Countering Violent Extremism

The Federal Register for May 19th contained a notice posted by DHS that the Homeland Security Advisory Committee (HSAC) would be holding a teleconference on May 13th to discuss the initial report of the Countering Violent Extremism Working Group. This task force was formed at the request of Secretary Napolitano at the February 3rd HSAC meeting. The following comment was posted to the written comments docket for this meeting (www.Regulations.gov; Docket Number DHS-2010-0030). This comment was listed at DHS-2010-0030-0002.1 on that site. Extremists and Critical Infrastructure I commend Secretary Napolitano for tasking the Homeland Security Advisory Committee with looking at the issue of countering violent extremists. Anyone with access to the national news must be concerned about the apparent increase in the number of violent extremist organizations from a wide variety of political, racial and religious backgrounds in the United States that seem to becoming more dangerous every day. Any assistance that the HSAC can provide to the Secretary in developing a comprehensive plan to counter this trend would certainly be beneficial to the Department and the country as a whole. While we have yet to see any chemical worker, transit employee, airline pilot, or nuclear power plant attendant involved in any of the publicly acknowledged terror plots, anyone with a background in security knows that it is just a matter of time before someone working at a publicly-owned critical-infrastructure facility will be identified as a member of one of the increasing number of radical groups found in the United States. Hopefully that identification will be made before they are involved in a successful attack on the facility at which they work. Any program developed to counter the growth of violent extremism will have to be two fold. One phase of the program will have to address the jump from legally protected political extremism to the illegal acts violent extremism; identifying the motivation for that transition and pre-empting that move. The second phase will have to deal with the identification of those individuals who have made the transition before they can consummate their illegal acts. That second phase will be especially important for critical infrastructure employees. Any terrorist plot needs to be disrupted, but a terrorist plot against critical infrastructure with active insider support is one with an especially high probability of success. This makes identifying those potential perpetrators a very high priority. Any efficient identification of transitioned extremists at critical infrastructure facilities will inevitably involve the management of those facilities. This will require that the management of those facilities be trained to recognize the individuals that are potentially violent extremists. Since the easiest to identify precursor to violent extremism is extreme political views, we need to be especially careful that any such training program be clear in its delineation of the difference between legally protected extreme political views and violent extremist actions. I think that it is especially important that the Countering Violent Extremism Working Group specifically address this issue in their report to the Secretary.