2,688 Days

A great piece by Marc A. Thiessen

From the Washington Post

When President Bush left office on Tuesday, America marked 2,688 days without a terrorist attack on its soil. There are 1,459 days until the next inauguration. Whether Barack Obama is standing on the Capitol steps to be sworn in a second time depends on whether he succeeds in replicating Bush’s achievement.

As the new president receives his intelligence briefings, certain facts must now be apparent: Al-Qaeda is actively working to attack our country again. And the policies and institutions that George W. Bush put in place to stop this are succeeding. During the campaign, Obama pledged to dismantle many of these policies. He follows through on those pledges at America’s peril — and his own. If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible — and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation.
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Consider, for example, the CIA program that Bush created to detain and question senior leaders captured in the war on terror. Many of these terrorists, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, refused to talk — until Bush authorized the CIA to use enhanced interrogation techniques. Information gained using those techniques is responsible for stopping a number of planned attacks — including plots to blow up the American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; to fly airplanes into the towers of Canary Wharf in London; and to fly a hijacked airplane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

During the campaign, Obama described the techniques used to prevent these attacks as “torture.” He promised that if elected, he would “have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors.” If he follows through, he will effectively kill a program that stopped al-Qaeda from launching another Sept. 11-style attack. It was easy for Obama the candidate to criticize the CIA program. But as president, what will he do when the next senior al-Qaeda leader — with actionable intelligence on plots to strike our homeland — is captured and refuses to talk? Will the president allow the CIA to question this terrorist using enhanced interrogation techniques? If Obama refuses and our country is attacked, he will bear responsibility.

Consider also the National Security Agency’s program to monitor foreign terrorist communications. In the Senate, Obama voted against confirming then-NSA Director Michael Hayden to lead the CIA because, in Obama’s words, Hayden was “the architect and chief defender of a program of wiretapping and collection of phone records outside of FISA oversight.” In 2007, Obama voted against the Protect America Act, which temporarily authorized the NSA program. Last year, he promised to filibuster a long-term authorization but at the last minute switched his vote. He explained that he still wanted to make changes to the law, including stripping out immunity for telecommunications companies for their cooperation with the NSA — which would effectively kill the program. And he promised that “once I’m sworn in as President . . . my Attorney General [will] conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and . . . make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties.”

Now that he has been sworn in, will Obama allow the program to continue through 2012 as Congress authorized — breaking his pledge to his liberal base? Or will he move forward with his promised review and impose new constraints on the NSA’s ability to learn what terrorists are planning? If he does, what if we fail to connect the dots before the next attack?

Obama faces a similar quandary regarding Iraq. Bush left him with a stabilized Iraq, where al-Qaeda is in retreat and American forces are coming home by the end of 2011 under a policy of “return on success.” Candidate Obama promised to dramatically accelerate this withdrawal and to remove American troops within 16 months. Just last week, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod declared on ABC’s “This Week” that Obama intends to keep that promise. The problem is that Gen. David Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs are not likely to recommend such a rapid and irresponsible withdrawal. That leaves Obama with two choices: He can scale back his plans and continue the slower drawdown already set in motion by President Bush. Or he can overrule his military commanders — and pursue a rapid drawdown over their objections. If he does this, he will own the potentially devastating results. In 2007, President Bush revealed intelligence that Osama bin Laden had told al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq to form a cell to conduct attacks inside the United States — then the surge drove them from their havens and set back those plans. If Obama allows al-Qaeda to regain its Iraqi havens, and the terrorists use them to strike our country, he will not be able to blame Bush.

President Obama has inherited a set of tools that successfully protected the country for 2,688 days — and he cannot dismantle those tools without risking catastrophic consequences. On Tuesday, George W. Bush told a cheering crowd in Midland, Tex., that his administration had left office without another terrorist attack. When Barack Obama returns to Chicago at the end of his time in office, will he be able to say the same?

The writer, who served in senior positions at the White House and the Pentagon from 2001 to 2009, was most recently chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

WT: Federal agency warns of radicals on right

Crazy but true…

9-page report sent to police

By Audrey Hudson (Contact) and Eli Lake (Contact) | Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in “rightwing extremist activity,” saying the economic recession, the election of America’s first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

“It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration,” the warning says.

