 Thank you all for coming My name is Brian Fishman. I'm a research fellow here at the New America Foundation really appreciate you Taking the time out both those in the room and also Watching online for this event to talk about one of the the more important issues of the day domestically at least which is the use of Infiltration and surveillance techniques to counter domestic terrorism what we're gonna look at today I hope that we focus on is is the question not That gets looked at most often which is the issue of whether these Techniques are moral and legal, but I really want to explore and I hope you'll ask questions related to the issue of When should they be used from a practical standpoint? Do they work and how well do they work? and and let's dive down into that a little bit so One of the reasons and then probably the most important reason that we're having this discussion is the series of Associated Press articles about the NYPD's program to monitor and surveil Suspected terrorists and and the communities in which they reside in and around New York City Two of the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters that wrote that series of reports are here with us today Matt Apuzo and Adam Goldman. They're two colleagues Eileen Sullivan Chris Holly are not here They literally they put the prize in your hand yesterday. Yes, so congratulations and Then we also have John Berger who's just completed a what I think is a really interesting and comprehensive report looking at an FBI investigation of The Patriot Movement in the early 1990s. You can find hard copies outside. It's also online at the New America Foundation website And what this does is it really sort of details the process that the FBI went through as it was trying to understand a Quite radical milieu in which it had the sense that very bad things were happening But couldn't quite put its finger on it And so you get this process of mission creep that is that is quite interesting To frame this a little bit I want to just throw out some statistics from a New America Foundation study that was done by my colleague Peter Bergen former colleague Andrew Leibovich and then Jennifer Rowland who's sitting out of the table out there a Project that they did with the Maxwell school up at Syracuse Looking at homegrown terrorism and what they did is they looked at 192 cases of jihadist related homegrown terrorism since 9-11 and 118 cases of sort of left and right wing Terrorism from after 9-11 what they found is that in terms of the casualties that this created It's relatively a small problem 30 people were killed 17 of those related to jihadist terrorism 13 related to sort of left and right Extremists that relates to 73 Americans killed in hate crimes during that time period and 15,000 Americans murdered every year So we should keep this problem in context now Of course those numbers would have gone way up if Umar Frouk Abdul Mutalib had been able to successfully detonate the underwear bomb in the Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit So there are some very near misses in that in that that keep those numbers down But one of the things and perhaps the most relevant for our conversation here today is that 40% of those jihadist plots were involved an FBI informant or an undercover Operative within those plots And one of the misconceptions that I'd like to point out and the reason why we have this panel's Structured as it is is that while 40% of the jihadist plots perhaps were were stopped Or were law enforcement used those those kinds of techniques to deal with them 50% of the right wing and left wing Plots had an informant or an FBI undercover. This is not just Contrary to popular belief at least on the national level This is not just an issue that impacts the American Muslim community and I think that's Important and we should and we should look at that sort of very closely. So With no further ado, I'm gonna try to stay out of the way For this conversation as much as possible Goldman's mocking me over there I'm gonna turn this over to Matt and To Adam they're gonna talk for 20 minutes or so then we'll go to John Burger who will provide some historical perspective And then we'll turn it over to Q&A when we get to the Q&A part of this conversation I hope you'll speak up. Please wait for the microphone and Announce your name and affiliation when we do that. So with no further ado Matt Adam Yeah, so I'll just talk just for a few minutes just about what what the NYPD is doing So we have a little sort of factual Background and then Adam will talk a little bit about You know about What's been accomplished what's been missed? So after 9-11 as I am sure most people here know You Ray Kelly became the new police commissioner in In New York and one of the first things he did was sort of Reinvigorate the intelligence division the intelligence division had become the kind of this backwater You know glorified show first service for diplomats visiting New York But in its heyday, you know the the intelligence division had you know red squads and the sort of the hunt for communists They infiltrating student groups civil rights leaders, you know, they were videotaping protesters They had undercovers in all of you know, sort of the activist groups the unions anybody who was you know potential troublemaker That after a class action lawsuit the intelligence division was basically lopped off at the knees and became this You know backwater, but Ray Kelly he decides they need they needed an intelligence division again and Looking for somebody to run it. He hires Dave Cohen who's former deputy director of operations at the CIA Basically the nation's top spy so he arrives and Realizes he needs help and so he calls down to Langley and gets to her tent on the phone and says, you know What New York needs is we need somebody who's Who's still in the CIA but working with the NYPD so? So George Tennant sends up a man named Larry Sanchez and Larry is Working for the CIA he's on CIA payroll He has an office at the CIA station in New York, but he also has an office at the NYPD and his job is to basically Be Cohen's personal liaison to the CIA and he helps to create some of the programs That have become hallmarks of the NYPD over the past decade One of the first things they did was create what is known as the demographics unit and demographics unit basically carved up the city into various zones and Dispatch teams of plainclothes officers typically Arab or South Asian officers in their 20s. They would go out to restaurants delis Hookah bars cafes clubs basically wherever Muslims would hang out and their job was to Chat up the owner engage his sentiment. What it was he think of America? So take a look around are people watching Al Jazeera. How are they reacting to Al Jazeera? What are they talking about? Sit in the booth maybe listening on a couple of conversations In the next you know the next table try to figure out like what do people here think and And every day they're writing up these daily progress reports when we've seen their reports and it'll say you know so and so You know this restaurant is is owned by you know so and so he appears to be a devout Muslim He's from Pakistan You know we they'll collect phone numbers off the bulletin boards of people who are renting rooms So those all those phone numbers will go into the database. Oh, who's renting a room in Muslim neighborhoods? So you end up with these big reports, you know reports on Moroccan neighborhoods, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese Albanians And the idea is is if there's ever a credible threat of an Albanian terrorist in New York They can just go grab the Albanian report and they've got they know where they're gonna work eat shop pray Where they're gonna get their haircut. I mean how many? Pakistanis are cab drivers of what their medallion numbers are So there's the demographics unit, and then they also have you know this long roster of informants Sort of colloquially known as moss crawlers This is a program that was basically cribbed from the CIA And while the CIA Quickly determined that it was a waste of time the NYPD has really embraced it Basically, it takes you take paid informants and you have them just sort of cycle through the mosques of New York City And just kind of be the eyes and ears of the NYPD inside the mosque and they're issuing They're they're giving daily reports to their handlers about what they're hearing. I mean some of the reports We've seen include, you know very innocuous stuff You know Talking about we should have a pro we should plan a protest we should have a letter writing campaign against you know the the profit cartoons and You know we should we should talk to our local politicians and And all that gets you know sort of the idea of who's active in the community these guys get put in databases Who's speaking up who you know, even if you speak up and say peacefully, you know, you're gonna go into a police file They also had a cool program That we never heard of before If you get your name changed in the city of New York every couple weeks the The court system Sends the database of everybody who changed their name in the city of New York to the NYPD And their analysts go through and they look for people who have sort of for lack of a better way to say it Muslim sounding names Going to American sounding names, you know, whatever an American sounding name is right? So Mohammed Amir to John Smith you get flagged and you're gonna go into a file And then if you're John Smith and you're going to Mohammed Amir You're going in a file and then what they do is they'll run background checks against you and they'll see you know And because they have access all these federal databases, you know, they have access to Treasury Department records So they can look at your foreign travel They can they'll check and see if you've ever applied for city job if you've passed any background checks You know, they'll obviously do open-source, you know Accurant auto-track reporting and all of this is collected and maintained in police databases The idea being well that you know, there are people like Carlos Bledsoe who? Changed his name, you know converted to Islam changes name and shot up a little rock Arkansas recruiting station and people Like David Hedley who changed their name to sound very American so that they could travel and go unnoticed So that kind of became the hallmark of the NYPD is sort of when one or two things happen We go and look there to make sure it's not it. Maybe you should make sure that's not a trend or we assume It is a trend so they spent a lot of time, you know, finding out where people work out because you know the 9-11 hijackers Worked out at gyms. So like where if you're a Moroccan, where would you what gym would you go to? They determined you would probably go to the Y they went took pictures of the Y and went in and talked to the guys who run the Y and you know and You know, so those are the those are the those are the programs and and they the net was just so wide That a cat, you know that lots of people I mean, you know that yeah lots and lots of innocent people are put into these Into these databases including many of the same Muslim community leaders who? sort of stand shoulder to shoulder with the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg and sort