Hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security- Role of Local Law Enforcement in Countering Violent Islamist Extremism Panel 1

Interview

Hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs- Role of Local Law Enforcement in Countering Violent Islamist Extremism Panel 1

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SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm delighted that you're holding this hearing today. I think it will help deepen our understanding of the threat of homegrown terrorism and the role that local law enforcement can play in countering it.

The rising threat of homegrown terrorism magnifies the importance of local law enforcement in our efforts to protect our country from attacks. While some terrorists are foreign nationals crossing borders to operate as a part of an international network like al Qaeda, others may be native-born or naturalized Americans radicalized by a website advocating violence, or in an extremist mosque, or even in prison.

As recent domestic plots against Fort Dix and the JFK International Airport demonstrate, local law enforcement officers are often our first line of defense against such homegrown terrorist threats. Whether local officers are patrolling, investigating the link between a stolen car and a driver's forged identification, or conducting community outreach, their actions can help to disrupt terrorists' planned attacks within our country. These officers are often present at the first encounter with radical elements in their communities.

For example, four of the 9/11 terrorists, including the one who hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, had earlier been pulled over and ticketed for speeding. Each of them had violated a U.S. immigration law, but the state and local officers who stopped them were not aware of that. If standard procedures had included checks for such infractions, and if we had set up an effective system to get that data to these frontline officers, perhaps part of the 9/11 plot might have been detected and disrupted.

Surveilling and photographing public buildings, smuggling drugs or cash, buying precursor materials for bombs, making violent statements or threats -- checking on any of these behaviors can turn a routine policing incident into a chapter of the broader fight against terrorism. Alert officers sensitized to the potential implications of these behaviors are powerful weapons in our homeland security arsenal. Local police are also particularly well positioned to understand the roots of violent extremist behavior in the ethnic, racial or religious communities in their towns and cities, and to reach out to those communities in a respectful and cooperative spirit.

Each of the departments represented before us today has worked on understanding the process of radicalization, on distinguishing between the law-abiding majority and the violent minority, and on avoiding attitudes or tactics that can alienate local populations, and reduce their willingness to report suspicious events or to cooperate in police investigations. With wider awareness of threats, more extensive coordination and better information sharing, the nation's local law enforcement officers can play an even stronger, more collaborative role in our counterterrorism partnership.

Today, we will learn more about the initiatives of the New York City, Los Angeles, Kansas City and Miami-Dade police departments to combat the threat of radicalization and domestic terrorism.

I particularly look forward to hearing about New York City's study of the radicalism process based on foreign and domestic case studies. It offers a very useful framework for analyzing and intervening in this (legal/lethal ?) process. Like the chairman, I was struck by the finding that often the individuals who go through the radicalization process are, quote, "unremarkable" citizens living lives without any contact with the criminal justice system. Similarly, the work of the LAPD in creating a fusion center, which I have visited, and in developing a community mapping project provides examples of best practices that can be extended elsewhere.

I look forward to deepening this committee's understanding of how local police departments have organized themselves for counterterrorism work, how they develop and use personnel and programs, how they interact and coordinate with agencies on the federal level, like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. They can also help us identify and disseminate best practices and lessons learned and ensure that our sharing of information and analysis provides effective, actionable leads.

While our witnesses today represent major cities, we must keep in mind that terrorists, whether foreign or home grown, can also plan, train, buy supplies, assemble bombs or carry out attacks in smaller communities or rural areas. We must ensure that those officers in smaller departments benefit from the skills and knowledge developed in larger departments and that our federal assistance is delivered in ways that can provide the greatest support for all local law enforcement efforts.

So again, Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for scheduling this very important hearing.

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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As usual, you and I focused on exactly the same issue, so I'm going to continue along the same line of questioning. In your report, you found that the individuals who go through this process are not on law enforcement's radar, that they are largely -- your term was "unremarkable individuals."

But in all 11 cases, there was, as the chairman indicated, a spiritual sanction and an operational leader. There's no profile for the individual who may be recruited to go through this process, but is there a profile for the spiritual sanctioner and the operational leader, Mr. Silber?

MR. SILBER: Yeah, in terms of the spiritual sanctioner, really the only profile in terms of commonality was this was an individual who believed that they knew more about Islam and knew a little bit more than the rest of the group. So they had some claim to legitimacy. In most of -- in the European cases, a few of these individuals actually had experienced -- had had experience fighting in a legitimate -- what they believed was a legitimate jihad overseas. So they had this veteran status. Specifically even in the Hamburg group of 9/11, there was an individual named Zammar, and this was a person who had had experience fighting in jihad in Bosnia. So when he claimed to know what the true Islam was, that carried more weight with this group of sort of neophytes.

And as far as the operational planner, it's really somebody with the mentality, discipline and intellect to be able to lead the group. And again Mohammad Sidique Khan in the 7/7 attack -- this was a Leeds Metropolitan University graduate -- again with 9/11, with the Hamburg group, Mohammed Atta, who was an individual who was an engineering and architectural student. So these were people who were well educated, well informed and had the knowledge to be that leader.

SEN. COLLINS: What your findings suggest to me is that it's almost impossible to try to figure out who's going to go through this process, because they are average citizens or average residents, but that if we can figure out who is likely to be the spiritual sanctioner or the operational planner, that that could lead us to the entire network. Because it's really telling that in every one of the case studies that you looked at, you had those two roles. Is that a fair assessment of how we should target the efforts?

MR. SILBER: I think certainly having those individuals is a necessary condition for a group to go forward. And actually one group that we profiled, the Hofstad group in Amsterdam, was a group where it was unclear who the operational leader was. And as a result, this group never actually went forward to fulfill their greater plans. One individual acted ahead of everybody else and assassinated Theo van Gogh, but that group didn't have an operational planner and couldn't go forward. But certainly those two individuals are critical for the group to go through the whole process, and it may be worthwhile to try and identify those individuals as a first step.

SEN. COLLINS: Mr. Sanchez, Commissioner Sanchez, I was struck in reading about the department that you have an enormous number of individuals with foreign language capabilities that allows you to more easily do outreach to specific communities. And it really is in stark contrast to the lack of that capability at the federal level. I am wondering whether it's because you've made an effort to recruit from those communities. Or are you investigating in significant language training for your police officers?

MR. SANCHEZ: Having spent over 20 years at the CIA before coming to the New York Police Department, I was overwhelmed by the resources they had as far as language and culture.

I think, you know, being that New York City is 4 (sic) percent foreign born, the NYPD mimics that demographic breakdown. They're probably in the area of being between 25 to 40 percent foreign born, just by the -- you know, the typical average recruiting would have classes that would include quite a bit of both first- and second- generation people from various countries. So it was not something -- it was not a program we instilled, it was resources we found. And what we've done with it is, rather than allowing it to just be a part of the fabric of the NYPD, we sort of corralled it to be able to use it as best we can on this issue.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you. Thank you.

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SEN. COLLINS: Commissioner, what has been reaction of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to your report?

MR. SANCHEZ: I guess it's sort of been mixed too. I mean, our relationship with the FBI has actually -- and as you've probably heard in a lot of different settings, has become stronger and a lot closer.

I'll be honest and tell you, when we -- the NYPD got in this business, it was horrible. There were a lot of turf issues, as one might expect. There was a lot of hostility. But I guess the size of our department kept us alive, and our commitment that we're not going to go away kept us alive.

Now, that said, I think the -- we continue to depend on the JTF (sic), and we continue providing a -- over 125 detectives in the JTTF to protect us from that threat that's coming overseas, where we can't collect on, and we don't know when these people got radicalized, and we don't know where they're going. So we really depend on that, and we take direction from them on their -- and they know that.

The reception, I think, on our paper has been mixed in that a lot of organizations rather (would ?) have put something out on this before we did. It was important for us to get this out quickly, because, you know, every day we're fighting the war of civil liberties, one that we're trying to protect, but one we're also trying to inform.

And we couldn't be too politically correct on all of this and still survive the program that we continue to be very aggressive on, on New York City.

So it's -- the short sort of non-answer: it's been a mixed response. Sometimes it's just quiet. But it hasn't been volatile or hostile.

SEN. COLLINS: That's my assessment as well, based on our discussions with the FBI in particular.

We held a hearing earlier this year that the chairman referred to, looking at the use of the Internet, and I -- as the radicalization tool. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps some of the federal agencies involved in this fight were not taking the threat of domestic radicalization through the Internet seriously enough. What's your assessment? Do you think the federal response to the threat of homegrown terrorism is at the level it should be?

MR. SANCHEZ: Senator, it's tough to say, because one of the problems I see that the feds have -- you know, I said before that part of our mission drives the way we do business. And part of our mission is to protect New York City citizens from becoming terrorists. The federal government doesn't have that mission, so automatically, by definition, their threshold is higher. So they're going to have a heck of a lot harder time having to deal with behaviors that run the gamut on First and Fourth Amendment rights and to be able to even look and scrutinize them without having even reached a standard of criminality that you need if your prime objective is, you're going to lock them up.

So it's difficult. Even though the will might be there, I think the limitations actually hinder the ability and of course resources -- I mean, you know, think about New York City. The intelligence division is 600 strong, and we're only doing, you know, five boroughs.

SEN. COLLINS: Mr. Silber, my time has almost expired, but I want to bring up very quickly an issue that this committee looked at a few years ago, and that was the financing of the spread of an extremist ideology by the Saudis through the financing of radical mosques and madrassas in this country. Are you seeing that in New York City as well?

We looked at Northern Virginia in particular, which is where we saw it.

MR. SILBER: Right, I think probably the biggest challenge that we see is probably the proliferation of the ideology that originates from Saudi Arabia. You know, to date, NYPD hasn't pursued any terrorist financing cases but we do see the ideology. You know, one of the things that we cited in our report were Noble Korans, that were produced by al-Haramain Institute, that ended up in the New York State prison system. And these were particular Korans that, on the English side of the page, had special footnotes and appendices that didn't appear in the Arabic. And this again is the Koran that originate in Saudi Arabia. Much of the literature that we see being read by some of these student university groups is books that originate from Saudi Arabia about Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab. So we do see the ideological influence right now, more so even than a financial role in proliferating the ideology.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

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