences of that, about the terrible precedent it sets, to have agents involved, CIA personnel involved, in a difficult program that's approved by the Justice Department, approved by the National Security Council, and the Bush administration, and then when a new administration comes in, it becomes political.

They may find themselves dragged up before a grand jury, have to hire attorneys on their own because the Justice Department won't provide them with counsel.

It's a terrible, terrible precedent.

WALLACE: There are a lot of aspects that you just raised. Let me review some of them.
Why are you so concerned about the idea of one administration reviewing, investigating the actions of another one?

CHENEY: Well, you think, for example, in the intelligence arena. We ask those people to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the -- in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the next administration, nobody's going to sign up for those kinds of missions.

It's a very, very devastating, I think, effect that it has on morale inside the intelligence community. If they assume that they're going to have to be dealing with the political consequences -- and it's clearly a political move. I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this -- then they'll be very reluctant in the future to do that.

WALLACE: Do you think this was a political move not a law enforcement move?

CHENEY: Absolutely. I think the fact is, the Justice Department has already reviewed the inspector general's report five years ago. And now they're dragging it back up again, and Holder is going to go back and review it again, supposedly, to try to find some evidence of wrongdoing by CIA personnel.

In other words, you know, a review is never going to be final anymore now. We can have somebody, some future administration, come along 10 years from now, 15 years from now, and go back and rehash all of these decisions by an earlier administration.

WALLACE: Let me follow up on that. The attorney general says this is a preliminary review, not a criminal investigation. It is just about CIA officers who went beyond their legal authorization. Why don't you think it's going to stop there?

CHENEY: I don't believe it. We had the president of the United States, President Obama, tell us a few months ago there wouldn't be any investigation like this, that there would not be any look back at CIA personnel who were carrying out the policies of the prior administration. Now they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party, and they're reversing course on that.

The president is the chief law enforcement officer in the administration. He's now saying, well, this isn't anything that he's got anything to do with. He's up on vacation on Martha's Vineyard and his attorney general is going back and doing something that the president said some months ago he wouldn't do.

WALLACE: But when you say it's not going to stop there, you don't believe it's going to stop there, do you think this will become an investigation into the Bush lawyers who authorized the activity into the top policymakers who were involved in the decision to happen, an enhanced interrogation program?

CHENEY: Well, I have no idea whether it will or not, but it shouldn't.

The fact of the matter is the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave us those opinions had every right to give us the opinions they did. Now you get a new administration and they say, well, we didn't like those opinions, we're going to go investigate those lawyers and perhaps have them disbarred. I just think it's an outrageous precedent to set, to have this kind of, I think, intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration.

I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, how did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?

Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions, threatening contrary to what the president originally said. They're going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations. I just think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage long term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say.

WALLACE: If the prosecutor asks to speak to you, will you speak to him?

CHENEY: It will depend on the circumstances and what I think their activities are really involved in. I've been very outspoken in my views on this matter. I've been very forthright publicly in talking about my involvement in these policies.

I'm very proud of what we did in terms of defending the nation for the last eight years successfully. And, you know, it won't take a prosecutor to find out what I think. I've already expressed those views rather forthrightly.

WALLACE: Let me ask you -- you say you're proud of what we did. The inspector general's report which was just released from 2004 details some specific interrogations -- mock executions, one of the detainees threatened with a handgun and with an electric drill, waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times.

First of all, did you know that was going on?

CHENEY: I knew about the waterboarding. Not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved.

The fact of the matter is, the Justice Department reviewed all of those allegations several years ago. They looked at this question of whether or not somebody had an electric drill in an interrogation session. It was never used on the individual, or that they had brought in a weapon, never used on the individual. The judgment was made then that there wasn't anything there that was improper or illegal with respect to conduct in question...

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Do you think what they did, now that you've heard about it, do you think what they did was wrong?

CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States, and giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. Those interrogations were involved in the arrest of nearly all the Al Qaeda members that we were able to bring to justice. I think they were directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States.

It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?

CHENEY: I am.

WALLACE: One specific question about Holder, the Obama administration -- you put out the statement saying that you were upset that President Obama allowed the attorney general to bring these cases. A top Obama official says, hey, maybe in the Bush White House they told the attorney general what to do, but Eric Holder makes independent decisions.

CHENEY: Well, I think if you look at the Constitution, the president of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. The attorney general's a statutory officer. He's a member of the cabinet.

The president's the one who bears this responsibility. And for him to say, gee, I didn't have anything to do with it, especially after he sat in the Oval Office and said this wouldn't happen, then Holder decides he's going to do it. So now he's backed off and is claiming he's not responsible.