of have decried terrorism. So I mean literally some of the the leading imams who you know When there's a foiled plot or you know one of these things, you know These imams come forward and they stand behind Bloomberg when Bloomberg says, you know, we won't accept this in our city And we're gonna fight this these imams are there. They have dinner breakfast with Bloomberg Meanwhile, they're also being spied on by the NYPD. They have informants Directly attached to them. They have an undercover officer in their mosque and you know, the idea is is sort of a total Penetration of you know, the communities where the NYPD has decided a Terrorist is likely to be I mean, they've mapped every every mosque You know within hundreds of miles of of New York And and they also have it's gotten steadily to be not just terrorism You know the we've seen documents that showed that they went to to New Orleans to attend a People Summit which is basically a group a gathering of community organizers and liberal advocacy groups getting together to talk about, you know, the problems with free trade agreements and They infiltrated that meeting. They sent an undercover to New Orleans to write up reports about all these liberal groups Who were there and what were they talking about and who was their leaders? And again, they say this is open-source a lot of this is open-source stuff, you know So they're totally allowed to do it and they're totally allowed to collect it And but some of it is also, you know, they have these they have cameras all across the city And you know, they have cameras that are trained on mosques. They have undercover cars that Sit outside mosques and videotape people coming in and out and and pull the license plates of everybody Who's going to mosques and so they know who's going to what mosque? and Then the last thing I want to say is the fascinating thing about all this is, you know So the Department of Homeland Security has given something like 1.6 billion dollars to the NYPD since 9-11. They Really don't make any bones about the fact that they don't know where this money goes. They don't know what it's used for The city council approves the NYPD's budget, which is roughly four billion dollars every year and has never once held a hearing on What's the intelligence division doing? there was one say Hearing in Congress sort of an informational hearing in front of Senate Homeland and Larry Sanchez testified about all the great work they were doing and he made a comment and he said, you know one of the things that's been critical to what we do here at the NYPD is we view we view activities that are Historically protected by the First and Fourth Amendment as we now view them as potential precursors to terrorism And nobody on Capitol Hill said Huh, tell tell me more about that. I mean nobody wants to know the White House has sent millions of dollars directly from its drugs our budget To under a program called HIDA high-attensity drug trafficking area They have this program that's used to combat drug trafficking And that money since 9-11 is being used to fund the cars that do the undercover surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods the computers that store all this information You know, there's the office space where this is being run out of And you ask the White House, you know, hey, so how does this fit? Tell me if is this what you mean when you talk about, you know sort of the police department being on We want police departments to be on the cutting edge of sort of our outreach efforts to the Muslim community Is should this be a model and they say well look we don't decide where the money goes or what it's used for We don't had super just a policy office, so we don't get a say So we don't feel like we should have to weigh in on whether we agree or disagree with what this is being used for So nobody really has any oversight of of where this money is going or any visibility into it All of the documents we got would be exempt from, you know, open records requests lawmakers hadn't seen it and The last thing I guess I would say is if This may be this really well may be the best way to fight terrorism in American cities and if it is then why would we want to have that with with so why would you want to have programs like this? Only in New York, I mean there New York is the biggest target, but certainly not the only target Why wouldn't we want a demographics unit in in every city? I mean, why wouldn't we want these cameras all in every city? And and if it is and if it is not the best way I mean if it turns out, you know what this isn't the best way to fight terrorism Then why would we want New York City our main target to be to be using anything other than the best tactics to fight terrorism? so the only way you can sort of have that discussion is by actually acknowledging what it is that is happening there and And figuring out is it the best smartest way to do counterterrorism, you know, 12 years after 9-11 so that and that's kind of what You know the kind of discussions we've hoped that this the series we've written would would get people talking about well One of the things that we were able to do after we were provided literally hundreds of secret NYPD documents is Examine their programs and where they were who they were spying on whether is the Muslim student the MSA's What moss there and And I'll just quote from you from one of the stories we wrote When the NYPD's effectiveness is questioned in the department's Mr. Arden supporters frequently point to a long list of terrorist plots said to have targeted New York since 9-11 The list often is described as plots ordered by the NYPD. It's usually 13 or 14 That's the NYPD narrative in reality However, the NYPD played little or no role in preventing many of those attacks Some like a cyanide plot against the subway system were discovered among evidence obtained overseas But were never sent in motion others like the 2006 plot to blow up US-bound airliners using liquid explosives were thwarted by US Authorities and plans you sorry UK and when plant the plans never got off the ground More recently you might have heard there was a big trial in New York City a man by the name of a decent Dungeoning was convicted of terrorism charges and He'll probably go to jail for the rest of his life Well, Adise was good friends with a guy by the name of Najib Ulazazi and another guy by the name of Zorain And they were good buddies. They all lived in this Queens neighborhood And these were the people that Programs were designed to catch and these were the these were the these were the stereotypes But the thing about it is they missed them completely They'd infiltrated Madhu and Jeanine student organization Queens College missed them. They were in their mosque They missed all three of them. They all attended the same mosque. They missed all three of them So it raises questions about Well, if they were designed to catch these people then how did they miss them another good example is Bryant Neil Venice? And Bryant Neil Venice is one of the more extraordinary figures and counterterrorism. He was from Long Island He got radicalized out there and through perseverance. He made his way to Pakistan and met with al-Qaeda's leadership Not one or two, but he met with Rahman he met with all the top guys and he was helping them with a plot to blow up the Long Island Railroad Once again, he was not on the NYPD's radio radar In Zazi and the other interesting thing about the Zazi plot is you know, they the NYPD said we can't rely on the federal government anymore So we have to we have to recreate this intelligence division But the most serious plots that not that this country has faced since 911 or in fact thwarted by US intelligence They were thwarted by NSA. They were thwarted by the CIA and they were thwarted by the FBI Another interesting example is Shazad the Times Square bomber for all the cameras We have in Times Square for all the technology that's touted. We missed Shazad Shazad came this close from blowing up his car So we wrote a story and we were wondering when we examine these we examine these successes And there's never been a public reckoning for whether this in fact works You know when we have 9-11. Oh my god, we got the 9-11 commission report. There's a total examination I mean everybody's perfectly willing to tear apart the FBI or CIA and put them on display or you know What happened with the underwear bomber in 2009? I mean that I mean there were there were hearings on that How did that happen? We have to fix that but but we're not asking those some questions about the NYPD Why did the NYPD miss Sassi and it once again it goes back to the programs and the effectiveness and that's one of the things we tried to we tried to examine in our reporting do these programs actually work and As we were doing the series we were asking the questions and there was a lot of pushback about the mere mere fact of asking these questions and You know Matt and I Matt and I believe that these were worthy questions to be answered Okay, thanks John. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the Pat Conn investigation? You know the Pat Conn investigation is is Fundamentally different from the NYPD program in some ways they targeted the Patriot community, which is a Loose coalition that was very active in the 90s and still exists today of anti-government extremists of various stripes a lot of overlap with organized racism and The problem with you know the movement and where it does start to resemble what happened with the NYPD is that these guys were you know pressing up against the first and fourth amendments in very similar ways The FBI Decided that they wanted to prioritize investigating this movement after the rise of a criminal gang called the order which was hitting banks and armored cars and using the proceeds to fund white supremacists a bunch of money they stole four million dollars and A vast majority of that money was never recovered and the FBI was concerned that this money was being used to fund extremism so they Took on a number of initiatives to try and tackle this movement they used a variety of paid informants and unpaid informants and then in 1991 they launched an undercover operation called Pat Kahn in which three FBI agents posed as a white supremacist group that they completely invented called the veterans area movement and It was initially deployed against a group in Texas and then that kind of went nowhere And so they shifted their focus to an Alabama group They found some evidence of criminal activity there, but they didn't do anything about it and then they shifted to a group in Tennessee All the while, you know Collecting intelligence basically and then the agents some of the agents who worked on this case told me that this was Designed to create intelligence on the Patriot community The problem with that is that the FBI's guidelines for how they do this kind of group one well-funded Undercover operation requires them to have a specific crime that they're investigating a suspected crime or an imminent crime When this started they used as a pretext the fact that some of these guys in Texas had been making threats about FBI agents who were investigating them These threats never went anywhere. They were just talk as far as anybody could really tell but they continued to be the pretext for this investigation as it sort of spread out into an interstate investigation of multiple groups Basically, you know after after a bit more than two years of Full-time undercover penetration of this movement. They came out of this with no arrests one one Person and some members of his group in Alabama went to jail for the theft of military equipment But the undercover investigation never came into play in that the Army's criminal investigative division and another FBI informant Who wasn't involved in this program provided all of that information? They spent upwards of a hundred thousand dollars Carrying out this investigation they crossed state lines on numerous occasions They recorded information that even FBI headquarters kind of pushed back on them and said, you know, this is really First Amendment stuff You know, you have to be careful of this they go to these rallies that these guys would hold and you know There's a lot of anti-government rhetoric and a lot of political and extreme religious rhetoric and racist rhetoric and a lot of stuff That's very unpleasant, but it's not illegal And finally when the investigation was shut down it was shut down with with prejudice You know the investigating agents were ordered to stand down and not to conduct any further investigation of the group It was it was a strongly worded rebuke that indicated that they had gone too far with us The thing about this this is a case study that really goes into a lot of detail about this one operation because I think that There's a lot of interesting dilemmas that you you can see play out in this These guys unlike what the NYPD is doing these guys were following leads, you know It wasn't just a sort of an abstract interest in in the movement although they had that and they used it for that But they were getting leads they were hearing things that were really alarming that they were going to blow up a federal building We're going to do this. We're going to do that And there were actual crimes being committed theft of military property and its resale and some explosives and firearms type violations But the fact is is that the investigation, you know, just produced a tremendous amount of data produced a tremendous amount of activity and spent a pretty good amount of money and didn't Catch who it needed to catch in the middle of all this activity these groups getting together and conspiring and selling weapons and trading stuff off Literally through the middle of the investigation Timothy McVeigh walks in 1993 and goes unnoticed and Not only does McVeigh himself Completely escaped scrutiny during this period, but the people he was associated with Who were involved in these groups? There were files on some of the guys that McVeigh was hanging out with and on the groups that they belong to including a guy named Andreas Strasmeyer and a guy named Roger Moore and both of these guys were identified as potential suspects in the Investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing after the fact as far as anyone can tell none of this information all this intelligence That was gathered in the course of this undercover operation None of it came into play these guys had organizational links that were significant to McVeigh's actions And you know, nobody pulled out these files and and said hey look, you know, because that's if you're going to do this Collection the point of it is that you're going to have that information when you need it You know that you're going to understand these networks better and you understand the connections that these people have and Nobody pulled out nobody made the connection that Strasmeyer had been involved with this group in Texas And nobody made the connection that Roger Moore had been in group in this group in Alabama. So You know, there's multiple questions about how the utility of this investigation And you know, were we better off that this investigation took place? or are we better off if it didn't and that's complicated by the fact that in the patriot movement one of their big themes is really that the government is out to get them and They know they knew some of these guys were informants They knew some of these guys were undercover agents or some of them at least claimed after the fact that they knew it Whether they knew it at the time some cases they did in some cases. They didn't They base a lot of their strategy around fear of infiltration They are and there are a lot of their enmity for the government has to do with infiltration and pressure points that were put on them related to infiltration Ruby Ridge the killings of Ruby Ridge which inflamed the patriot movement ultimately started because the ATF was trying to coerce Randy Weaver Very small-time white supremacists into being an informant when he refused they put pressure on him The pressure escalated and ended up, you know, his his 14 year old son and his wife were killed in a siege that Ultimately boiled down to his refusal to be an informant And and there are other examples. I mean it basically, you know, the question that I had in Reading this is just you know, how much enmity enmity and mistrust Does this create when you look at it in the hole as opposed to when you go through You know and one reason Brian asked me for about 5,000 words on this I give him 15,000 Because when you go through decision by decision and you know, you look at each individual decision and you say, you know Of course, they had to investigate this of course They should have kept going with this but then when you look at it as a whole and you look at, you know How these guys were inflamed by some of these activities, you know, you have to Look at it both on the macro and the micro and the question is really, you know, are you doing more harm than good and I'll just leave it at that So I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a couple of questions and then and then we'll turn it over to the audience the I want to be a little bit of a naysayer, right? to you guys like I think that if we The argument that I think we would get from NYPD is that a lot of the time they were following leads, right? And so I'm wondering from Matt and Adam you guys were able to get access to a lot of documentation but one of the lessons that I take from some of the the instances where documents have been released whether it's through wiki leaks or or through sort of authorized leaks in one way or another is that We're only seeing a partial bit right and sometimes because we're seeing something that was supposed to be secret and it is brought out into the open We think we're seeing everything. What what do you guys think that you weren't able to see? and It seems to me that that's likely the the things that would have been more highly classified would have been around specific leads around specific Individuals those kinds of things that might have shown a different light I'll take a first crack. I think you Adam, but so first of all none of this stuff's classified Let's be clear the NYPD does not have classification authority They can stamp the word secret on it that doesn't actually make it secret So the other part is that You know What is a lead, right? So I mean, I don't think the NYPD is being disingenuous I don't think they're lying when they're saying we're following a lead You know the a lead in some of these documents is Somebody you know is a is it it says and I mean that you don't don't take my word for it I mean you can go on AP dot work slash NYPD and read these documents yourself. I mean it says that a Lead you would something you want to flag is a business where? people from the community could gather and thus and thus could be a breeding ground for you know You know for can you could be a place where co-conspirators could meet, right? I mean so I mean one of the leads in the Albanian documents and again This wasn't like the cell a selective page. This is we have the entire Albanian report. It says, you know, hey We made note of this potential hot spot It's a park in an Albanian neighborhood where old Albanian men come to play chess And that was put in the report because that you could maybe that could be some Albanian terrorists could get together and play chess in the park So I mean a lead is not at the NYPD a lead is not what the even what a lead is at the at the FBI The FBI's guidelines are I mean what's the diog is that you know 800 pages now something I mean the the NYPD's guidelines are like 11 pages so a lead is not the NYPD is not what a lead is at the FBI and And and while the FBI is prohibited from as you said, you know collecting purely first amendment activity That's not connected to any criminal information The NYPD was is not does not face that prohibition because they're not a federal agency So they collected lots of stuff that is not collected terrorism, but it's purely first amendment So I mean I guess I would I would just say That you know, I think they I think they are following leads I think they just have a very different definition of what a lead is and a lead to them is anywhere Where a terrorist might be and they will say we have to do that because this is New York and we were attacked And we haven't forgotten even though the rest of the country has 2003 when Dave Kohn became Ironically DCI of the NYPD And Dave wrote an affidavit to a federal judge in this class action lawsuit that The lead plaintiff with Barbara Hancher it's known as the Hancher agreement and he went to the judge and said look We've got to be able to stop attacks before they happen So we have to be able to do preventative preventative counterterrorism work. So The judge said, okay, well, we're gonna lower the bar from probable cause to reasonable suspicion Reasonable suspicions pretty big. It's sort of like they're stopping frisk. They you know They stop infest people when there are furtive movements, you know that that could essentially be anything I From the majority of documents that we we did have, you know, Matt and I went to Great Lentz to To talk to people and I've said this publicly before, you know, we we we've talked to people within the NYPD The FBI didn't know this was going on. They didn't know there was a demographics unit They didn't know they were rakers ironically this sort of came out of from the US intelligence community and and they you know, they they Most of the time they they would tell us that you know, we weren't following leads. We were following Muslims and But then again, we do we are sitting on other files I mean, there's lots of stuff we haven't published and it's clear from those files that yeah, they they are they were they were Investigating people who were making inflammatory comments, you know, but some bin Laden's a great guy I mean, whatever you, you know, the what's happening in Afghanistan is wrong and that's that's that's a red flag and I think just like the FBI they would do an assessment and see if there's anything real there the problem looking at these files is some is Even after the Joint Terrorism Task Force with easily lead The lead body for investigating terrorism in the United States the JTTF would say yeah, we looked at this guy We did our 180 day assessment. There's nothing here. Well for the NYPD that didn't matter They continue to investigate them. They're looking for a threat that perhaps is there Yeah, and they can do that You know, but what I think that is a one of the questions of post 9-11 America like what is it? What is a lead? I mean, you know the NYPD's Spokesman says they have to go anywhere where there's a possibility a possibility of criminal activity I mean, that's that can be this room. That's everywhere, right? So and what is a red flag? I mean, I am sure that there have been discussions in this room where people have talked about The the problems with drone strikes in Pakistan. I'm sure there are people who've been in this room Who have said, you know that they're opposed to Israeli policies in in Gaza the West Bank? those kinds of things if said in a mosque Would I mean almost certainly it ends you up in a in an intelligence file? At the NYPD and and is that a red flag? I don't I mean, I I don't know Is that where is that what we're at now? John? What did the leads look like in the Pat concave and what what constituted a lead at that point? Well, the pac-con case started with a walk-in informant saying that he heard that the civilian material assistance group which had been involved in Iran Contra and became a White supremacy oriented group after after that fizzled out Was planning to do a nuclear to hit a nuclear power plant And so, you know, this is serious threat They were they were talking about doing a raid on nuclear power plant where they thought that there was a gigantic armory of weapons and Then it never went anywhere and it it sat and they watched these guys and they expanded and expanded You know what they were watching that the threat that actually started the pac-con undercover investigation Proper was that these guys were sitting around talking about Killing a couple FBI agents and then it came out that they had like driven by the guy's house and you know Kind of collected a little bit of information on them But almost immediately what happened was you know, they put Before they did the pac-con undercover. They just put a regular group to undercover which is just a informal more informal kind of arrangement had somebody poses a hitman and Go up and make himself available to kill these guys and they're like no, we're gonna do this after the revolution and That was basically it and but the threat state is the justification for this thing for for a long time Because what they saw was an opening Unlike you know with the NYPD has a broad mandate to to collect and prevent and this was prior to 9-11 in the shift to prevention They needed a hook and so but once they had that hope they ran it right into the ground You know what one of the lessons of the post 9-11 world and one of the lessons from The 9-11 Commission report was we failed to connect the dots. We weren't working across bureaucratic boundaries. We need to do that better And I'm sure that the the concept of putting Dave Cohen at NYPD and then Larry Sanchez Was an attempt to do that. We know that we live in a world where the political boundaries Don't our political boundaries don't mean as much as they used to we we talked about that all the time for various reasons Both international travel the internet etc Are some of our notions of what is of what? Law enforcement and intelligence can do domestically outdated I mean Given that world Yes, I'm asking you and I mean I Don't I don't know Another they're outdated. I mean the FBI. I mean after 9-11 we modernize everything right? I mean the FBI has all these new rules Except the FBI FBI right so the FBI has all these rules It's not clear. I mean it's it isn't it's never been Discussed what the NYPD was doing. So I mean I don't I Don't know that it's outdated and Maybe it's because the reason we don't know it's outdated is because we're 12 years after 9-11 And we're just now talking about what's been going on In the city where 9-11 happened for the first time and having a real discussion about what's been going on Well, you know interesting interesting side the model that the NYPD built this thing on was the Israeli model And demographics the demographics unit and they were treating Brooklyn and Queens like these were the West Bank You know Judea and Samaria whatever you want to call it and And but the problem with that model is we don't have settlements these aren't occupied territories We don't have a wall separating Queens from Manhattan So and we don't have a national religion So I forget that either we don't have a national religion But but at the same time it's really important for the NYPD to understand the population in New York City Whether it's to understand communities or understand a threat after an attack who to communicate with etc It's right. Isn't that important more important for people in New York for the NYPD to understand the community in New York than it is for the Detroit Police Department to understand it in Detroit because if it is and this is the best way to do it Why wouldn't we want this in Detroit? They said I mean, let's put this in Detroit LAPD Chicago PD Newark in Michigan, too They don't do this there and they say they don't want to do it And so it was an enormous Persian community in Los Angeles not granted their little day They're you know, they're very affluent and most escaped, you know, most left Iran because they were anti regime but there might be a few people in there that Do Like the regime here today so we supposed to route through all the Persians to find that handful and you know the other thing that gets lost in this The people coming here, you know, we describe them as Muslims But they're Americans and they came here they came here for the same reason You know my parent my grandfather, you know, escaped from Poland You know and the anti semitism there and they are Americans and you know The vast majority of them did leave leave these countries because they wanted to enjoy what America was given them So I mean and to and to your point Brian. I mean look I Keep coming back to this if this is the right way to do it and and we're not counter-terrorism experts I mean we're reporters If this is the right way to do it then I mean Why why isn't there more of a groundswell on Capitol Hill to say other police departments should be doing this Why isn't you know, why aren't the congressmen, you know from Michigan saying? Detroit this is your dare election of duty, right? Why are you not doing this? Why is we have to look to New York CIA the CIA had a clandestine operative Not Larry, but after Larry in the NYPD. They eventually yanked him out But you know that was the only relationship of its kind in the country in the country, you know, I wouldn't we want that I wouldn't want that in LA. There was a millennium. There was the plan millennium attack there There was the attack on the airport. I do a metallic was coming to Chicago. Why wouldn't we want the CIA in all of our departments making you know using these cutting-edge programs that they've that they've they've crafted to Decimate al Qaeda. Why wouldn't we want all these programs and you know police departments across the country John? I want to address the assumption that's built into your question Sure, which is that 9-11 was a failure of collection. Sure. It was not a failure of collection It was a failure to synthesize the information that was collected What you can see I think the outlines of in this Pac-Con report is that Oklahoma City was not a failure of collection It was a failure to use the information that was collected properly the reason that is usually cited especially 9-11 But also in Oklahoma City for failing to make those connections that there was too much information So if you're drinking from the firehose as it's often referred to Is the solution and you can't you can't drink from the firehose and you know you're having a problem, you know should you Put three more fire hoses pointed at you. It's not the solution to that problem You know, it was never a failure of a collection It was a failure to understand how to use the intelligence that was being collected, right? I mean and that's a great point One of the things though that has changed after 9-11 is that the political pressure on The intelligence community law enforcement has changed fundamentally and polls in New York show that these programs are relatively popular And I think that the pressure on The people that work in these programs is immense right because precisely for the reasons that we talk about I mean You know when you look at the underwear bomb plot from a couple years ago The recriminations pointing at the IC were you know, should these people be criminally charged? Did they fail fundamentally in their responsibility to keep the United States safe? That pressure is immense and I think that the people working on these things every day feel that that the weight of that responsibility how do we How do you frame a program that doesn't do this kind of stuff if there is the perception that it's going to work how? Do you how can NYPD at this point and if they decided that this doesn't work? Could they change considering our political environment right the way that we the way that we think about this We want our law enforcement going out there and we know in both The case in New York and in the Pat con case that there was there there right there are plots out there in this milieu There was Timothy McVeigh. They were it wasn't like they were looking somewhere crazy So here's the here's the logical so Dave Cohen gave a deposition in one of the many lawsuits in which he said They asked me said well this this lawsuit was over Random searches of your bag and your person when you get on the subway and Dave Cohen said look We have to do that because this is a deterrent for terrorism and the lawyer said well, how do you know? He said well, I've been doing this for 25 years. He said you've been searching people for 25 years. No, but I've been in counterterrorism for 25 years But yeah, but how do you know this works? And he says well What do you mean? How do I know I'm an expert and he said worry about how do you know that this works? And he said well, it's simple They haven't attacked us again So so wait I want to add that because I have the exact quote He said quote I never bothered to look If it doesn't exist it doesn't exist Is there a methodology to find out if these things work? I've never bothered to look but it doesn't exist as far as I know and then the proof was they haven't attacked us again So I mean you have you have a you have you're right. There's a huge political pressure There's also a huge personal pressure. I mean you're on the front lines a lot of these guys we talked to I mean They're career cops. They want to keep the city safe and they will do whatever they're told will keep the city safe now um Just from a lot like a pure logical argument standpoint You know if if on if January 1st 2002 They said, you know every time you cross the street in New York City You have to hop on your right foot and that'll help stop terrorism and then we weren't attacked again That doesn't mean that hopping on one foot stops terrorism. I mean that just doesn't that's not how you do Sort of method methodological analysis as I screw that up So so that was one of our I mean that was a red flag for us is if that's if that's how we do this But every morning Dave Cohen has a meeting before he meets with ray kelly and he talks to all of the senior guys And he says what do we got going on today? And some days they say we're gonna you know nothing same thing as yesterday running those Traps and we're out here. We're doing this. We're doing this and he says, well, what do you mean? We got nothing? Um, I gotta go and brief the commissioner. We're what do you got nothing? And I got 300 guys out there You give me nothing? So Then of course the it rolls downhill, right? I mean there is you're exactly right. There's pressure And so a lot of these guys who are you know involved in this who were you know making notations like I observed two Corans in my visit. I mean Not because they were like, oh god two Corans must mean a threat But because they were like if if you don't report it It was so clear that if you were if you're the last guy to visit a location And then somebody from that location blows himself up. They're gonna be like you missed it So they're like, no, I didn't miss it. I wrote down everything. I wrote down. He had two Corans Um, so I mean you're right. There is a pressure, but I think as what john alluded to Um, when you are collecting all of this information if there's not somebody saying Well, what good does that do for us to say there's two Corans? Well that now ain't that but it seemed like even as they were producing this point these these reports Nobody was vetting the information, you know They would go I mean I lived in brooklyn for five years and I lived next to the syrian community And they would go to the restaurants there and they would go in and you know, they'd write things down and you know This is a syrian restaurant and the reports say we aren't gonna we're gonna look at syrian muslims And but the problem you're not gonna look at syrian christians We're not gonna look at syrian christians But but you know while maybe the the original owner was syrian syrian muslim He today is a syrian christian and so when you show him this report He doesn't know why he's in the report and he says But I'm but why don't they just come and ask me and I'll tell them I I'm happy to talk to him and that that was the overwhelming response to people we talked to they just didn't understand That why they're in these files when why don't why don't the police just come and talk to us? Yes, you can look at the falafel we serve And you know and the other the other point too talking to people who were involved in these programs at the mypd You know some were bragging to us others thought it was a complete waste of time I mean we're spending enormous amount of money running around doing these things and they're not producing Anything and other and I mean to be fair a lot of the people who helped I mean there's this perception of the only people who cooperated with our reporting with these sort of naysayers or you know People who got passed over for you know promotions, whatever a lot of people who talked to us We're proud of what they did and they said, you know This is a program. We want to we should be talking about this is a program. We should be you know that we should be studying And you know, let's let's best practices this You know, let's replicate this elsewhere You know, we shouldn't be ashamed to talk about what we're doing 10 years out and And and that's I think again that the discussion we've we've hoped to to get going Yeah, and one of the other interesting things, you know, there's the hundreds of millions of dollars that I mean It's been honest in the 600 people who work for Dave Cohen 300 people work for Dave Cohen You know, you ask yourself, what if we put those resources? and those urdu and pasto and Dari and Arabic speakers and you know because you know in farsi speakers What if we put them in uniforms and put them out in the communities to walk the beat to gain trust in the neighborhoods? I mean, it doesn't take a genius the FBI will tell that tell you this I mean typically, you know the the muslim communities are the front line They are the front line of the war on terrorism If somebody comes into their neighborhood and they don't recognize that guy and he's odd You know, whatever whatever the reasoning is he's going to go that person will go to the police, but you know now Now the muslims feel betrayed and uh, they're less You know, they themselves have said they're less likely to come forward with tips So this is an interesting one and it feeds back into to the pad con paper and I swear this will be the last question I ask I just think this is fascinating But which is which is the sort of and you mentioned it john, which is this reaction um, and and paranoia around government infiltration and spine right which is closely tied to sort of a patriot ideology But I think you see that reflected increasingly and this is something I've learned from you in some of the anarchist You know pseudo anarchist left today But you also got that get that kind of messaging out of the now late and we're all lucky who talked quite a bit In his propaganda to american muslims and attempt to inspire and recruit folks You know saying well the government's turning on you. They're going to come for you these kinds of these kinds of things And now you see on jihadist websites Uh, not just instruction manuals for building bombs and those kinds of things but also instruction manuals for identifying infiltrators right um And and that's interesting right there. There is a reaction in the Uh, the actual extremist system to these kinds of things You know from the lessons that you see from the pat con investigation. What do you what do you think john? How how are actual radical miliews You know where violence may emerge going to react to the specter of these kinds of of programs Well, I think you know My sense is that what we're really lacking on this is data And really like an organized study of it. So everything i'm going to say is going to be anecdotal and subjective And what I think we need is really like, you know, and I talk about this at the end of the papers organized study There is a tremendous amount of anti-government paranoia in the radical radical but not yet violent communities that Every time something like this happens like this kind of investigation or You know, I wrote a piece recently about a army manual that had some Has been interpreted it was leaked. Uh, it has Guidelines for interning u.s citizens in it and uh, you know, it's been and these guys are going nuts over it and You know every time You contribute to the validity of their worldview. I think that you know is Hardened somebody who's on a radicalization path and it helps harden them and doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to act out and that's you know, kind of the place where we things really Need to be studied more directly and what I would also say is that what what we really haven't studied is how The cumulative impact of all this stuff affects non radical communities I you know, we haven't really seen an examination of how for instance these nypd revelations or You know the the pattern of using informants And and under covers very aggressively For prevention is affecting ordinary people ordinary muslims or people who are you know leaning toward Anarchism or people on the left or the right, you know We never we we don't like as a society to talk about the fact that our mainstream political discourse spills over into radical Movements, but you know, what we have now is that really people within the mainstream political discourse are saying that Every terrorism plot is created by the fbi and the cia Because of the involvement of these under covers and if you and and as with the paccon case if you look at each individual case You know each one stands up in court Each one you see somebody head of report of somebody who's dangerous for the most part There are a couple of exceptions to this but you know You can see the rationale for taking the actions that were taken in each of an individual case But what we don't do is we don't look at the cumulative effect of having an informant or an undercover agent You know helping An alleged bomber every single time Don't ever buy c4 from anybody They'll say right like The more suspicious that you can make people who want to buy c4 The more suspicious you can make them of the guy who's trying to sell them c4 the better we are for it Because maybe they won't buy it from the next guy who could legitimately sell them c4, right? And that paranoia disrupts does disrupt people who might act but the question is right. I mean that's part of the strategy Right, but the same time is that what you're also doing is the same the same kind of preventative Uh paranoia and you know, I mean people I talked to who were involved in paccon said that part of what they were trying to do Is to let these guys know they're being watched constantly And you know and part of what that does is it also hardens their hostility some people drop off and some people Become harder and we don't really know that much about it. And what we don't know is like Somebody who's you know a pro gun ownership person or somebody who's a conservative muslim Who sees these stories and sees this pattern of behavior? How does it affect them and it doesn't make them more prone to feeling alienated to feeling radicalized or You know, or are they indifferent to it? I mean, we don't have the answers to those questions because nobody's asking them in a systematic way All right, let's go to the audience questions Yes here in the white My name is maria mariani and I am involved with a national security education program. It's a critical language program and I recruit people who speak languages that are critical to our national security I'm all over the country. I'm in mosques and temples and everything else and I'm proud to say that our program we don't Violate First Amendment rights. We don't investigate the people who are applying for our scholarships and our program is funded by the also office of the director of national intelligence And these people apply like everybody else. They're u.s citizens and Based on their merits, they get the scholarship or don't get the scholarship And then they're vetted later when they decide to take positions or offered positions by the intelligence community Or wherever else they want to work to help our nation's You know security, so I'm freaked out by the fact that Some people think it's okay to do what the new york city police department is doing Yes, Jen right behind you Hi Russ Deming now it's nice First of all, congratulations on an excellent series My question is has this prompted any greater scrutiny in washington and capitol hill executive branch of nypd intelligence activities? And if not, why not? Um, why not? Well, I mean part of it is I mean there's not I mean all of it is there's not really a political There's no political benefit to um to looking into this And certainly not into doing anything that could be perceived to hinder the nypd's ability to keep the city safe um I mean p king congressman from long island is the chair of the homeland security committee in the house Um, and so that seems you know I mean so and on the judiciary instead of judiciary chuck schumer is a huge supporter of the nypd and You know 36 members of congress have written to the justice department and said hey, you know You open these investigations into police departments that violate civil rights