An Assessment of the U.S. Government's Domestic Terrorism Assessment

[Nevilledog]

https://www.lawfareblog.com/assessment-us-governments-domestic-terrorism-asssessment


Late in the afternoon on Friday, May 14, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security released one of the more consequential national security reports you likely never heard of. The document, put out in consultation with the director of national intelligence, is a joint report containing a strategic intelligence assessment and data on domestic terrorism. The congressionally mandated report assesses the domestic terrorism threat, details the agencies’ investigative procedures and provides data on domestic terrorism cases.

The document screams of a Frankenstein interagency coordination exercise, complete with sections with different fonts and writing styles, reflecting the variety of departments and agencies involved in putting it together. The 40-page report is a valiant, albeit incomplete, attempt to lay down an initial marker on the state of domestic terrorism in America. The news cycle about the report may have come and gone, but here are some important takeaways that shouldn’t be overlooked.

The Public Finally Has the Data, Sort Of.

For the first time, the FBI has put a solid number on domestic terrorism arrests in the United States. In short, it has been arresting fewer and fewer domestic terrorism subjects every year since 2015.

The FBI conducted approximately 1,000 domestic terrorism investigations each year from fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2019. “Investigations'” come in different forms, and unfortunately the bureau did not break down that number to indicate how many are coded as assessments, preliminary investigations and full investigations. Those differences could help reveal more about the scope and depth of the workload. While the number of domestic terrorism-related deaths increased over the three years, the number of arrests and charges decreased each year. Between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2019, almost 850 domestic terrorism suspects were arrested by or in connection with the FBI. In fiscal 2019, around 107 subjects were arrested—about half the number arrested in fiscal 2015.

*snip*