Festival and austin is the host of this hourlong event. Law thank you evan, thank all of you for being here, this is titled from within the topic on domestic terrorism, law, couple of quick reminders, this will be 60 minutes total but we will leave plenty of time for questions, we know that some of you have questions you want to ask our no kidding allstar panel here, secondly in previous sessions at the festival we have heard some very interesting ring tones, we would not like to hear any more of those interesting ring tones, so please remember to silence your phones but if you do want to take pictures, taken videos, etc and treat them yes they hashtag at trip fest 19 is how you will do that, we will take questions at the end and the microphone will be passed around so if you want to get the attention of the microphone please look around as we move to that portion of the program. Quickly im david the chief operating officer and i work in the Counter Terrorism center both before and after september 11th so now we will be revisiting the terrorism issue from a different perspective, but im going to bring the best expertise and insight from our panelist,s bobby is one of the confound areas of law fare who served on the president s own task force, he is now the chair and law and World Affairs at the university of texas where you also directs the center, maryam accord has been the acting assistant for security, the general for National Security and 20 years before that the u. S. , assist in your, situation is not illegal its director for the constitutional advocacy and protection and visiting professor of law Georgetown University law center, one step closer you have lisa monaco, the Homeland Security and counterterrorism to barack obama, as well as the assistant attorney general for National Security and chief of staff and then director robert, mueller whatever happened to him . Shes now the cochair on Data Security and privacy group, she teaches National Security law that New York University security of law and is a security analyst at cnn and last really not least nick the, director of the Counterterrorism Center after serving in government positions in the administrations, he is now senior director for National Security and counterterrorism programs at the Mccain Institute for leadership, and the college of law, Arizona State university. That is a lot of background ends experiencing to bring on this issue confronting us today. So lets start with what is laying the, stage bobby what is domestic terrorism and what statues do we have to help us address it . So the first thing to understand and grappling this is that there can be a difference between what we might describe this the ordinary sense of the phrase and what legal definitions there might be, so lets just start with the common sense understanding which is usually described as Something Like the following, illegal acts of violence where the mental state of the person conducting this is to have a coercive effect on government policy and or to intimidate or terrorists a civilian population, so there is this motivation to distinguish it from a crime, trafficking violence that sort of, thing that is just a common sense understanding, what makes it domestic instead of just heroism in general would be where the nature of the threat actor doesnt have a substantial foreign tie, its not emanating in the form of direction and control or development of the flaw, etc from abroad, that is to say it is simply one of us doing it here. That is the common sense understanding, as for how it is spoken about and statutes that is where it gets tricky and their lies our issues in this area. At the federal level we have a variety of what might be described as generic Violent Crime statutes, but then we have a slice of federal criminal law that is specific to terrorism, there is a whole laundry list of all the offense is there, most of them are International Terrorism focused because that is an area where of course the federal government has to play a lead role. It is widely believed that we dont have a domestic terrorism statute, it is true that we dont have one that is labeled as such and i think we will talk about whether that is an important gap that needs to be closed, simply for the symbolic purposes and all the things that fall from the symbolism, but its also the case as some of the terrorism statutes actually do apply to domestic terrorism scenarios, so thats a practical matter, when can the federal government get involved, if it is a terrorist attack it is purely domestic but it involves explosives or attacks on certain types of targets, federal if issues, transportation hubs, in those scenarios ontario some statutes can be charging, the practical gap, there is two, guns and other forms of violence like weapons used in a vehicle that dont involve explosives, domestic terrorism are used and this method would because, that is not covered in the federal level on they have another way of approaching it is triggered. Secondly you may have heard something called the Material Support statute, it gets complicated because there is more than one of these, but what people of europe is like an embargo that flat out prohibits any provision of support, tangible or intangible to terrorist organization that has been designated as such. We dont do that with domestic terrorist organizations so that is a separate gap and whether any of these gaps should be closed is a separate question and i think we will talk about. And quickly you mentioned federal, federal, federal but for an issue where a murder is using a vehicle oregon or an edged weapon states will prosecute that. Its not domestic terrorists are running away because there