I just, I think he's trying to duck the responsibility for what's going on here. And I think it's wrong.
WALLACE: President Obama has also decided to move interrogations from the CIA to the FBI that's under the supervision of the National Security Council, and the FBI will have to act within the boundaries of the Army Field Manual.

What do you think that does for the nation's security? And will we now have the tools if we catch another high-value target?

CHENEY: I think the move to set up this -- what is it called, the HIG Group?

WALLACE: Yes.

CHENEY: It's not even clear who's responsible. The Justice Department is, then they claim they aren't. The FBI is responsible and they claim they aren't. It's some kind of interagency process by which they're going to be responsible for interrogating high-value detainees.

If we had tried to do that back in the aftermath of 9/11, when we captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, we'd have gotten no place. I think it moves very much in the direction of going back to the old way of looking at these terrorist attacks -- that these are law enforcement problems, that this isn't a strategic threat to the United States.

I think it's a direct slap at the CIA. I don't think it will work.

I think that if they were faced with the kind of situation we were faced with in the aftermath of 9/11, suddenly capturing people that may have knowledge about imminent attacks, and they're going to have to have meetings and decide who gets to ask what question and who's going to Mirandize the witness, I think it's silly. It makes no sense. It doesn't appear to be a serious move in terms of being able to deal with the nation's security.

WALLACE: Well, on another issue, the CIA has stopped a program to kill or capture top al Qaeda leaders, top al Qaeda terrorists. And CIA Director Panetta told lawmakers that you told the CIA not to inform Congress.

Is that true?

CHENEY: As I recall -- and frankly, this is many years ago -- but my recollection of it is, in the reporting I've seen, is that the direction was for them not to tell Congress until certain lines were passed, until the program became operational, and that it was handled appropriately.

And other directors of the CIA, including people like Mike Hayden, who was Leon Panetta's immediate predecessor, has talked about it and said that it's all you know a very shaky proposition. That it was well handled, that he was not directed not to deal with the Congress on this issue, that it's just not true.

WALLACE: The CIA released two other documents this week -- "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Preeminent Source on Al Qaeda"...

CHENEY: Right.

WALLACE: "Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al Qaeda."

While they say that the overall program got absolutely crucial information, they do not conclude whether the enhanced interrogation programs worked. They just are kind of agnostic on the issue. And then there's what President Obama calls the core issue -

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn't answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Well, these two reports are versions of the ones I asked for previously. There's actually one, "Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al Qaeda," there's another version of this that's more detailed that's not been released.

But the interesting thing about these is it shows that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah provided the overwhelming majority of reports on Al Qaeda. That they were, as it says, pivotal in the war against Al Qaeda. That both of them were uncooperative at first, that the application of enhanced interrogation techniques, specifically waterboarding, especially in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is what really persuaded him. He needed to cooperate.

I think the evidence is overwhelming that the EITs were crucial in getting them to cooperate, and that the information they provided did in fact save thousands of lives and let us defeat all further attacks against the United States.

The thing I keep coming back to time and time again, Chris, is the fact that we've gone for eight years without another attack. Now, how do you explain that?

The critics don't have any solution for that. They can criticize our policies, our way of doing business, but the results speak for themselves. And, as well as the efforts that we went to with the Justice Department and so forth to make certain what we were doing was legal, was consistent with our international treaty obligations.

WALLACE: At one point the Vice President showed us the view of majestic mountains from his back yard. I asked about the Democrats running battle with the CIA including Nancy Pelosi's charge the agency once lied to her.

Republicans have made the charge before, do you think Democrats are soft on National Security?

CHENEY: I do, I've always had the view that in recent years anyway that they didn't have as strong of advocates on National Defense or National Security as they used to have, and I worry about that, I think that things have gotten so partisan that the sort of the pro defense hawkish wing of the Democratic party has faded and isn't as strong as it once was.

WALLACE: Now that he has been in office for seven months, what do you think of Barack Obama?

CHENEY: Well, I was not a fan of his when he got elected, and my views have not changed any. I have serious doubts about his policies, serious doubts especially about the extent to which he understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation.

WALLACE: Now, he has stepped up the use of the Predator drones against Al Qaeda. He has continued rendition. Aren't there some things you support that he has done?

CHENEY: Sure, some of those things have been -- the use of the Predator drone, something we started very aggressively in the Bush Administration, marrying up the intelligence platform with weapons is something we started in August of 2001. It has been enormously successful. And they were successful the other day in killing Batula Masood [Beitullah Mehsud], which I think all of those are pluses.

