Transcripts For CSPAN2 Seamus Hughes Homegrown 20240711 : vi

CSPAN2 Seamus Hughes Homegrown July 11, 2024

Program to him. And to honor his memory. I think his spirit will be with us for a long time. And i just wanted to mention him gratefully here as hes been part of our Virtual Events upo this point. Todays event as i said at the beginning is meant to celeate this a wonderful new book within amazing cover which is why it showed it. Theres so much going on in the cover we couldve just spent today talk about the cover. Like what are all the little post its. But we won. The author of t book that is with us today is shamus hues. He wrote this book with alexander and clifford. Shamus isne of the leader counterterrorism exper in the country. Hes been produci report after report for years both for congress and others. Before joining the program for extremism on george whington university which of the ncp National Counterterrorism center before that he was a senior counterterrorism advisor and Home Security Government Affairs committee. There is an awful lot shamus should be talking about today are one hour. Wanted to talk start with the book and go on. For ose in the audience please feel free to send your questis into the q a and i will get as my into the conversation as i can. First want to have a conversation with you seamus a. Verso wanted why now with this book . Which is that the real hype in the United Statesas 201 2015. We kept seeing cases i 2015 and 2016 with maybe some other things you want to mention it has been kind of a here and therset of investigations, indictments a prosecutions. From the height of something wi over 50 cases a year we have now Something Like less than a dozen. Is that he did the book now . Were you thinking maybe the ark of isis in the United States at least in this inclinatioand the way we know it was something we can tell the full story of . Doesnt conaway . Or w now . Gue thats absolutely right. First the m say thank you very much for having me. Karen you have been friend for a number of yearsd centern National Security something i have relied o in their reports for years n. You put on a great event so its an honor to be here. Thank you for the kin words about frank its an honor to be a part of the conversation on this day the reason we decided to put out a book on isis in 2020 is a positive thousand 15 is a story was notritten yet. Just yesterd we had two new indictments a sealed in the district of pennsylvania. A huand and wife they were sending money to family members t go join isis. So we read the book in 2015 we would not have told the full picture. It takes a long time to get a sense of it. And for about tee years may and my coauthors travele around the country with fbi agents, Defense Attorneys and family members and came bk from isis to get a sense of what actually mea and we say isis in america. It sums like a loaded term. We should not be alarmist about it. But its also not insignificant. We wanted to wrap h head around it. And the only way to do tt was to take a stepack and look at it. So we looked a about 20000 pages of legal documents. I found a whole host that all got rejected appealed repealed again. We filed enough motions to unsealed docents. After bit of time start talking. In times past are more willing to talk about tt case in 2014 awhere the height of it. Sophie wted to do it justice so i didll of this. I will said the detail o these cases is quite impressive. Not just the detail the cases themselves but the diffent indictments to one another and the individuals knew one another for virtually and otherwise produce aumber of things i had not realized in terms of the rationship with those piring those funding, thosplanning attacks. Those indicted. Its action very intricate presentation imptant you have. But in the aggregate what did you learn . Went to megan little more specific. At did you learn that surprised you when she got what you needed to get in terms of how to describe the isis terrost . Smacking the story of isis in america is ones and twos are not fours and fives. Talk about a relatively small phenomenon of individuals, usually friends with some level of in Person Network but not a Large Network tha youd see in large parts ofurope. I think that is t first take away. The second take away, you know this as well as i do. Theres not a typical isis recruit for their old, young, rich, poor, black, white, does not really rhyme or reason to i summon join the terrorist organization for they all share the same ideogy and narrative but they com after it differently. In the ways they g to is completely different. The point you made he pled back the oon a little ill relators a bit more connection than what we give cred to. A young man in iowa is someh connected to a guy thats a part of the group of guys and rocco. At connection is usually made or social media. But sometimes are set in rson network likely sought minneapolis, st. Paul where the brothers, sisters roommates of kids that joint alshibaab ten years ago were the one toame and joined isis. If you fear that you are very dirse and diffuse picture. Host one thing to focus on that not surprising, is the youth, how young they are. And the reason i bring that up as i would like you to compare thato do things. One is isis in europe. And elsewhere in the world. And two, white supremacist extremism and wha we are seeing now. Well really talking in these isis cases of individuals who are barely in their teens. And often in the early 20s. Uest yes i believe thats right. I w surprised by the number of minors we have in our case study. T only the people who were arrested for criminal charges, we had an individua that was arrested when their 15 tha was an outlier. St of the time you have a number of minor cases were fbi agents would dermine the did not want to bring a federal charge for it or perhaps they could not get to the nional Security Division of department of justice. But when you interview these agents they said dnt really wa to charge a 16 over terrorism i deny with them to spend 20 years i jail for that. The lack of tools