We'd really like it if you could look into what the nypd is doing and just tell us whether this violates people's rights That was nine months ago and the justice department is reviewing the letter to request a review um, so Tom Perez is still the assistant attorney general for civil rights literally runs away from me when I show up to events To ask him like hey, does the justice department also consider american black muslims to be an ethnicity of interest? um I was going to say bloomberg's response has been someone flippant and ray keller's response has been um, ray keller's response has been well 3000 dead never again You know I lived in israel for three years during the worst terrorist bombings 95 and 98 And being living in israel didn't preclude the israelis from asking their government whether their policies worked Because there was a holocaust and the state was created so it never happened again and um You know nobody it seemed like a great part of that and during the series It's like people weren't willing to challenge that because 3000 people had died um So that was and at the white house level. I mean john brennan gave a speech Pretty recently in new york and said um I have the utmost confidence that everything the nypd is doing is is legal And is keeping the city safe and then when that got reported The white house uh sent out an anonymous statement Saying well, you know, he wasn't talking about the surveillance. We don't take a position on that um So getting them to sort of say what whether they support the programs that they're funding is is tricky If you're not going to take a legitimate look at this, then how does the muslim community react to it? Right, and they're very upset any new jersey Well, and it's it's interesting too because I mean there is no muslim community in new york city I mean it's because there's you know the bangladeshi community does not interact regularly with the egyptian community Which does not interact regularly with the pakistan community Um, it's sort of like saying the catholic community in new york city. I mean it's it just doesn't work that way Um, also the civil rights organizations the muslim civil rights organizations typically um in the united states Tend they tend to be newer, you know sort of cropped up post 9 11 um, they don't have the Sort of the experience, uh, they don't certainly don't have in a lot of instances the political Cloud to to to make Waves about this What was interesting is when we started writing about what was going that they were doing this in new york And in places in new jersey Where you see a much frankly first of all the muslim communities tend to be more affluent In new jersey second of all they also in many neighborhoods are african-american Black converts, you know for black muslim converts um And the civil rights organizations the african-american civil rights organizations are much more mature much more politically savvy much more Well-established and you saw that just took hold much quicker and got political responses much quicker from quarry booker You know governor christy in a way that just hasn't happened in new york John what's your perception When we when we look at these kinds of because there is I think there has been a perception that these kinds of techniques I mean obviously nypd is sort of a is a unique case But within the country at large there's been a lot of talk about fbi Surveillance and infiltration techniques related to you know al-qaeda style terrorism of of american muslims But I think only recently has that conversation really sort of spilled out into Other groups at least hit the mainstream in in recent years with Talk about some of the anarchists plots in the midwest and these sorts of things Does it matter in the way that we talk about this? Depending on the ideology of the group right? I mean there was this article in enrolling stone a couple days ago that I sent to you guys And with basically the assertion that federal law enforcement makes a big deal about it if it's You know would be jihadis would be lefty anarchists doesn't talk about this when it's a right wing white nationalist type Um, but at the same time that article acknowledged that this is actually happening more often Among right wing white white nationalist types. What's the conversation? What are we missing here? Well? There there are nuances in how this plays out I mean we are seeing an increase of these kinds of tactics. We saw just recently arrests of People on the fringes of the occupy movement. We've seen the rest of right wingers You know using the same kind of sting tactics that are that are being used in muslim cases What I would argue and I don't think people talk about it very much is really uh, you know if there's a difference in how Muslims are are treated in this process It has to do with firearms ownership and mere possession of dangerous explosives or an interest in explosives Because on you know in the patriot kind of sphere You know these guys are heavily armed if you have a muslim in new york city with you know 20 Guns including semi-automatics in his apartment. That's going to be handled differently than a guy in rural tennessee Who has the same setup and so there I think there are I think certainly that they handle some of these cases differently and especially because of the you know this intense focus on the idea of lone wolf terrorism Uh, you know, I'm not sure that it's uh I you know, I think we need to really examine it and try and figure out how productive it is. I mean I I tend to For the most part, I think that you know when you look at these cases at the federal level Uh, they are they're pretty by the book about it. They have a playbook that you go through this That you you know the the guy gets six After opportunities to remove himself from the plot, you know They're finding people who are really kind of committed to do this. I think in most of these cases You you're not seeing people being provoked into doing something But you see some cases in the muslim community which are more borderline and I don't think You would see that in the in the white supremacist community I don't think they would like to string somebody along and encourage them and Hand them a fake bomb and they wouldn't need a fake bomb as part of the problem is that those guys already know how to make Yeah, Jen over here in the in the white shirt Thanks, um, thanks for the panel Have you guys sort of figured out an affirmative Small p progressive policy to do, you know to integrate, you know state and local In counter terrorism because I mean it's most of what you've done is you know a critique And intellectually honest critique but a critique but how do you know a Do you have an affirmative policy of how to do this? I mean just for as far as me and adam adam and I go, um I mean we didn't set out here to to say The nypd is doing this wrong and it should be done differently. Um, I mean we set out To say what is the nypd doing? Um, and why won't anybody talk about it and and so we're I'm actually not I mean, I'm not convinced as I sit here today that the nypd is doing is not the best way to do I mean it very I mean everybody says they're the gold standard And so I think when we looked at this we just said well if they're the gold standard Then let's figure out what it is they're doing. Um, but their reaction they're Which baffled us because when we originally reported a story the first big story on this in august 2011 When we described everything you've heard. Um, we didn't have the documents yet. They lied And they said it's fiction These programs don't exist. There's no such thing as a demographic thing And it's interesting people step forward and they said well, why would you lie about a program i'm working in? Why would you lie about a about a successful program? Why would you lie about a successful program and then you know then we Reported the then we reported then we got a hold of the documents that showed that put proof to the putting is and and you know I mean, I will I will punt this I will punt this question definitely and say it's not our job. I mean to say um America's counterterrorism policy should look like this. I mean well our job. I think is Here's what America's counterterrorism policy does look like and it's for everybody in the room and everybody who votes And everybody whoever decide whether they want our counterterrorism policy to look like this God forbid but that should journalists should have to write laws. Um or policy or policy terrible But I mean the obama administration has very I mean they've been very upfront about they are going to change the way America is viewed in the muslim world and they're they hit the reset button with the muslim world Um, and they they have this vision for what they want Police departments to be in fighting terrorism now. It's very hard to get them to say exactly what that is But when we say is it this is it this is it the nypd? That that's what you want everybody to be they won't answer it and And that struck us is very odd because frankly to the vast majority of the world New york is america, right? I mean so whatever is happening in new york to people's relatives to you know, that's the way Um, you know if you're sitting at a cafe in a mon and you get an email from your brother in manhattan And this is going on in new york It might as well be going on all across the united states because new york is america So the fact that we can't get a straight answer about where anybody stands on this um in new york um only makes us even made us even more interested in in Diving deeper and try to explain what was going on there. So short answer. No, I don't have a better policy But i'm also not trying to say this policy isn't the right one. I'm saying we should have an honest conversation about it I'll make a policy comment of of sorts What we've done since september 11th our policy on counterterrorism has been more more more And we keep we've got a structure which is our justice system It's from the local all the way up to the federal level And it's a christmas tree and we just keep hanging ornaments on it And now you can't even see the tree anymore and One of the most difficult things for politicians and policy makers to do is to say we're going to do less But somebody's got to say it because you know and uh daveed garden steen ross has written about this You know, we have a system that is increasingly bloated increasingly expensive and increasingly intrusive and We don't have any mechanism in our our political or policy discourse to say how we're going to scale this back uh Instead we just get you know Brand new and improved body scanners and and we get you know Larger kind of demographic mining and we get more and more and more and you know That's not that's not a policy. That's not a policy formulation that leads to success and it shouldn't be off limits to say What what do we want to do and what's really working? I mean the sort of the christmas tree analogy is a good one I hadn't heard that one There's you know adam and i have talked about this sort of this mantra Spoken and unspoken that the united states is going to take all legal means to prevent terrorism And we're going to do everything we can within the power of law. That's just not true I mean we just will not do that right? I mean so, you know, we