But my concern is that the damage that will be done by the President of the United States going back on his word, his promise about investigations of CIA personnel who have carried those policies, is seriously going to undermine the moral, if you will, of our folks out at the agency. Just today, for example, the courts in Pakistan have ruled that A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistan nuclear weapon man who provided assistance to the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Libyans, has now been released from custody.

It is very, very important we find out and know long term what he is up to. He is, so far, the worst proliferator of nuclear technology in recent history. Now we have got agents and people out at the agency who ought to be on that case and worried about it, but they are going to have to spend time hiring lawyers at their own expense in order to defend themselves against the possibility of charges.

WALLACE: Actually, the CIA has now said that they are going to pay for the lawyers.

CHENEY: Well, that will be a new proposition. Always before, when we have had these criminal investigations, the fact is that the employees themselves had to pay for it.

WALLACE: What do you think of the debate over healthcare reform and these raucous town halls?

CHENEY: I think it is basically healthy.

WALLACE: And what do you think of the healthcare reform issue?

CHENEY: I don't -- well, it is an important issue, but I think the proposals the Administration has made are -- do not deserve to be passed. I think the fact that there is a lot of unrest out there in the country that gets expressed in these town hall meetings with folks coming and speaking out very loudly about their concerns indicates that there are major, major problems of what the administration is proposing.

WALLACE: There was a story in The Washington Post a couple of weeks ago that in the process of writing your memoir, you have told colleagues about your frustration with President Bush, especially in his, your second term. Is that true?

CHENEY: No.

WALLACE: That story was wrong.

CHENEY: Right.

WALLACE: The report says that you disagreed with the President's decision to halt water boarding, you agreed with his decision to close the secret prisons, you disagreed with his decision to reach out to Iran and North Korea. Is that true?

CHENEY: Well, we had policy differences, no question about that, but to say that I was disappointed with the President is not the way it ought to be phrased. The fact of the matter is, he encouraged me to give him my view on a whole range of issues. I did.

Sometimes he agreed. Sometimes he did not. That was true from the very beginning of the Administration.

WALLACE: Did you feel that he went soft in the second term?

CHENEY: I wouldn't say that. I think you are going to have wait and read my book, Chris, for the definitive view.

WALLACE: It sounds like you are going to say something close to that?

CHENEY: I am not going to speculate on it. I am going to write a book that lays out my view of what we did. It will also cover a lot of years before I ever went to work for George Bush.

WALLACE: Will you open up in the book about areas where you disagreed --

CHENEY: Sure.

WALLACE: -- with the president?

CHENEY: Sure.

WALLACE: There is a question I have wanted to ask you for some period of time. Why didn't your Administration take out the Iranian nuclear program, given what a threat I know you believe it was, given the fact that you knew that Barack Obama favored, not only diplomatic engagement, but actually sitting down with the Iranians, why would you leave it to him to make this decision?

CHENEY: It was not my decision to make.

WALLACE: Would you have favored military action?

CHENEY: I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues.

WALLACE: Do you think that it was a mistake, while you were in power, while your administration was in power, not to go after the nuclear infrastructure of Iran?

CHENEY: I can't say that yet. We do not know how it is ultimately going to come out.

WALLACE: But you don't get the choice to make it 20/20 hindsight.

CHENEY: Well, I --

WALLACE: In 2007, 2008, was it a mistake not to take out their program?

CHENEY: I think it was very important that the military option be on the table. I thought that negotiations could not possibly succeed unless the Iranians really believed we were prepared to use military force. And to date, of course, they are still proceeding with their nuclear program and the matter has not yet been resolved.

We can speculate about what might have happened if we had followed a different course of action. As I say I was an advocate of a more robust policy than any of my colleagues, but I didn't make the decision.

WALLACE: Including the president?

CHENEY: The president made the decision and, obviously, we pursued the diplomatic avenues.

WALLACE: Do you think it was a mistake to let the opportunity when you guys were in power, go, knowing that here was Barack Obama and he was going to take a much different --

CHENEY: I am going to -- if I address that, I will address it in my book, Chris.

WALLACE: It is going to be a hell of a book.

CHENEY: It is going to be a great book.

WALLACE: Was it a mistake for Bill Clinton, with the blessing of the Administration, to go to North Korea to bring back those two reporters?

CHENEY: Well, obviously, you are concerned for the reporters and their circumstances, but I think if we look at it from a policy standpoint, it is a big reward for bad behavior on the part of the North Korean leadership. They are testing nuclear weapons.

They have been major proliferators of nuclear weapons technology. They built a reactor in the Syrian Desert very much like their own reactor for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.They probably are the worst proliferators of nuclear technology any place in the world today.

And there ought to be a price for that. Instead, I think when the former President of the United States goes, meets with the leader and so forth, that we are rewarding their bad behavior. And I think it is a mistake.

WALLACE: You would not have done it.

CHENEY: No.

WALLACE: How concerned are you about the increase in violence in Iraq since we pulled out of the major population areas and also what do you make of the fact that the top Shiite parties have formed an alliance tilting towards Iran and leaving out Prime Minister Maliki?

CHENEY: Well, I am concerned about Iraq, obviously. I have been a strong supporter of our policies there from the very beginning. I think we made major, major efforts to take down Saddam Hussein's regime, establish a viable democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I think especially going through the surge strategy in '07 and '08, we achieved very significant results.

It is important that we not let that slip away. And we need to be concerned, I think, in these days now in the beginning of the new Administration, I would like to see them focus just as much on victory as they are focused on getting out. And I hope that they don't rush to the exit so fast, that we end up in a situation where all of those gains that were so hard won are lost.

WALLACE: Given the increase in violence, given some of these new issues, in terms of the political lay of the land, given President Obama's plan to pull all combat troops out by a year from now, the summer of 2010, how confidant are you that -- that Iraq, as a stable, moderate country, is going to make it?

CHENEY: I don't know. I don't know that anybody knows. I think it is very important that they have success from a political stand point. I think the Maliki government is doing better than it was at some points in the past. I hope that we see continued improvement in the Iraqi armed forces, security services.

But I think to have an absolute deadline by which you're going to withdraw, that's totally unconditioned to developments on the ground -- I think there's a danger there that you're going to let the drive to get out overwhelm the good sense of staying long enough to make certain the outcome is what we want.

WALLACE: Obviously, this weekend, the country is focused on the death of Ted Kennedy. What did you think of him?

CHENEY: Well, I -- personally, I liked him. In terms of policy, there's very little we agreed on. He was a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts. I was a conservative Republican from Wyoming. So there wasn't much that we had to work together on.

On the other hand, I admired the fact that he got into the arena as much as he did for most of his professional life, and was obviously a very active participant.

WALLACE: How are you adjusting to life out of power?

CHENEY: Well, this is the fourth time I've done it, Chris. So it's not my first rodeo, as we say. I'm enjoying private life. I just -- excuse me -- took my family on an Alaskan cruise for a week, all the kids and the grandkids. We've gotten to spend a great deal of time in Wyoming, which, as you can tell her in Jackson Hole, is one of the world's finer garden spots.

So I have, I think, adjusted with a minimal amount of conflict and difficulty. It's been pretty smooth.

WALLACE: What do you miss?

CHENEY: Oh, I'm a junky, I guess, all those years. I spent more than 40 years in Washington, and enjoyed, obviously, the people I worked with, wrestling with some of the problems we had to wrestle with. I enjoyed having the CIA show up on my doorstep every morning, six days a week, with the latest intelligence.

WALLACE: You miss that?

CHENEY: Sure.

WALLACE: Why?

CHENEY: Because it was fascinating. It was important stuff. It kept me plugged in with what was going on around the world. And as I say, I'm a junky from a public policy stand point. I went to Washington to stay 12 months and stayed 41 years.

I liked it. I thought it was important. And I will always be pleased that I had the opportunity to serve.

WALLACE: Do you miss having your hands on the levers of power?

CHENEY: No, I don't think of it in those terms.

WALLACE: But I mean being able to affect things. You obviously feel strongly about these issues.

CHENEY: Right.

WALLACE: Do you miss the fact that now you're just another man watching cable news?

CHENEY: No, and as I say, I've been there before. I left government after the first Nixon term and went to the private sector. I left after the Ford administration and ran for Congress. Then left after the secretary of defense and went to the private sector. So these are normal kinds of transitions that you've got to make in this business.

What I've always found is that there are compensating factors to living a private life, to having more freedom and time to do what I want, and to spend more time with the family, which is very important. Over the years, you know, I've sacrificed a lot in order to be able to do those things I've done in the public sector.

WALLACE: Well, we want to thank you for talking with us and including in your private life putting up with an interview from the likes of me.

CHENEY: It's all right. I enjoy your show, Chris.

WALLACE: Thank you very much, and all the best sir.

CHENEY: Good luck.

EA Soundcheck: Scott Lucas on Ted Kennedy

I spoke this morning with the BBC World Service's World Update about the life and politics of Ted Kennedy, focusing on his Senate career and push for social legislation, the health care debate in the US, and the pressure of living up to a Kennedy legacy. The interview begins at the 47:25 mark.

EA Soundcheck: Scott Lucas talks to BBC World Service about Lockerbie

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was released from a Scottish jail today. Appearing with David Maddox of The Scotsman, I spoke with the BBC World Service's World Update about American objections to al-Megrahi's release, including the impact on US-UK relations (very little), US-Scotland relations (even less), and the real significance (US domestic politics and Hillary Clinton's move for power within the Obama Administration).

[UPDATE 21 August: Unfortunately, the BBC does not keep archived programmes of World Update so yesterday's programme is now in Broadcast Heaven (or Hell). Thanks to all those who listened!]

I'm Afraid of Americans: Understanding the New Threat of Domestic Terrorism

America’s National Security Strategy is changing.

Last week the New York Times published an article detailing the Pentagon’s plan to shift focus away from international terrorism, known under the previous administration as the Global War on Terror, towards larger strategic threats to the United States such as destabilized governments and mass refugee crises provoked by climate change. Most in the defense establishment welcome this shift in strategy, but the threat from terrorism still remains.

This time, however, there is a difference. The terror threat comes largely not from foreign nationals but from Americans.

In 2009 almost 70 Americans, including police officers and medical personnel, have been killed by domestic terror attacks. This is a breathtakingly sharp rise from 2008, when only two people lost their lives, both of whom died at the hands of anti-Liberal terrorist Jim D. Adkisson in Tennessee. The first attack in 2009 was in Samson, Alabama, when Michael McLendon went on a cross-county shooting rampage that killed 11 people including himself. The most recent was on June 10, when James von Brunn opened fire inside the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, killing one guard and wounding several others.

While each of these attacks is unique, they can be roughly broken down into a handful of categories. In this piece, we will explore these terrorist archetypes, the ecosystem that produced them, as well as common tactics, both harmful and helpful, used to counter them. The intention is to provide students, analysts and researchers, with a sound and coherent image of the domestic terror threat facing the United States.

A Brief History of Killing Each Other

The United States has considerable experience dealing with domestic terrorism throughout its history. In the 19th century, militias and terrorist groups were responsible for everything from razing Mormon outposts (and massacring the inhabitants) to bloody commando raids by extremist Abolitionists on plantations and other elite southern institutions. Following the Civil War, terrorism shifted to the domain of racial supremacists like the Ku Klux Klan, who launched a series of brutal attacks on Reconstruction governments in a (successful) bid to re-instate segregation, as well as carrying out the infamous public lynchings of countless innocents.



Gallean Anarchists bomb Wall Street in 1920

In the 20th century, newly naturalized cells of anarchists, Galleanists, and hyper-conservatives unleashed waves of bombings against Wall Street and other major financial interests. Incidentally, one of these terrorists, Mario Buda, is credited with the invention of the modern-day car bomb. Later in the century, these tactics would be further evolved into the full-on asymmetric warfare carried out by insurgent groups like the Weather Underground, the American Indian Movement, and the Black Panthers.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the modern day domestic terrorist archetype took shape in the form of Anti-Abortion bombers and Anti-Government “Freeman” militias. Their reign of terror culminated with one of the most spectacular and devastating terrorist attacks on American soil, the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City which left 170 dead and many others wounded. With the foreign-borne attacks of September 11, 2001, most domestic terror groups quietly dropped into torpor. That is, until the catastrophic collapse of the US economy and the election of President Obama in 2008.

Asylum Of the Inmates, By the Inmates, and For the Inmates

America is an extremist country. Similar to its allies Israel or Pakistan, America perceives itself, true or not, as having faced the brink of total obliteration several times in its relatively short existence. This has led to not only a reflexive reliance on violence and violent imagery to make its voice heard, but has also combined with indigenous cultural strands of alienation, paranoia, and apocalypticism to form a permanently deranged opposition class, a mass movement of citizens opposed to anything and everything outside of their delusional ideological boundaries, regardless of how it may benefit them.

Rick Perlstein vividly describes this effect on the contemporary debate on health care reform in a column for the Washington Post. He writes:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? … They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

It is within this garden of culture-wide delirium and fanaticism that domestic terror takes root. In this regard it should be considered as a side effect, albeit malignant, of normal American life. The domestic terror groups are not dangerous for their extremism, their paranoia, or their particular calibration of ideology. Rather, the danger lies in their imminent potential to separate themsevles from normal political discourse, adopting violence, terrorism, and murder.

This detail may seem obvious, but it is a factor of American life most often misunderstood by analysts and observers, and it should be considered integral to any accurate debate on domestic terror. Be wary of serious research being overwhelmed by the obfuscation of hysteria, it’s a simple mistake to make.

“Pro-Life” Abortion Activists

By far the most well-organized of American domestic terrorists, the radical anti-abortion movement is dedicated to the eradication of all family planning services in the United States, seeing it as an affront to their religious beliefs sanctifying the life of the unborn.

Randall Terry, Operation Rescue

They maintain vast networks of sympathetic volunteers and church workers who funnel a wide range of support to terrorist cells across the country. This support includes financing, propaganda, and even emotional support for imprisoned members of the movement. Much like transnational jihadist terrorism, convicted or slain anti-abortion terrorists are elevated as heroes or “martyrs” of the movement.

Typical anti-abortion terrorist attacks target medical facilities that provide family planning services, as well as the personnel of these facilities. Tactics include daily physical harassment, threatening communications, vandalism, bombings, and assassination.

The most recent victim of these terrorists was abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, who was shot in the head while attending church services by Scott Roeder on May 31. Roeder is connected to several extremist groups, including a few militias, but most notably to Operation Rescue, headed by religious extremist Randall Terry.

Terry’s history includes disowning his son for homosexuality and expulsion from a New York church for abandoning his wife and children for a much younger bride. In a recent public appearance broadcast on CSPAN, Terry overtly warned that if Obama is successful with his legislative agenda, America would suffer more violence and terrorist attacks at the hands of abortion activists.

Sovereign Citizen Patriot Militias

Claiming that the Second Amendment of the US Constitution allows for organized citizen militias, these groups fund, equip, and train citizens in modern asymmetrical warfare and survival techniques, presumably to be used against government and law enforcement agencies.

Timothy McVeigh, OK City Bomber

Members of these militias are opposed to nearly all taxation by the federal government, any immigration policies which they claim weaken the nation, as well as any movement at all by the government to regulate the sale of weapons and firearms. They also traffic heavily in pedestrian conspiracy theories, such as the responsibility of the Bush administration for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the coming establishment of a tyrannical global government headed by the United Nations and foreign banking interests (often referred to as the New World Order), and the notion that Mexican immigration is a covert plot to re-conquer the southern United States by Hispanics.

At the height of their popularity in the 1990s, these groups were estimated to have some 40,000 members operational in all 50 states. Citing law enforcement sources, the Southern Poverty Law Center claims that since the election of President Obama, more than 50 new militia training centers have been established in the United States. Without a doubt the most numerous of terrorist groups, militias are also the best trained, often drawing their membership from former law enforcement and military personnel.

While no recent attacks have been directly connected to militia activities, the Department of Homeland Security has warned of a “Second Wave” of militia attacks in response to the election of President Obama and other contentious political issues of the day.

Culture Warrior Phantom Cells

Richard Poplawski, Mass Murderer

Most of the domestic terror attacks in 2009 would fall under this category, being committed by individual, independent actors with no apparent material support from wider networks. These terrorists are similar to so-called Lone Wolf killing sprees by sociopathic and/or psychopathic individuals (such as the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre), but nevertheless qualify as terrorism due to the deliberate targeting of victims of a particular political or cultural persuasion, such as the previously mentioned attacks on a Unitarian Church in Tennessee and the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

Invented by white supremacist Louis Beam, the idea of “Leaderless Resistance” is that a motivated individual should handle of the responsibility for supplying, planning, and carrying out terrorist attacks entirely by himself (all known cases of domestic terrorism have been carried out primarily by males) so as to completely avoid the vulnerabilities of a group-endeavor, like snitching and infiltration. These terrorists are far and away the most difficult for law enforcement agencies to monitor, given the near-absence of public information and warning signs.

Since the election of President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security has launched what it calls its “Lone Wolf Initiative” aimed at pre-empting such attacks. However, given that security services were unable to locate past Culture Warriors like Theodor Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and Eric Rudolph for years (or decades in Kaczynski’s case), there is little evidence that contemporary law enforcement efforts will be any more successful than in the past.

The Wrong Way to Fight

The domestic terror attacks of 2009 have been high-profile affairs, widely publicized across television, print, and the internet. Understandably, American citizens have reacted against the terrorists with a fierce backlash. However, these reactions have often been counter-intuitive and, in some cases, directly harmful to counter-terrorism efforts. It is important for both lay observers and dedicated analysts to understand what works and what does not against domestic terrorism.



Anti-Obama Propaganda Poster

Partisan Politics – With few exceptions, the great majority of domestic terrorism in the United States since the 1970s has been carried out by individuals who are politically conservative, libertarian, or Republican. However enlightening this might first appear, there are absolutely zero conclusions one can draw from this in the fight against terrorism.

As a democracy, the US often vacillates wildly between conservative leadership and that of a more liberal or progressive persuasion. With the current administration being avowedly liberal, it is logical that any major domestic opposition groups, including terrorists, would come from the opposite political persuasion, the right wing. It is as offensive and outrageous to politically attack Conservatives for domestic terror as it is to attack all Muslims or Arabs because of attacks by Transnational Jihadists.

Quite simply, the politics, religion, or cultural disposition of a person has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. This is never a useful identifying feature.

Repression – The instinctive reaction of many opponents of domestic terror has been to viciously and systematically attack the freedom of expression of anyone who references or publishes material that could be linked to domestic terror. Victims of this scapegoating include media mega-stars Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Lou Dobbs, not to mention the countless others too unpopular to withstand such attacks. In the fight to counter domestic terror, this is madness.

The tactic allows terrorist entities to feel victimized, which perversely empowers their rhetoric. It can also drive them underground, making their activities even more difficult to track – and exploit. Most importantly, free speech in the US acts as a “free marketplace of ideas” in which hate and fear-based arguments like those of the terror organizations will wither into dust when faced with the “competition” of rational and reasoned arguments from the populace at large. This can not happen while left-wing groups assail their opponents’ very right to express themselves.

The Right Way to Fight

The siren song of American partisan lunacy can be highly seductive, but it is important to remember the practical skills the US has developed in countering domestic terrorism. As a free democracy, the country is easily susceptible to radicalism and rancor, but as a nation of laws, it is also equipped to prevent it. Now that we understand the history of domestic terrorists, their specific makes and models, and the ways in which they are often empowered by efforts to undermine them, the image of a successful counter-terror campaign should begin to come into focus.

It is recommended these actions are carried out under the authority of older laws, such as the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act), as opposed to newer anti-terror legislation like the Patriot Act. This will prevent unproductive controversy on the constitutional legitimacy of Federal counter-terror operations.



The Blind Sheik, convicted in US Courts

GWOT Remix – While the garish and gratuitous Human Rights violations of the George W. Bush administration tend to overshadow its counter-terrorism efforts, it has quietly developed a host of tactics and best practices for countering Transnational Jihadist terrorism, tactics which could easily be adapted from battling Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qa’eda to battling Randall Terry and Operation Rescue.

One of the most powerful techniques for countering terrorism has been attacking them at the source of their financing. The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has all the capabilities required to freeze, capture, and dismantle the entire financial infrastructure of terror cells. Combined with standard law enforcement tactics like surveillance, infiltration, and sabotage, a coordinated assault by the FBI on domestic terrorist infrastructure could weaken, if not permanently damage, these groups’ ability to carry out terrorism.

Devilish Details – In the 1920it s, Al Capone ran one of the widest reaching and most sophisticated organized crime elements in the history of the United States. In 1931, he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned. Not on charges of racketeering or murder, but rather income-tax evasion. The lesson here is that direct combat against criminal elements is unwise when you can easily dismantle them with smaller regulations. This is a strategy that has been used against domestic terrorists before, and it is also the most likely to yield immediate results.

Rather than full paramilitary assaults on domestic terrorists, such as in 1993 with the tragic massacre in Waco, Texas, law enforcement would be better served by chipping away at organizations for smaller legal violations. Has the suspect paid their taxes? Do they have licenses for their firearms? Do they have the right credentials for purchase and possession of dynamite, blasting caps, or controlled fertilizing substances which could be used to produce an improvised explosive device? These questions are easy to answer, and will lead to much cleaner convictions than more ethereal charges of “terrorism” which have produced little to zero legitimate convictions in American courts.

The Consequences of Violence

While the predictions and warnings in this text may seem dire, there is very little evidence of successful terror campaigns in the United States. If anything, terror attacks usually have the opposite reaction, pushing the country and its culture away from whatever values are being espoused by radicals and extremists. Veteran American activist Bob Morris wrote about this tendency on the blog Politics in the Zeros [Disclosure: I am a Contributor to Polizeros]. Recalling the left-wing terror campaigns of the 1960s, he writes this:

[In] the 60s Jerry Rubin said “kill your parents.” Things got quite radical then. But within a few years, the right wing was ascendant and the left mostly in tatters. That’s because the middle class got turned off by leftie howlings and went rightward. The right saw this as a huge organizing opportunity and took full advantage of it. It wasn’t until the past couple of years that the pendulum started moving leftwards again.