and abili to do anything beside that is mildly concerning on my end. And also, think you saw an intereing trend now, particularly now, a stepup of state and local officials charging and statelevel producing terror in newersey new york, f minor cases there is a jersey in South Carolina for 16 year old got a gun charge of the state level, spent two yearsn jail got out it was charge againith terrorism when his atm for trying to join isis. Think thats aailure of policy too. You see these miners going down this path and not having options other than Law Enforcement. Its a concern that policymakers shod think about any real substance. Host i want to talk about that before go on. Youve spent a lot of time thinking about couer violence, extremism, counter prevenon however you want to determine. Ere was a period at the Obama Administration where there is government funding for this there were some robust efforts made. There are still a few things out there, buthat happened . We dont hear about the cde movent now. Im sort of curious, what is your take on i we got demoted and the funds rit upper what happened . Theres a couple reasons why. One the ser scope of the number of arrests in 2014 and 2015 forced to be created. They cannot arrest their way out of the problem. Theres an attorney interviewed in your consider on the table with a bunch of fbi agents they would get their Weekly Briefing of cases. And after a couple weeks he said i dont have enough lawyers to charge all these individuals are going t have to figure out a different w. You know, the Obama Administration did spent a lot of time, if they had really dug into it, you really talking about people putting together national straty. That is notoing to be successful. And t be fair, as a lot of ncerns, my civil rights and government overreach. You shouldave a National Program to do so. I think there is some truth in that i dont think we need to have a billiondollar program when the numbers are so small. But the other day i im sitting across the room from a parent who is concerned about their kid and the only option i have is a rest or do nhing until they grow out of the phase, i just think that is a ilure at a policyevel. s a failure of siety. We should have som level of offramp spray think we could do that creatively in a way thatoes not come across and where to go fromere . The Obama Administration largely ied with the trump administraon they change names its the same program with less funding and less people. Theres no buiin advocates for this program. Theres no advocates in the middle. I would be surprised if it real gets a shot in the arm in the biden adminisation. Maybe perhaps on aye supremacist antigovernment side. I think there is som room to do so. I dont see that necessarily happening in any really subsidence way because of isis and jihads in. One of the things is in the major ols of prosecuting terrorist is a terrorism statutes. In the strength of the terrorm statutes arehe link to foreign organizations. In terms of isis in your description of this homegrown phenomenon, she went to tell us about how its different than how w thought about or not, about the International Outreach of al qda . And actually about travel, training, as opposed to what was going on with al qaeda . And how much that has changed . What is happed with the foign fighting phenomenon today . Guest that is one of the takeaways of the book pretty look at the 60 pluck a jump less cases there were public the vast, vast majorit of all been some attempts of attempts to travel or travel overseas. Isis had a message and a projec project. They flipped the switch for American Home grown extremts. They were drawn to that idea. So you did see a push on that aspect of it. The difference between al qaeda and isiss not on the message of the products but the people. Isis has the ability, time, and space to reach out systematically to americans and groom them over the course of weeks and months to encourage and attack. Think of a case in upste new york were a man when sue donnelly was reaching out to nether manith Mental Health issues abo the need to commit an attack and a nightclub in upstate new york. This is an individual who i thin without sue donnie whispering in his ear probably wouldve gone a different way. Were al qaeda would just put th message out to a megaphone effect. Throw it out there and hope it sticks. These guys were much more one on onentervention trying to push the message a action. Host their virtual entrepreneurs. Id try to make virtual enepreneurs stick but its not going too. Just call whatever videos those whichs virtual attack planner planners. There were six or seven indivials, the fbi deemed them the legn called the legion of doom very dramatic. Individuals in a computer lab changing phones back and forth in systematically reaching out to americans for an attack. What would happen is, ty had a level of confidence, the weknown british hacker who became an isis propagandist. Americansould reach out to them. These guys in theegion would reach back and say you dont want to travel too hard. What you want to do is have an attack in the he that lets make it easy for heres an address of a military officer in your area. Heres a link onmazon to the nike when using heres howou upload the video to behead the individualnd we will claim credit for it. So tse guys were not necessarily saying make sure you detect them all the america they were saying would be great if you checked them all . Lets make it easy for you to do that. It is a bit of a handholding you look athe plotting, we found that more than hal of the cases involved at least six of the individuals in a legion. So onc those individuals are systematic killed by the department of defense and allied forces, that number dramatically dropped into thousand 16. Host just sticking with ternational conversation a little bit, you talk about troopsn the region and contributed to the growth of isis would be chaos in syria, right . So just skipping forward to today and the announcement this week about the drawdown of troops, in the region, does it worry you in terms of a predicate for more terrorism . Or are we in a different period of time . How would you weigh in on this switch i think we are in a manageme time. I dont see is have a clear victory but i don see us having a clear defeat. We were are a lot smarter than we were before. We have a sense of theetwork for isis now. A lot of it h to do with terviews with but Law Enforcement deatheturning foreign fighters. They get a sse of how they operate and how theyve taken folks were able to targeted strikes in a way we had before. Is it always better to have folks on the grod to add intelligence and things like that . Absolutely. I dont see an appetite in this country or even in our politil party to do so. I think we are probably going to see a similarhing to what we had in somalia where the occasional strike when you have intelligence, but not anything else of real sutance. I concerned really is, you just dont want to let these guys gw back up again. The fact that the had this territory, they were able to intake thousands of foreign fighters on a way no other Terrorism Group had history. You dont give them space, if theyre worried about looking over their shouldervery day ths good thing for counterterrorism, right . Its a matter of playi it a little smarter than we he in the past. The one theres also the queson of the camps were individuals are living in syria refugee camps. In some places detention camps, the sensef breeding ground for maybe new forms of terrorism,aybe for isis itself. To think there is a way to handle this problem and addres this problem . Be worried about it . How do you take it . Guest im worried about it to full general dicalization, you get enough people in a room who believe exeme thought some violence could happen. But probably more important than that i worried about justice. In america we have had a pretty good track recd of bringing back, we brought back to thousand folks f courts of a system too that thats no problem. Were able to do tt because we have the terrorism clause which most countries dt and allows for the collection of evidence and prosecution. Th other thing franklys we have smaller numbers of citizens in the camps. It is one thing to ask the u. S. To take bk a dozen people. Its another thing to ask the french take back 500. They just do not have the systems in place to do so. Were dealing with a different set. Its easy when somebody comes back from syria joining isis was a bad idea what to pad guilty but itsuite another thing when someone comes back says no im not talking t. You cant really build a case on that. You are stu with the theory of you let some go. But i think the ultimateoint is we have a responsibility. Our citizens fro around the world went to iraq and committed wa crimes and genocide. Its incumbent on uso provide some level of justice for those victims. The best way to do that is through criminal prosecutions. I want to go back to the issue of radicalization. That story is not ove a number of excerpts have made the with jihadist trorism. And radicalization of White National white supremacist. Do you see these as crossover in terms of a message . Obviously their messaging is different. But where do you see the crossovers it would you just say no these are sarate entities but we to look at them both may point had a counter extremism . Theres a couplehings to think about in general. One Tech Companies have not caught up. If you look at 2015, 2016 timeame, twitter googled the light bulb went off and they decide to content meration. They push these guys off the rgins. They have not been the same thing with antigovernment oups. In relative free rei. Reach out to local member right now the other thing differt is that radicalizati which comes with movement there is an online dynamic. There is the large offline. It is easy make it easier to load up a bunch of guys in a room to talk about how much you hate the michigan governor for vid larkins. You know, you try to get a dozen people in a room to tal about how good isis is, nine of them would be f units rate that does not happen with antivernment. So there is an ability to cruit and set up an organization easier whent comes to those ideologies. But the last thing i would mentn is we needo talk really about the mixing of ideology. It is not a clearcut as it used to be. In the good old days 15, 20 years ago i could tell you that i was an al qaeda guy, and thatadical that would be easy from the bucket. Right now youre seeing this mixing of White Nationalist is also inte whose a member who give a proud boys meeting the buckets maket harder. The government really needs the buckets you can put resources against buckets. I can have a squad that is intel because we think that is important. But what happens when it mixes backandforth . Analso comes full circle. How do you train up for moderation Technology Companies to understand the ideology in a way thats easi. Host one of things its constantly talked about and think about deterring radilization and oer parts of the world is to talk abo the causes that led to that radicalization. Whether its vlence whether its discrimination whether its once or the oer when you look at white supremacist in this country is there a similar narrativebout what nes these individuals to identify with but they terrorist group . And if so what is that narrativ narrative . Guest malicious is much more of a connection. For White Nationalist, but i think its reay online is on a roll. It has the coordination you havent seen prior. A little bitf a different dynamic is on there. Theres a general sense isis which is a sense of belonging. These are usually individuals who are not particularreat with what they are and in real fe you want to be part of something bigger. What this White Nationalism provides a sense of belonging. We are getting a ton of questions by think im going to go to the questions i will interject myself as ty make sense. One asks, i would like to know as an author id terrorism h do we hold accountable and more comprehensive way the women who inspired th

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