Transcripts For CSPAN3 Terror Threats Part Three 20171208 :

CSPAN3 Terror Threats Part Three December 8, 2017

Supremacist movement has been energized by mr. Trumps campaign. That it has unearthed some demons to use congressman sanfords words. The marchs chant in charlottesville, you will not replace us, was an expression of paranoia over cultural displacement. It reminds us of what dylann roof said when he murdered nine people in a charleston church. Youre taking over our country. The marchers chant, blood and soil, their antisemitism reminds us of one of the darkest chapters in modern history. In my written testimony, i called the threat associated with groups like isis the most acute ones we face. So i certainly dont take issue with director wrays calling it our main terrorism threat. But i worry that calling the threat from domestic extremist groups like those in charlottesville merely a steady one as director wray has called it, may lead us to underestimate the danger at the current White Supremacist Movement poses. Not just to our physical safety, but to the very soul of our nation. And im worried that calling the domestic extremist threat merely a steady one may lead us once again not to give it the attention it deserves. Thats why i think the joint resolution that this Congress Passed unanimously in september and that the president signed is so important. The resolution recognizes the growing threat from racist an antisemitic and xenophobic hate groups in this country. It urges the president and his administration to use all available resources to address that threat. And it calls on the attorney general to vigorously prosecute criminal acts from the radical right and to improve the reporting of hate crimes. That reporting, id note, is woefully inadequate. The fbis recent report counted approximately 6,000 hate crimes in 2016. Yet, the bureau of justice statistics estimates that as many as a quarter million hate crimes may be occurring annually. So clearly, we have a disconnect here. As you know, the charlottesville resolution urges various things. But has no enforceable provisions. Thats why its so critical that this committee hold oversight hearings in the very near future, to ensure that the president is living up to the commitments he made when he signed the resolution. I would also ask this committee to recommend legislation, similar to that which senator durbin has proposed, that would institutionalize a focus on terrorism from the radical right within our federal Law Enforcement agencies. That threat is the oldest our country faces. Charlottesville demonstrates that its lethal. And its likely to be with us long after we hopefully have addressed the threat of terror from groups like isis. It deserves a full measure of our attention. Senator durbins bill would do many other things, including preserving funding for the state and local antiterrorism program, s. L. A. T. , for short, a Critical Program that has been on the chopping block. As i mentioned in my written testimony, my colleagues and i at the Southern Poverty Law Center, are representing susan bro, the mother of heather hire, killed when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of protesters. In charlottesville. At the funeral of her daughter, susan said they tried to kill my child to shut her up. But guess what, you just magnitu magnified her. I would rather have my child, she said, but by golly, if i have to give her up, were going to make it count. Ill see susan next week in charlottesville, and i look forward to telling her this committee is committed to doing everything in its power to curb the threat of radical right terrorism in our country. And to make heathers death count. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Cohen, i think this is very important hearing. I think we have seen it before with tim mcveigh. Rabbi, thank you for pointing out my fathers sort of i view legacy of 32 Bombing Missions over the nazis. For the life of me, i dont understand this mindset of hatred and revival of the nazi spirit. That i thought we crushed in world war ii. I was recently there six months ago to see the evil that was perpetrated by the nazis and my father worked to defeat. When i see skin heads and neonazis, and White Supremacists assemble, and not only confounded as to how this could happen, but i just find it completely immoral and unacceptable for this nation. My grandfather was persecuted by the klan because he was catholic. So hatred in all forms, whether it be radical islamist ideology, cannot stand in this country and we need to unite as a nation. I want to thank all three of you for your testimony. First i want to ask chief rausch, you had what could have been a similar charlottesville on your hands. You had 3,000 people show up to protest a confederate monument. Its foreseeable that both of these factions are going to come together. Youre going to have a lot of heated emotion. The potential for great violence. Yet over a period of a two and a half hour rally, we saw no violence. I think what you did is a model of leadership for how Law Enforcement perhaps working with state Law Enforcement can successfully prevent this kind of violence in the future. I just wanted you to comment on what you did that may have been different from charlottesville that maybe Law Enforcement officers across the country can learn when this situation enters into their hometowns. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First and for foremost we learn what happens in other countries. We literally took the game tape from charlottesville, from boston and from durham, north carolina, and sat down and went through it and talked about those things that were right and the things that were wrong. And we then strategized on how we addressed that with what we had coming at us. So some of the things we saw that were right, boston, their mayor and their chief did a great job of getting out in front and putting out the rules of what they would allow. They made a press release before rally and said these are the things that will be allowed at this rally. Now, in our assessment, they didnt go far enough. They had some violence still. Not as much, but they had some violence at that rally. And so we looked at all of that to determine how we will do ours. First and foremost was getting the information out through the media to the public and to these groups that were converging of what would be allowed. Second was taking complete control of the area that they were going to be in. We took control of that early on, so one of the things that we had heard from charlottesville was that they had some challenge with the areas that they were showing up that they didnt have control of. We went in and took complete control. And we cordoned off the area. The vehicle threat was real. We took care of that by utilizing our public service, putting dump trucks at every vehicle access point to keep those types of vehicle borne attacks from being able to take place. A lot of coordination and control. The coordination with our state partners, with our local and federal partners as well on looking at intelligence information of these groups, what they were planning, what they were saying to each other and early on was important. Some of the other things was putting rules in place. We said there will be none of the things that we saw that caused the problems. So no sticks. No rocks. No bricks. No bottles. No firearms. All of that no mask. Nothing to cover yourself to keep yourself your identity from being known. All of that was important that we put that in place immediately so that people knew these are the rules. We learned that a lot of the supremacists didnt show up because of the rules. They didnt want to follow those rules, so they didnt come. Which was okay for our community. And so i think that the success was a result of that. Then a wellexecuted plan by our team. They did a great job of making sure that we had everyone safe and we kept control of the area and it was just a wellexecuted plan. Let me commend you for that. A textbook model of how to do it right. I hope other Police Departments will learn from the good things that you did. I mean, i think its a great model. Rabbi, im a student of Counter Terrorism. I was a Counter Terrorism federal prosecutor. I remember ramsey usef. His first target was not the world trade center. It was 12 jewish synagogues, symbolizing the 12 tribes of isreal. Pretty chilling. He decided to change that plan and go after the greatest symbol of financial might in new york and thats the world trade center. When he almost successfully brought the twin towers down, of course, he came his uncle came back and finished it. Sadly. And i know your community suffered greatly and this whole country did. Thats why this committee was formed in the first place. But the Jewish Community centers have been under threats constantly. Im proud to say this committee working with the Ranking Member doubled the authorization amount from fy17 for 50 million, 100 increase over the fy17. Also to what are called nonusae jurisdictions. I hope thats a step in the right direction. We i think made great progress in that. But i would like for you to describe the threats that youre seeing currently to the centers and synagogues in this country right now. Well, first of all, i think this is an appropriate time to for the community to say thank you. Obviously its passed by law. There are appropriations, there are hearings, but i think for the Jewish Community, especially younger families who never experienced it before, its traumatic. Its longlasting. Like any hate crime. It has both the personal and the communal impact. It may be difficult for our nonjewish neighbors to understand as i mentioned in my testimony that its been three decades since jewish kids would be dropped off at a school where there wasnt an armed guard. And on a regular saturday morning, i prayed in a relatively modest sized synagogue in l. A. We were actually targeted by radicalized islamist terrorists from california prisons for an attack that got thank god was interdicted before it took place. The mindset for Jewish Community leaders, jccs, schools, temples and synagogues is to do your best with perimeter defense and to always have in mind i was listening carefully about the friday night football game, especially if its going to be a playoff and theres this tremendous energy. Our security has to be in place 52 weeks a year. That is society. Here we near the capital of our nation. Its one of our basic freedoms, freedom of religion. As i mentioned in my testimony, this is not paranoia. Its just reality. I know theres a lot of give and take, important discussions here about whats a greater threat from isis or is it from the nazi like types. Unfortunately, we have to grapple with both of them. We rely very heavily on local Law Enforcement, the anticrime, the antihate and terrorist units. And i think maybe the most important point i would like to sort of bring back to the one committee that actually still has it, we really need bipartisanship moving forward if were fighting hate in america. To have some sort of, you know, whats a greater threat, to whom. I think we need to quantify what the threats are. But we have to move Forward Together as americans to confront the bigots, the racists or the terrorists. Otherwise they win and we lose. If you look at charlottesville, the nazis came that night, or whatever. The groups came. They had a game plan. They werent worried about the law. They knew what they were going to do on the internet. They even had a way to place themselves in their own minds as victims that night. Did you know that they complained that they were actually pushed by Law Enforcement into the antifa, and thats how the whole violence began. When i look at that horrific piece of theater that was so incredibly effective for them, that was a group that did their own planning. And they understand the rules of the game. They knew what they wanted to violate. We live in a day in which because of the Internet Everything local is global and everything global is local. And as a result, whether its something in the middle east or the horrific events that took place on the bicycle path in new york, when those things take place, every single Security Officer of every Jewish Institution across the United States has an immediate conversation with the rabbi, with the executive director. These are concerns that are not far removed from us on a daily basis. Thank you, rabbi. Chair recognizes Ranking Member. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Welcome to our panel of witnesses for this hearing. Mr. Cohen, can you give the Southern Poverty Law Center experiences with domestic terrorist organizations here in the United States, whether you see a proliferation of that ideology or organization and to what extent, what region of the country is it peculiar to, if so . Thank you for the question. To answer the last part first, there is no region of our country that is not affected by hate groups. None. And thats quite unfortunate. Over the last 15, 20 years, weve seen an increase in the number of hate groups, driven, we think, primarily by the countrys changing demographics. Theres a backlash to it. You saw it during president Obamas Administration where he represented the kind of change that some people were scared of. It preceded him but was intensified during his period of time. After 9 11, unfortunately, i think we saw in the country a retreat from a focus on the threat of traditional forms of domestic terrorism. Partly for an understandable reason. The horror and carnage of 9 11. I think the pendulum had swung to far. Hopefully, after charlottesville, which i think is a wakeup call, you know, the pendulum will begin to swing back, where we can take that form of threat more seriously. Thank you very much. The other two witnesses talked a little bit about social media and how that has become the weapon of choice, if you please, for a lot of these hate groups. Chief, can you give us your experience with this. Your organizational experience . Absolutely. Social media has become the platform. It is intensified the voice of hate. Its become the location thats basically made hate a megaphone to the rest of the world. And it is a place where, as the earlier panel had mentioned, its where people are being radicalized. As the video that you showed earlier shows, thats the type of information thats being shared widely with individuals throughout the country. Before you would have to be, as you mentioned, in an area that may have a large group of these types of individuals. Now its wide open. Our experience is that they are theyre constantly bombarding individuals with those types of videos and trying to normalize that mindset and that behavior. Rabbi, whats been your experience . Thank you, congressman. Im here with my colleague, rick eaton, who i consider one of the worlds great experts on this issue. We put out an annual report that gives a snapshot of its called digital terrorism and hate. Thats the project. And included over the last few years have been report cards. So we name names and for a number of years twitter would get across the board f for doing nothing. Facebook has generally done a lot more than others. But theyre grappling with 1. 5 billion separate pages. We have always felt and continue to be convinced that an important component of fighting this virus has to be Silicon Valley, the individual companies. They cannot and should not hide behind First Amendment. Theyre in business. Theyre doing very nicely, thank you. I think increasingly, they recognize or have recognized some of their responsibilities, but they can do in their way a whole lot more than the combined membership of the United States house, senate, and the executive branch. Theyre very powerful. They have collectively created the most powerful Marketing Tool ever. And while after 9 11 we were extremely worried that our far right here would be mimicking the islamists, well it turns out that al qaeda and isis actually ended up mimicking our extremists when it came to lone wolf. That was a u. S. Idea and it was brought over to yemen. We know the results. But the internet empowers and validates the individuals, the conspiracies, et cetera, and its not so much at this point passing new laws. We have to really insist that our partners here, the collective genius thats giving collective genius thats giving us all these bells and whistles and social media and beyond, they have to be directly involved in degrading the marketing capabilities of the bigots, both local, national and globally. Thank you. Mr. Cohen, whats been your experience with those individuals and organizations and their use of social media . Well, as not surprisingly, you know, the hate exists now on the net. In 2008, when president obama was elected, there are about 140,000 registered users on storm front, on one of the oldest neonazi websites. Today there are over 30,000 registered users. Gives you a sense of the growth of it. I echo what rabbi said about the digital platforms in Silicon Valley. Theyre private businesses, they can do what they want. But all of them say in their terms of service that theyre not going to allow hate. Sometimes they say that is merely a Public Relations ploy, right . And so we try to get them to live up to their terms of service. Sometimes by embarrassing them publicly. Paypal, for example, was very slow to live up to its terms of service. But after charlottesville, when they got some bad press, they did. So we think its important to recognize that hate is growing on the net. The anonymity, the ease of finding hate on the net fuels it. The echo chamber, as rabbi cooper said. And i think its critically important for groups like us, not so much the government, but groups like us, to hold those companies to their terms of service. Thank you. I yield back. The chair recognizes mr. Perry. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Thanks, gentlemen, for your attendance. Mr. Coh

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