The White House has distanced itself from the analysis. When asked for comment on its contents, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said, “The President is focused not on politics but rather taking the steps necessary to protect all Americans from the threat of violence and terrorism regardless of its origins. He also believes those who serve represent the best of this country, and he will continue to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and benefits they have earned.”

The nine-page document was sent to police and sheriff’s departments across the United States on April 7 under the headline, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

It says the federal government “will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months” to gather information on “rightwing extremist activity in the United States.”

The joint federal-state activities will have “a particular emphasis” on the causes of “rightwing extremist radicalization.”

Homeland Security spokeswoman Sara Kuban said the report is one in an ongoing series of assessments by the department to “facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the U.S.”

The report, which was first disclosed to the public by nationally syndicated radio host Roger Hedgecock, makes clear that the Homeland Security Department does not have “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.”It warns that fringe organizations are gaining recruits, but it provides no numbers.

The report says extremist groups have used President Obama as a recruiting tool.

“Most statements by rightwing extremists have been rhetorical, expressing concerns about the election of the first African American president, but stopping short of calls for violent action,” the report says. “In two instances in the run-up to the election, extremists appeared to be in the early planning stages of some threatening activity targeting the Democratic nominee, but law enforcement interceded.”

When asked about this passage, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said, “We are concerned about anybody who will try to harm or plan to harm any one of our protectees. We don’t have the luxury to focus on one particular group at the exclusion of others.”

Congressional debates about immigration and gun control also make extremist groups suspicious and give them a rallying cry, the report says.

“It is unclear if either bill will be passed into law; nonetheless, a correlation may exist between the potential passage of gun control legislation and increased hoarding of ammunition, weapons stockpiling, and paramilitary training activities among rightwing extremists,” the report said.

The FBI was quoted Monday as saying that, since November, more than 7 million people have applied for criminal background checks in order to buy weapons.

The Homeland Security report added: “Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool.”

The report could signify a change in emphasis for Homeland Security under former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. A German magazine quoted Ms. Napolitano as rebranding “terrorism” as “man-made disasters.” Since its inception in 2003, the department has focused primarily on radicalization of Muslims and the prospect of homegrown Islamist terrorism.

In January, the same DHS office released a report titled “Leftwing extremists likely to increase use of cyber attacks over the coming decade.”

“These types of reports are published all the time. There have actually been some done on the other end of the spectrum, left-wing,” Ms. Kuban said.

A similar headline was used in a report issued in January, Ms. Kuban said, although she could not provide the content of the headline.

Ms. Kuban said she did not know how long the new report had been in the making.

“The purpose of the report is to identify risk. This is nothing unusual,” said Ms. Kuban, who added that the Homeland Security Department did this “to prevent another Tim McVeigh from ever happening again.”

The Homeland Security assessment specifically says that “rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat.”

Jerry Newberry, director of communications for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the vast majority of veterans are patriotic citizens who would not join anti-government militias.

“As far as our military members go, I think that the military is a melting pot of society. So you might get a few, a fractional few, who are going to be attracted by militia groups and other right-wing extremists,” he said.

“We have to remember that the people serving in our military are volunteers, they do it because they love their country, and they believe in what our country stands for,” he said. “They spent their time in the military defending our Constitution, so the vast majority of them would be repulsed by the hate groups discussed in this report.”

The Homeland Security report cited a 2008 FBI report that noted that a small number of returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.

The FBI report said that from October 2001 through May 2008 “a minuscule” number of veterans, 203 out of 23,000, had joined groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, the Creativity Movement, the National Alliance and some skinhead groups.

“Although the white supremacist movement is of concern to the FBI, our assessment shows that only a very small number of people with prior military experience may have an affiliation with supremacist groups,” FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday when asked about the FBI report.

A 2006 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors white supremacists like the Klan, said that white-power groups had an interest in the kind of training the military provides.

Mark Potok, director of the center’s intelligence project, said the Homeland Security report “confirms that white supremacists are interested in the military. There is some concern, and there should be, about returning veterans, one need only think of the example of Timothy McVeigh, who was in the first Iraq war.”

Mr. Potok added that he was generally pleased with the report.

“Basically, the report tracks fairly closely with what we have been saying for some time now. They mention us a couple of times, though not by name,” he said.

Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC