Homeland Security Looked Past Antigovernment Movement, Ex-Analyst Says:
Surprising and not not surprising at all. The vast US security appartus with it's astonishing budgets should really be able to use some of those ressources to look at homegrown threats, but if partisan politics intervene things tend to become, well, politicized.Daryl Johnson once worked in the branch of the Department of Homeland Security that studied the threats posed by antigovernment groups. His former office was shut down more than five years ago.
But when members of an armed group took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon last week, Mr. Johnson was not surprised.
In 2009, the former analyst wrote a report that warned of a growing antigovernment movement and the possible recruitment of returning military veterans that could “lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone-wolf extremists.”
His words drew fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers and conservative news media, labeling the report an unfair assessment of legitimate criticisms of the government. The document was retracted after Janet Napolitano, who was then the Homeland Security secretary, apologized to veterans, and the Extremism and Radicalization Branch was quietly dismantled.
This doesn't mean that errors won't be made and attacks would't be comitted but at least the government should try hard to protect it's citiziens. That goes in a different sense for Europe as well, which tends sometimes to be not so keen on other issues and threats...
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