Homeland Security Targets Only Left-wing Organizations and Jihadis

ABC News: Silence Recalls Oklahoma City Victims

Children who lost their parents in the Oklahoma City bombing recited the names of the dead, and mourners gently laid bouquets on empty chairs symbolizing each victim Tuesday as they observed the 10th anniversary of the nation's worst act of domestic terrorism.

Timothy McVeigh, a rightwing terrorist, was convicted of killing 168 people maiming and injuring more than 500 more, confessed and was executed for the bombing.
Eric Rudolph pleads guilty to a series of Atlanta bombings including two women's clinics, a lesbian bar and Centenial Olympic Park. The attacks, which occurred between 1996 and 1998, killed two people and maimed and wounded more than 110 people.
Meanwhile Homeland Security is making a list of terrist threats based on ideology, rather than fact. Their list amazingly includes only left wing domestic political groups, some committed to peaceful civil disobedience, and jihadis. There are no right wing groups on the list!
Some argue that the rightwing terrorists have fragmented since the OKC bombing, not wanting to be associated with McVeigh. “A lot of people said, ‘I’m fighting against the Zionist Occupied Government, I’m not here to kill children,” Ellis explained. However, others point out many on the list present a risk at best theoretical, rather than real. And if the right wing is concerned about Zionists, this administration is closer to the Israeli government than any in history.
CQ.com

Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries. “They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat,” said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. “If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that,” said German, who left the FBI last year. “Hopefully it’s an oversight.”


James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. “The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future.”

[...]
As a final item, the list notes the threat of eco-terrorists, who “will continue to focus their attacks on property damage in an effort to change policy.” The document notes that although “publicly Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate their attacks.”


The document lists several groups or sources of radical violence that DHS does not consider threats to the homeland. Lebanese Hizballah and various Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, are unlikely to attack the United States, the report’s authors conclude. Several high-profile terror prosecutions, including cases against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and Florida professor Sami al-Arian, rest on their connection to such groups.


“Why are we expending so many resources targeting people who have allegedly provided support to groups that don’t threaten us?” asked David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a frequent critic of the U.S. government’s war on terror. “How does that make us safer?”

Clearly, the Bush Administration has decided that Jihadis and left-wing nonviolent groups such as ALF are their ideological enemies. Be damned pragmatic priorities regarding safety! This is a crusade!