always sort of Use this as an example when people say well are these programs legal? Yeah, maybe I don't know that's not my I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a judge But we we don't take all legal means to prevent terrorism You know why because you can still bring a bag for now onto a plane if we really wanted to say Nobody's allowed to bring bags onto planes that would be legal and you that would help prevent terrorism, right? You couldn't get anything onto a plane. We don't do that. Why don't we do that because We made a cost-benefit analysis and that I mean I think that's the kind of those are the kinds of discussions We hope these stories talk about well, what are the cost benefits of all of our policies? Because a lot of these a lot of these programs have never been studied like you said there's never been a study We don't know if they work or if they're successful or what the What you're giving up in exchange if this is working for some safety And also, I mean, you know The reason that we still are allowed to take bags on is because we haven't gotten to it yet The thing is is that you know, especially if you look at It certainly tsa is kind of the poster child for this thing and it's a little bit different from what we're talking about here But you know, but tsa provides an example It's like, you know, they will continue to add layers and they will never subtract them you may recall about a year ago that There was a there were stories saying that we were going to be allowed to carry liquids on planes And we're going to be allowed to keep our shoes on going through gates. Well, I did not Notice that I was allowed to do either of those things when I flew here for this for this event. So, you know, they're I take my shoes off and I got swabbed. So now it's you getting swabbed too So, I mean they keep they'll keep adding they keep there's a mechanism to add things I mean, we're predisposed politically to add things and and whether it's a surveillance program Or whether it's a kind of wiretapping, you know, I mean wiretapping is a whole other area of this that we haven't even talked about, you know that the the predisposition is to just keep hanging ornaments on the tree and and We've got to start taking some off that don't work and aren't efficient and are counterproductive in other ways and we we don't have any Will political will to have that conversation I barely have the will not ask questions. Jen. Will you ask Alejandro up here on the front? Thanks to new american our panelists for this very interesting discussion today My name is Alejandro butel and I'm with the muslim public affairs council and again. Thank thank you all for your remarks Um, I kind of want to piggyback off of a question that brian had asked before. So giving you some satisfaction there But um, basically what you had asked before was how do we frame a program that works that isn't necessarily the nypd And so I want to it's a comment and a question and my my comment is that in uh in recent days um our organization with a coalition of other community and civil rights organizations Had been sitting down and having discussions for instance with the la pd to come up with ways for instance on a specific issue such as the suspicious activity reporting uh to improve The way that the intelligence collection is being done While at the same time trying to come to some sort of modicum of understanding of preservation of civil liberties But even so I guess I still want to pose the question to everyone there Especially even to you john going back to one of your articles that you had written foreign policy magazine Which is how can muslims contribute american muslims contribute to the framing of a more effective program And not just in the policy discourse, but even at the popular level too Where can we begin to have a serious conversation? What are the contours and where can we see some of this going? That was talked about when we interviewed muslims And after our series it became clear to them that they felt they didn't have a voice And nobody was willing to stand up for them in new york city Um because of what happened on 9 11 They didn't have any political clout because the communities are fragmented and they don't vote as a bloc and I'm certainly not suggesting this but one of the one of the conclusions that they had come to is that We have to have a grass roots movement. We have to come together and we have to give ourselves a voice to be heard Because let's just be frank if you if you don't have political count nobody's going to listen to you whether it's city council or Or capital hell. It's as if you you don't exist You know A lot of the problem again, you know comes comes out of our political setup and uh, I know the article you're referring to it's you know Basically says points out that you know politically on the right side people On the right tend to approach muslims as if they are a hostile Enemy to a greater or lesser extent people on the left side tend to treat them as children and to be over Oversensitive to their feelings while at the same time wanting to change them in some vaguely undefinable way and You know, I guess if I was to offer advice, uh, I would say that You know with the I think there's With the exception of an organization of the magnitude of the mypd and with what they're doing, but I would say that If you further you take the conversation out of washington and engage people in more local kind of venues Probably the better off you are and then you sort of like do a ground up Uh reframing of this because I think that When you get out of washington and you you're talking to more Ordinary people, you know, even if they're in government at the you know government and politics There's less posturing because I think a lot of this what I just said about the right and the left I think a lot of it is posturing. It's very self-conscious posturing when you're in the media spotlight and I think you know when you you're talking to a mayor and you're talking to a police chief, you know, there's different It's different. It's more human. So I'll sort of to echo both those points With with a fun anecdote that I think sums up what we were talking about sort of the political maturation of the of the sort of muslim advocacy groups Along with the the fractured nature That adam was talking about so I don't know we're a few stories into our series and The justice department had at over. I think it was a gw Had a a legal forum for Was on muslim civil rights and but the idea was supposed to it was mostly hate crime I was supposed to be like, you know anti muslim bias crime um And so you had all these, you know top guys from the department of justice were there and you know representatives of the you know muslim community capital M capital C and um So we went and we you know because a lot of the people who we knew were going to be on the panel Had expressed a great deal of frustration And we're very upset about what they were reading in our stories about the nypd And they wanted to know what the justice department thought about that um You know it almost not it barely got a mention one person brought it up not as a question just sort of said I am troubled by this and sort of moved on and and when we talked to people afterwards They said well, you know that we were asked You know look if we could just really keep this on the sort of muslim You know what the justice department's doing to help us with the whole muslim, you know bias Hate crime stuff and not to get into the whole nypd thing. So, you know, you know, it was their thing We didn't want to we don't want to go off script And that's fine. I mean, that's you know, um it it was telling to us because um if if leaders of the You know civil rights leaders in the african-american community had felt outraged by by a policy and wanted answers from the justice department um It would be it was hard for me to imagine A bunch of african-american civil rights leaders sitting on a stage with the justice department and not having somebody say something And I think that just I think that I think that speaks to a a maturation and experience a political savvy That that that group has that, you know, the sort of muslim groups don't have and the other thing is I think The nwcp for the most part doesn't have to worry that if if somebody speaks up at a conference and says Hey, this is wrong and I disagree with this and I want to know what you're going to do about it That they're going to like be under suspicion. Like maybe i'm a terrorist now. Um, so, you know, I think that speaks to a lot of Where the you know, where the muslim community, you know, which I throw that around in quotes Because i'm not sure that word really means a lot um Where they are on this I I just think um Yeah Hi, I'm margo leams with mpr And um, I'm curious about the peculiarity of new york city as being the place beyond it being a 9 11 thing um, I'm from queens and I recall that there's a whole history of this kind of unit being uh, new york city Police department in the 50s and 60s. There was the red squad that the new york NYPD was very proud of that uh there and their role was Surveillance infiltration, you know, all of these same kind of things. Yeah, but I mean it just seems like This is a quite a long history. In fact, there's a map that exists Back in the teens and 20s that describes the city And all the neighborhoods in it by what political point of view people had um Do you think that the nypd it's a tradition among them to to see themselves as their own type of uh intelligence No, I mean, I think the 50s and 60s the red squads was was unique and I don't think they were I think it was a unique time and I don't think frankly that was a unique operation in the 50s and 60s I don't think the nypd was the only one out with red squads and monitoring dissident behavior And the map you're referring to wasn't actually an nypd thing. It was a city of new york thing I don't think the nypd Um, I don't think the nypd is has traditionally been in the business of doing what it's doing. Um And to that regard, I mean you have to give it a ton of credit for, you know Taking a hard turn after 9 11 and developing this really really quickly. Um, but I mean to the extent I don't think it's I don't think this is sort of in their dna I think this is a response to response to stimulus as they would say I mean this 9 11 happened and this has been there. This has been their response Okay, you turned a bunch of cops and the intel officers with no training um So What does it mean when we ask local PDs to be intelligence agencies, right? I mean This is something new that that isn't just In new york, but we've asked We've asked local PDs to plug into domestic intelligence operations that the fbi is doing because we feel the need to prevent incidents Are there specific lessons from this broader incident with with nypd and john if you've got thoughts on this too the For how we structure that because it's clearly something this isn't going away, right? Whether or not the nypd program says the way it is or whether it evolves over time Local police departments are going to be doing more intelligence gathering and trying to understand the world around them so that they can anticipate right how Where do you see that trend going? I mean for the for starters, so post 9 11 created You know my one of my favorite 9 11 buzzwords outreach, right? Um The fbi doesn't have a outreach program for the irish community, right? They don't have an outreach program for the catholic community, right? I mean, why do they have an outreach program for the muslim community? We know why they have an outreach program in muslim community and they they should right? I mean, you know one of the things is You know the fbi is like we didn't know anybody in the community. We didn't have any context But it was outreach in a sort of blurry kind of we also kind of want to know what's going on over in that community um And and so that line of like we're here to help which in in many cases they are here to I mean in most cases I mean they are here to help um That line between we're here to help and also just to get a look around right? I mean that's um That's kind of we don't really know I don't think I don't think we as a country totally know How we want to do that and um And we shouldn't know yet. I mean we're figuring it out. I mean this you know a lot of this stuff is uh A lot of this stuff is new and it's complicated and and I don't know that you know This you know the as part of this, you know, we figured out that the cia has trained guys from the nypd At the spy school at the farm the cia is you know spy school um, and then sort of send them back out into new york to be intelligence officers I don't know if that's the right model I mean do we want guys at the nypd treating? You know their city like the cia treats beirut But I think the cia has made a conscious decision. There was an ig investigation um after our story and the cia is ig david buckley reported that That there was little supervision going on with the officer larry sanchez who was there and uh And then this other senior He's actually a clandestine operative. He was the cos chief of station in amman in pakistan He ran the cia's climate counterproliferation division. This is one of the most senior clandestine officers and um in the agency And he was put over there more than a year ago to be special assistant to dav cohen And you know, we asked the question. Well, why why why do why do why do they need that guy there? I think he was running operations in pakistan and jordan and Counterproliferation why why do they need him there and we kept asking that question We kept asking that question and nobody could answer us nobody could answer us And then finally patreas pulled him home We're not going to answer the question. He's not going to be there and and you know What patreas has said publicly if i i'm not going to quote this um Accurately a hundred percent, but he did say we're going to have a relationship with nypd, but that's not going to be the relationship And and i don't know i mean i don't know that we I don't know we know what we want from our police department And I think that's a big part of what this story is about. We don't know what we want I don't think we know what as a country. We don't know exactly what we want from the fbi either and um You know, uh I don't know And I think you're right that we'll we'll want a lot more if there's another attack, right? We want them to keep things from blowing up. I mean yeah, but the problem with them We're not with that model to take bags onto planes, right? So I mean there is some limit that we say we don't want them to go this far But where do we how far do we want them to go? Yeah, but but the problem is here. I mean in this conversation is conflating Outreach to the muslim community in terms of trying to understand the muslim community and preventing terrorism And where you see that fail Completely is when you look at the cve policy that the white house put out and it's all about the outreach It's all about reaching out to the muslim community and doing Uprising them of their constitutional rights It's not cve because if you're doing that You can't apply it to white supremacists. There is no outreach to the white community. There is no outreach to to you know Let whites know that they have rights that that should be protected and there never will be and as long as you're conflating Sort of this social Let's meet the neighbor's approach to hey, let's put the neighbors in jail. You're almost segregating them. Yeah, and it's It's a great point I mean it's a great and the and the white house model is built off of the gang model, right? So we have we want our school teachers to look for the signs of gang activity You're wearing colors You're truant You're smoking pot in the parking lot. You're running with a bad crew. You're maybe you know breaking into homes so now we want teachers to look for Early signs of radicalization and we want to we want to raise the red flag Early warning signs the problem is is that like a lot of the early warning signs for drug for gang activity are illegal A lot of the early warning signs for being you know radical are not illegal And I don't know. There's any teacher in this country. I mean teachers are fine for like kid. Why are you out smoking pot? That's dumb. Don't do that. I don't know. There's any teacher in this country in public school Who's like why are you reading your holy book that way? I think you should read it this way Don't interpret that to mean that you should really I mean it the idea that we can just take the gang model And just drop it over here, you know like john said and and you know and that's cve for us I mean it's just it's It's way more complicated than I think public discourse is is allowing it to be yeah gen Let's take two final questions for here in the green shirt and then ocky Did you have a now? You're good. Okay in the green shirt. This will be our last question because we're out of time We could go on forever. You guys are interesting. All right. Thank you for the discussion My name is barry jones In your investigations Did you find maybe? Unvoiced minority who was focused on the motivation For violence rather than outreach or Whatever else these investigations seem to be focused on In in your Investigating the stories that you have reported. Did you find a faction of people in law enforcement who were focused on the motivation That brings people to these extreme acts like one thing i've never forgotten Was in the earliest reports that uh about osama bin laden after 9 11 Was that his intention was not to fight The u.s. Militarily He wanted to draw us into Unpopular wars in lands as far away from america as possible in order to bankrupt us so I remember that but i don't see that being discussed today as we fight terrorism Was really i mean i'll say it they're at they were at the cutting edge because they were doing it publicly before anybody else Was doing it in terms of trying to study radicalization in the west and why were people getting radicalized? I think a lot of people look back on that original radicalization in the west study And say well, I see some problems here, you know, or I wouldn't have done it that way But at the time i mean you're correct if i'm wrong You know you know this better than i do at the time I mean they were the only ones and they put themselves out there and said hey Let's try to look at what these red flags are and they did try to do that and and sort of the one of the Authors of that mitzvilber is kind of the dean of of analysis at the nypd um and and he's you know, he's taking um, you know, he's taking analysis the nypd, you know And and take it into a whole new direction And and I think i'm not speaking for far from me to speak for mech But i mean i think mitzvil tell you that there was an evolutionary process in at the nypd in terms of their understanding of Of the threat and the roots of radicalization as well And I think that you know that's as much of a reflection of the Of analysis in this but i mean they they were doing that they for sure were doing what you're talking Look at the people who came from new york like zazen Doreen and madunjanine and and uh in venice they Venet they were all Typically upset by what was happening in abu grabe or or afghanistan or iraq and And they wanted to go over there and actually fight against us soldiers Abroad but it was only once al-qaeda got their hands on them. They sort of Got him to come back got him to come back around it'll be interesting going forward, you know Look, we're out of iraq I mean apparently now we're drawing down from afghanistan not in 2014. I think it's 2013 It'll be interesting going forward You know what that does to this whole radicalization model So yeah, you know in my book on american jihadist jihad joe, which is on sale everywhere I looked at you know hundreds of case studies of why Specifically homegrown radicals become violent and what I found was that there are not real clear trends There are a lot of different things that factor into it and you can sort of point to some generalities, but ultimately You know when you're dealing with terrorism, I mean there's an inbuilt bias I think in government that you you don't deal with the grievance you deal with the violent act And the same with murder by the way cops don't focus on the why they have justifiable homicide We do have some leeway in that that we don't have in terrorism, but You know, I think that I think that's probably generally the right approach Especially when you look at when you actually look at the cases and see how different they are from each other And how everybody has kind of a different trigger point or a different motivation I think it's good for us to understand those things though and to study them But again, and you know, I'll just I'll keep pulling the same rabbit out of my head, but you know, we don't look to uh We don't ask why white supremacists are radicalized and try and change them using government programmed or a You know aggressive policy to try and change their views and in fact if we did that it would backfire terribly It's There's only so much you can deal with what people think and you know And use that as a basis to try and project their actions. Yeah. Well Turk Mahana, you know, I That's a complicated case Um, you know, I would have liked to seen a less aggressive prosecution of him But he lied to the FBI. He went to FBI. He went to Yemen and searched for terrorist training By over prosecuting him. I think that you know the the district attorney and the u.s. Attorney in boston, I think Gave an opportunity to make that case into something it didn't have to be To to sort of test the bounds of some some first amendment issues that we didn't have to to get at when really they could have put Um, in jail for eight years and I think that would have been adequate and uh, you know, so We should actually just have an entire another event about terak mahana At some point Because we could go on for an hour. I might be almost That's right an hour and a half about that as well Thank you very much to all three of our panelists really that was that was fascinating I just Really quickly want to put in a plug for an event that we're going to be doing here next Tuesday gen What time is it the 29th? With the lead author of the combating terrorism center at west points Report about the osama bin laden documents that were released two weeks ago. It should be really fascinating Nelly lehude is brilliant and we'll all learn a lot from her. So thanks for coming