is no scenario that will violate state laws so in our own most recent tragedy in all paso here and takes us there is capital word or charges filed, it doesnt matter that we cant file federal domestic charge in order to receive the penalty for that case, going back to previous cases of this in the United States, there is been a lot of talk about what needs to be done and not much has happened because of it. Lisa you wrote recently that regarding domestic terrorism and confront this threat, what do you think should be done to address these elements of domestic terrorism . So thanks for mentioning that and at the white house of Homeland Security and for george w. Bush and that piece to put aside political pride the partisanship in really do our duty to focus on the most urgent threats we have a nation domestic terrorism, gun, violence attacks on our democracy, all of those are things where we feel we need more bipartisanship and not bipartisanship, so on domestic terrorism in particular i think theres a few things we should do, one we should call it by its, name we need to call it out and here i would say, the good move by the Homeland Security last week and issuing strategy paper that says and quite clear language from the department of Homeland Security, domestic terrorism and attacks are a threat as foreign terrorism and counterterrorism, that is given the headlines and tragedy that oh paso indeed in another has faced seems apparent but it hasnt been said, it hasnt been said enough certainly by the federal government or experts at the federal level so we have to call it out, i think we also have to put it on the same priority list, we have to put it on the same plane as foreign terrorism, which is not to say that we should be ignoring or downgrading our approach and our focus on terrorism, i suspect there is a lot of unanimity but i think we have to recalibrate how we collaborate this, because resources focus leadership which gets to one of the things that i think we really need to do, one is a domestic terrorism statue, she has written eloquently about this but doing that i think will apply the same tomorrow to acts of violence, the same that we have for foreign domestic terrorism. We also need to restore the job of the Homeland Security counterterrorism adviser in the white house, so that role the one i had has been downgraded and the person who serves in the now downgraded function of that job i think has been put into witness protection after he had to make a statement about the sharpiegate. Lets be clear there still is a position there just isnt a report to the president like you did. Correct he has been down graded within the structure and what does that mean . Is this all just Bureau Credit bologna and when i was in that room the idea was president bush started this and you have one person operating in the senior and 24 7 to wake up and to focus on the next foreign leader engagement but on threat to the homeland and to report directly, i can tell you waited and that is why obama gave you a nickname doctor do because every time i saw my spring and bad news, but structure matters. There is also no crime that would apply to stockpile weapons, intending them to be used and condemning a mass shooting for ideological purposes and coercing, so i conceived of a statute and talked with a lot of people on capitol hill, i talked with civil rights and Civil Liberties groups, ive talked with the Oversight Board, ive been trying to talk to as many people as they can about this to see if we cant have a proposal that satisfies all the concerns, so the basic outline would be, criminalizing already existed crimes of violence, murder, kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault, but when done with the intent to intimate or coerce or influence policy of government through coercion and when that in the United States or the u. S. Territories this would be terrorism within the territorial jurisdiction of the u. S. , i say that instead of domestic terrorism because it would also apply to a terrorist attack on behalf of isis and alqaeda. This crime of violence in the race to intimidate or coerce, what that would do would enforce not only a predicate for a Law Enforcement to use the type of tools they used to combat International Terrorism, we talk about those, online undercover persona,s sting operations, things that people criticize were being too aggressive, i understand that but those are things that are aimed at prevention, so it gives Law Enforcement more of a predicate, they can do something now, but when they know that this is a statute that they are predicated on their investigation on, it gives them a route that is more direct as opposed to calling it Something Else in order to use those tools, it would also allow them for the criminalization of the stockpiling of weapons, knowing and intending that those are to be used in committing a crime of terrorism within the jurisdiction, that is probably more complicated than we want to get into here, and it would involve amending to do that, essentially you may recall the coast guard for stockpiling an arsenal of assault rifles and other weapons in had written extensively about his fouryear plan where he would be accumulating weapons and ultimately commit Mass Shootings intent on creating a white ethnics state, because it wasnt a federal crime he was charged with possession of a silencer that is on lawful, Unlawful Possession of drugs because he had drugs in his home and Unlawful Possession of firearms by a drug addict because he had drugs, these are all fiveyear offensives and we would call them minor fences, those of us that have been prosecutors and the magistrate judge ruling on whether to detain him prior to trial says i wont be able to detain him, you have not even charged him with the crime of violence, now the u. S. Government appeal that to the District Court judge that overruled it and said i will detain him but it is a serious concern when you have someone so intent on committing a mass attack, causing massive violence that really there was very little to charge him with, last thing and i know we need to move on, people say what about hate crimes, there are federal hate crimes and the government has been more effectively using those recently thats what you heard the attorney general after el paso say to his credit we are investigating this like domestic terrorism but his next breath was to look into whether detergent with a hate crime and you might think, why, that its because we didnt have terrorism offense 2. 2 and hate crime sometime can fill that gap, robert the tree of life synagogue shooter has been charged with federal hate crime, but they are not going to completely fill a gap and they service lately different role within our criminal justice scheme and we can talk more about that if people are interested, it is one option that is a fruitful option and one that is being used it just doesnt completely fall back up. So there is that statutory side but there is the mechanics of government, how do they support and surprise you to know that immense amount of hunting and resources were dedicated to this in the federal government and especially countering it and we have nick here who ran of the Counterterrorism Center and was its deputy for two and a half years before that and has said publicly that absolutely none of that time was directly focused on domestic terrorism, neck how do we understand, that how does the public understand have being the Counterterrorism Center was not focused on this threat. And then on lawyer of the bunch here so i would fully subscribe to the set of comments made before me that we need a better framework but as a practical matter the way the Government FacesInternational Terrorism concerns and we have things that have been brought up to me, when i would go abroad and meet my counterparts from other countries and i would think about international versus domestic terrorism, they would look at me as if i was bring some lexicon to the table that made no sense, they didnt make any sense, or create any such divide they simply talk about the kind of terrorism they were confronted with, why are you americans complicating this was the sense that i got away from them and thinking about into different ways and secondly when i thought about things like the tree of life synagogue massacre and i thought how are my friends in the white house and administration responding when event happens like that and i knew from my long experience in the white house sitting alongside mary and lisa, i knew exactly how we wouldve picked and sworn into action had it been the individual tied to isis and alqaeda we wouldve had the cia, the defence department, the Treasury Department every National Security agency that you can think of wouldve been around the table with us trying to figure out what piece of this can we help solve for address, on the other hand as soon as that person identified as a domestic terrorists and not being willing to an isis or nokia all the rest of us in the metaphorical sense pushed ourselves back from the table and look to the raid and said fbi over to you, it becomes then is simply an fbi matter to treat this as a Law Enforcement set of challenges, i dont say this as being critical what im saying is we tend to leave them alone on the Playing Field, to their credit theyre amping up their game against that set of issues when you see the testimony talking about that but i think the rest of the government needs to catch up in terms of its ability to contribute to solutions on this. Just to fill in that part, why do you need a whole of government approach that area. Because instead 11 no one a tool in the two boxes actually able to deal with any of this is really not terrorism, we couldnt bomber fight our way out of this problem nor could we spend our way out of it all these need to be new pieces the intelligence is part of the equation so its the same with domestic terrorism and marry rightly pointed out that it has stepped up its game at least rhetorically with the document last week the acting secretary mcaleenan released that says the fbi, the department of Homeland Security will be approaching these issues, renewed urgency and a sense of rio prioritization, the question is will that follow with the resources and programs, all the things that we use as a metrics to find out if you really serious about something and i thought about my own organization not to dodge your question and i thought oh all of that effort and energy that went to create this and who was told in the early days focus overseas, focus on the International Terrorism problem and not just simply live where we are today, it makes no sense why would you have your premier Counterterrorism Organization with some of the best minds and access to the best information on terrorism related matters and the terrorism concerns and i think we would all agree is at the top now, if you go to communities right now sure you are ready to be worried about this by isis and alqaeda, that threat is out there but the far more pressing threat as mary suggested by individuals motivated by white supremacist all ideology and hate the ideology or Something Like that so bringing in this to the game its not a panacea, its not a civil bullet and it doesnt mean that you guys are out here and we will fix the problem but it does come closer to what you said, government approaches