This is not to excuse the violent actions of domestic terrorists, but to illustrate that the battle against terrorism is not a hopeless or impossible task. With a clear understanding of the threat and a sober, determined strategy for dealing with it, the United States can easily withstand whatever the radicals may throw at it.

However, if the debate over domestic terrorism continues along hysterical, partisan, and sometimes downright tyrannical lines, the threat of domestic terror will go unchecked, and many innocent Americans will lose their lives. And they may die at the hands of terrorists, but the incompetence and negligence of those in the political and security establishment will surely bear a great deal of responsibility as well.

Video and Transcript: Obama Says US Economy Bouncing Back

Last Saturday, President Obama devoted his Weekly Address to the economic crisis. The President stated that, thanks to the Recovery Act, business investment is showing signs of stability, providing jobs to unemployed Americans.



Obama said that this economic crisis would pass and, indeed, there would not be another one if the US built "a new foundation strong enough to withstand future economic storms and support lasting prosperity”. There would be no return to an economy where “the growth is based on inflated profits and maxed-out credit cards”.

OBAMA: Today, I'd like to talk with you about a subject that I know is on everyone's mind, and that's the state of our economy. Yesterday, we received a report on our Gross Domestic Product. That's a measure of our overall economic performance. The report showed that in the first few months of this year, the recession we faced when I took office was even deeper than anyone thought at the time. It told us how close we were to the edge.

But it also revealed that in the last few months, the economy has done measurably better than expected. And many economists suggest that part of this progress is directly attributable to the Recovery Act. This and the other difficult but important steps that we have taken over the last six months have helped put the brakes on this recession.

We took unprecedented action to stem the spread of foreclosures by helping responsible homeowners stay in their homes and pay their mortgages. We helped revive the credit markets and open up loans for families and small businesses. And we enacted a Recovery Act that put tax cuts directly into the pockets of middle-class families and small businesses; extended unemployment insurance and health insurance for folks who have lost jobs; provided relief to struggling states to prevent layoffs of teachers and police officers; and made investments that are putting people back to work rebuilding and renovating roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals.

Now, I realize that none of this is much comfort for Americans who are still out of work or struggling to make ends meet. And when we receive our monthly job report next week, it is likely to show that we are continuing to lose far too many jobs in this country. As far as I'm concerned, we will not have a recovery as long as we keep losing jobs. And I won't rest until every American who wants a job can find one.

But history shows that you need to have economic growth before you have job growth. And the report yesterday on our economy is an important sign that we're headed in the right direction. Business investment, which had been plummeting in the past few months, is showing signs of stabilizing. This means that eventually, businesses will start growing and hiring again. And that's when it will really feel like a recovery to the American people.

This won't happen overnight. As I've said before, it will take many more months to fully dig ourselves out of a recession – a recession that we've now learned was even deeper than anyone thought. But I'll continue to work every day, and take every step necessary, to make sure that happens. I also want to make sure that we don't return to an economy where our growth is based on inflated profits and maxed-out credit cards – because that doesn't create a lot of jobs. Even as we rescue this economy, we must work to rebuild it stronger than before. We've got to build a new foundation strong enough to withstand future economic storms and support lasting prosperity.

Next week, I'll be talking about that new foundation when I head to Elkhart County in Indiana – a city hard hit not only by the economic crisis of recent months but by the broader economic changes of recent decades. For communities like Elkhart to thrive, we need to recapture the spirit of innovation that has always moved America forward.

That means once again having the best-educated, highest skilled workforce in the world. That means a health care system that makes it possible for entrepreneurs to innovate and businesses to compete without being saddled with skyrocketing insurance costs. That means leading the world in building a new clean energy economy with the potential to unleash a wave of innovation – and economic growth – while ending our dependence on foreign oil. And that means investing in the research and development that will produce the technologies of the future – which in turn will help create the industries and jobs of the future.

Innovation has been essential to our prosperity in the past, and it will be essential to our prosperity in the future. But it is only by building a new foundation that we will once again harness that incredible generative capacity of the American people. All it takes are the policies to tap that potential – to ignite that spark of creativity and ingenuity – which has always been at the heart of who we are and how we succeed. At a time when folks are experiencing real hardship, after years in which we have seen so many fail to take responsibility for our collective future, it's important to keep our eyes fixed on that horizon.

Every day, I hear from Americans who are feeling firsthand the pain of this recession; these are folks who share their stories with me in letters and at town hall meetings; folks who remain in my mind and on my agenda each and every day. I know that there are countless families and businesses struggling to just hang on until this storm passes. But I also know that if we do the things we know we must, this storm will pass. And it will yield to a brighter day.