Oklahoma City | Homeland Security
Silence Recalls Oklahoma City Victims
168 Moments of Silence Recall Victims As U.S. Marks 10th Anniversary of Oklahoma City Bombing
By KELLY KURT
The Associated Press | ABC News
Apr. 19, 2005 - Children who lost their parents in the Oklahoma City bombing recited the names of the dead, and mourners gently laid bouquets on empty chairs symbolizing each victim Tuesday as they observed the 10th anniversary of the nation's worst act of domestic terrorism.
In a church that served as a temporary morgue after the blast, more than 1,600 people remembered those who died with 168 seconds of silence starting at 9:02 a.m., the moment that the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building collapsed into a heap of desks, concrete, and bodies on April 19, 1995.
They also honored the survivors, the rescuers and the endurance of a damaged city that former President Clinton said "made us all Americans again."
"Oklahoma City changed us all. It broke our hearts and lifted our spirits and brought us together," said Clinton, who was in office on the sunny morning that Timothy McVeigh brought his bomb and hatred for the government to the city in a Ryder truck.
Across the street at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, in the grassy field where the building once stood, 168 empty chairs were a solemn reminder of the carnage of a decade earlier. Teddy bears were placed on miniature chairs representing the 19 children slain in the building's daycare.
Juanita Espinosa wiped away tears as she stood in front of the pint-sized chair of her cousin, 2-year-old Zackary Chavez.
"They found his head one week, and his body another week," she said. "It's still too much to think about."
Regina Bonny, a retired undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency who was pulled from the debris, placed wreaths and flowers on the chairs of four slain co-workers. "I pray over them. I talk to them," she said. "I'll never let anyone forget them."
McVeigh was convicted of federal conspiracy and murder charges and executed on June 11, 2001. Conspirator Terry Nichols is serving multiple life sentences after being convicted in federal and state court.
"I'm on the road to forgiveness," said Jannie Coverdale, who lost her two young grandsons, Aaron and Elijah, in the blast. "I will feel much better once I can forgive Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols."
Vice President Dick Cheney also spoke at the ceremony, telling survivors and family members of victims that goodness has overcome the evil of the blast in the last 10 years.
"All humanity can see you experienced bottomless cruelty and responded with heroism," Cheney said. "Your strength was challenged and you held firm. Your faith was tested and it has not wavered."
In a statement, President Bush said Oklahoma City "will always be one of those places in our national memory where the worst and the best both came to pass."
Clinton got a chuckle when he mentioned the Survivor Tree, the elm that was heavily damaged in the bombing and is now a leafy green reminder of it.
"Boy, that tree was ugly when I first saw it (in 1995), but survive it did," Clinton said.
"Trees are good symbols for what you did. You can't forget the past of a tree. It's in the roots, and if you lose the roots you lose the tree. But the nature of the tree is to always reach for tomorrow. It's in the branches."
Behind him sat living symbols of hope: four fidgeting children who survived the blast.
P.J. Allen, Brandon and Rebecca Denny and Christopher Nguyen reminded the crowd of the memorial's creed, "May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity."
The former president and the vice president stood and applauded them.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
March 25, 2005 – 9:43 p.m.
Animal Rights Groups and Ecology Militants Make DHS Terrorist List, Right-Wing Vigilantes Omitted
By Justin Rood, CQ Staff
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation’s security.
According to the list — part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security — between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as Al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.
It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.
DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment or confirmation of the document’s authenticity.
The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police officer and seriously maimed a nurse.
Another Army of God member, James Kopp, was convicted in the 1998 shooting of a doctor who performed abortions.
Individuals affiliated with such groups have also been involved in many smaller terrorist acts, including mailing hundreds of bogus anthrax letters to abortion clinics, and in plots to obtain and use conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons against civilians. In 2003, for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.
‘Still a Threat’
Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries.
“They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat,” said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. “If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that,” said German, who left the FBI last year. “Hopefully it’s an oversight.”
James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. “The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future.”
Focusing on Left-Wing Movements
Last year, following arson and vandalism sprees on both coasts attributed to radical left-wing groups such as ALF and ELF, the FBI made those movements its top domestic terror priority. But right-wing groups remained a concern, according to one FBI official.
“That doesn’t de-emphasize our interest in other domestic terror groups,” stressed the official, who would not be named discussing the bureau’s counterterror strategy, during a phone interview Friday. “For us, the right-wing patriot movement remains a continuing threat.” (The FBI considers militias, tax protesters, and anti-government groups part of the right-wing movement, the official said; the bureau considers violent anti-abortion extremists a separate movement.)
The DHS document, entitled “Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011,” is dated January 2005. Its pages are marked “Sensitive — Do Not Distribute Outside the Department of Homeland Security — Draft.” Each paragraph in the document is marked “(U/FOUO),” which typically indicates it has been reviewed by a government censor and determined to be unclassified, but “for official use only.”
Under a section marked “Threat and Vulnerability Assessment,” the document asks and answers the question “Who are the adversaries?”
First and foremost, the draft document says, are Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Second are new radical Islamist groups that arise overseas amid the rubble of the old Al Qaeda organization. These organizations “could try to supplant” Al Qaeda and “would see a Homeland attack as a way to attain that goal,” the document states.
Domestic radical Islamic groups concern the department, because of their potential to support Al Qaeda operations within the country, or to serve as a “recruiting pool” for the movement.
“However,” the document reads, “we are not convinced that any of these organizations acting alone would pursue a major attack against the Homeland.”
As a final item, the list notes the threat of eco-terrorists, who “will continue to focus their attacks on property damage in an effort to change policy.” The document notes that although “publicly ALF and ELF promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate their attacks.”
Priorities Questioned
The document lists several groups or sources of radical violence that DHS does not consider threats to the homeland.
Lebanese Hizballah and various Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, are unlikely to attack the United States, the report’s authors conclude.
Several high-profile terror prosecutions, including cases against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and Florida professor Sami al-Arian, rest on their connection to such groups.
“Why are we expending so many resources targeting people who have allegedly provided support to groups that don’t threaten us?” asked David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a frequent critic of the U.S. government’s war on terror. “How does that make us safer?”
State-sponsored terrorism also is not an immediate concern to the department, according to the document. “In the post 9/11 environment, countries do not appear to be facilitating or supporting terrorist groups intent on striking the U.S. homeland,” it reads. In fact, of all the countries designated state sponsors of terrorism, only Iran “appears to have the possible future motivation” to use terrorist groups to plot against the United States.
In the past few years, according to MIPT researcher Ellis, left-wing violence has overtaken right-wing violence as the primary form of domestic terror. “When a conservative government comes to power, you see more activity from the opposite side of the spectrum,” he explained. At the same time, the membership and activity of right-wing groups has suffered since the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the broadcasting of images of the children who died in the building’s second-floor day care center.
“A lot of people said, ‘I’m fighting against the Zionist Occupied Government, I’m not here to kill children,” Ellis explained.
Still, Ellis warned, the movements remain worthy of the government’s concern. Last October, the FBI arrested a man in Tennessee who tried to buy sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosive to attack a government building. The man, Demetrius “Van” Crocker, had also inquired about obtaining nuclear waste or other nuclear material, according to the FBI.
And in 2003, a Pennsylvania man was convicted of mailing hundreds of letters containing fake anthrax to abortion clinics around the United States.
Although their activities appear to be decreasing, such groups are still dangerous, said Ellis. “We don’t have the luxury of ignoring threats from either side of the political spectrum.”
Justin Rood can be reached at jrood@cq.com.
Source: CQ Homeland Security
© 2005 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved