SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE REPORTING — Almost from the moment the shots were fired in Butler, Pennsylvania Saturday, terrorism experts and ordinary Americans shared a common fear: that extremists on the fringes of the country’s deep political and cultural divides were now only more likely to turn to violence.
“The lethality of the anti-government, anti-authority movement has really increased on both sides,” former FBI Executive Assistant Director Jill Sanborn told The Cipher Brief, “and I think that is showing in this attack.”
The assassination attempt came at the midpoint of an already difficult year of political tensions and warnings about domestic threats.
Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that he viewed “the domestic terrorist threat as being persistent…and significant," and the most recent Homeland Security assessment included warnings that sounded prescient after the Butler attack. The DHS warned of a “high risk” from “lone offenders or small group attacks that occur with little warning,” along with concerns that such attacks might be aimed at "government officials, voters, and elections‑related personnel” in the runup to the November vote.
“Tensions have been building on both sides of the political spectrum and extremists have taken root,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told the Voice of America Sunday, and he warned that the shooting could make the coming days and months more dangerous.
Since the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol, law enforcement has focused primarily on extremists on the right wing of America’s divided politics. While official threat assessments still reflect that focus, a poll taken last month suggests dangers on the left as well. Ten percent of poll respondents agreed with the statement that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.”
“My main concern,” Clarke said, “is that this could lead to a spiral of violence and could come to characterize the remainder of the election season.”
The toxic political culture, violent fringes in American society and ready access to heavy weaponry have left glaring questions in the wake of the attempted assassination: How to calm the nation? How to avoid further violence?
A "counterinsurgency program" for America
In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 assault, Cipher Brief expert and former senior CIA Officer Robert Grenier wrote an article for The New York Times under a provocative headline: “How to Defeat America’s Homegrown Insurgency.”
It was all the more noteworthy because of the author’s background. Grenier had been the CIA station chief in Pakistan on September 11, 2001. He helped devise the attack plan that overthrew the Taliban later that year, and ultimately became the CIA’s Director of Counterterrorism.
“As a former overseas operative who has struggled both on the side of insurgents and against them,” Grenier wrote three weeks after January 6, “the past few days have brought a jarring realization: We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen.” He warned of elements in the U.S. that seek a “social apocalypse,” and suggested a response.
“Three weeks ago, it would have been unthinkable that the United States might be a candidate for a comprehensive counterinsurgency program. But that is where we are.”
Three and a half years later, the attempted assassination of Trump – and the fury and disinformation that have followed – have Grenier and other terrorism experts more worried than ever.
“I am very concerned, and obviously not alone in that,” Grenier told The Cipher Brief Sunday. He said it was “beyond question” that the attack against Trump will inflame right-wing groups that were already committed to the use of violence. “I think it just further stokes people’s anger and their fears.”
“We’re seeing reactions, including even from elected officials, suggesting that this might have been ordered by President Biden himself, suggesting that this is the deep state striking back,” Grenier said. “It fits into a broader narrative in the minds of many that (Trump) is a man who’s being persecuted…if anything, it makes the concerns that I had, going on over three years now, even more concerning than it was then, and in a position now where I just don’t know how you begin to counter it. I really don’t.”
Back in 2021, Grenier had ideas, recommendations for a “counterinsurgency” that featured a few core components.
The first – “the easiest and most straightforward,” he wrote then – involved the tracking and investigating of known U.S.-based extremists, and bringing violent offenders to justice.
His second recommendation was trickier: “We must isolate and alienate the committed insurgents from the population.” Here Grenier drew a parallel with Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq who depended on a large community of disaffected Iraqi Sunnis for tacit support and recruitment; in the U.S., he said, “We face the prospect of there being a mass of citizens — sullen, angry and nursing their grudges — among whom the truly violent minority will be able to live undetectably, attracting new adherents to their cause.”
Grenier also stressed the need for American citizens to reach across their political and emotional divides. “We must all earnestly engage in an effort to listen to others’ ideas, no matter how daft they may seem; to understand where such ideas come from, no matter how hateful the source; to meet assertion with reason and evidence, not counterassertion. And where our evidence is lacking, we must patiently seek it out.”
It was a call to action – and today Grenier says such approaches may be both more necessary and harder to implement.
A whole new world
Dan Hoffman, a former senior CIA official, three-time station chief and Cipher Brief expert, shares many of Grenier’s concerns, though he stressed another risk in the wake of the Pennsylvania shooting: the ready availability of heavy weapons, and the willingness of a small but not insignificant minority to use them.
“This is something totally different,” Hoffman told The Cipher Brief after the attack against Trump. “This is America's reckoning with violence. Why do we have more guns than people in this country? Why do our politicians and their acolytes love their country but hate their political opponents so much that they use language that means that they have to conquer them as opposed to reason with them?”
Beyond gun violence, Hoffman emphasized the need for the U.S. intelligence community to track and beat back efforts by Russia and China and others to stoke disinformation in the U.S.
“They're going to try to divide us with propaganda and disinformation about this attempted assassination of the former president. So we've got to work on that and have a plan to deal with it,” Hoffman said. “And no, Russia and China, we're not going to let you do this to us. We're united. We love our country more than we hate each other. Even though we engage in dialogue which is heated at times…we're not going to let you infiltrate us with your propaganda and disinformation that is designed to make us weak so that you can conquer us. We won't let that happen.”
Like Grenier, Hoffman was pessimistic about the way forward, though he said he remained a “glass-half-full” person. He referenced the recent poll of anti-Trump Americans – “You've got a small percentage of people in our country who think that it's OK to solve our problems with violence…10 percent, that's a lot of people. All it takes is one 20-year-old wing-nut to kill the former president. So we’ve got a problem. And if we're not awake already, if this didn't awaken us to deal with it, then I don't know. what could.”
Hoffman suggested a bipartisan effort on Capitol Hill to “come together and put a committee together and figure out how they can do better at this.”
Truth and consequences
In the wake of Saturday's attack, Hoffman and Grenier – and many others – have stressed the urgency of combating the misinformation and disinformation that are now rampant on both sides of the divide, and which Hoffman called “force multipliers for more distrust of our institutions and distrust of people who don't agree with us.” He added that “it's in the interest of Democrats and Republicans to try to fix that together.”
Grenier, in his 2021 “counterinsurgency” argument, said that facts in the U.S. had become “untethered from objective reality, they become excuses to justify what one wants to believe. Yes, the problem is far worse on the right than on the left, but the problem is a general one.” Winning an information war, Grenier wrote, would mean “bridging the urban-rural cultural and political gap with facts, tolerance and empathetic sincerity.”
Now he is skeptical that such a bridge can be built.
“I think much of it really comes down to truth,” he said after the attempt on Trump’s life. “And we’re in a post-truth era here. One of the things that I suggested we talked about back in 2021 – Is there some sort of collective authority that would have broad credibility across a wide political spectrum that could pronounce on some of these simple issues of fact that so divide people? – I don’t know where you would find that today. I felt it was somewhat naive at the time to hope for it, and I’m much less optimistic now.”
A Silver Lining?
If there was any good news in the aftermath of the Pennsylvania attack, it came in the form of rare pledges from the Biden and Trump campaigns.
Biden ordered a halt to campaign ads and anti-Trump messaging; Trump was reported to have ordered a toning down of all the speeches at the Republican National Convention, which opened Monday night.
Ellen McCarthy, a Cipher Brief expert and CEO of the Trust In Media Cooperative, saw hope in the twin statements of the campaigns.
“I'm hoping that this may be an opportunity, because you have seen that President Biden pulled down all of his political marketing comms pieces, and Trump said he would do the same thing,” McCarthy told The Cipher Brief.
“Now, we'll see what really happens. Is this a turning point? Is this a place where maybe there'll be some civility, some opportunity to take a breath? I'm hopeful.”
Grenier said the best outcome in the coming weeks and months would be if those pledges were honored, and if the trauma of Saturday’s attack moved politicians – and the nation – towards a gentler form of discourse.
“It makes me think about some of my own feelings and beliefs,” he said. “I do see Trump as being a very serious threat to our institutions, and I’m very concerned about the possibility of another Trump administration. That said, I think that our institutions are maybe more resilient than I and others give them credit for, such that branding him an existential threat to democracy and the foundational institutions of our country may be overblown, and may be contributing in some way to this back and forth that has produced an unprecedented level of division and hatred.”
Hoffman echoed the point. “If there's a silver lining…it might lead to the kind of national dialogue that we need in this country.
“If you're a glass-half-full person, which I find that I still am more often than not, the fact that the president - by centimeters - not only didn't get killed but didn't even get seriously hurt – that's a small price to pay, perhaps, for the national reconciliation. America, don't waste this opportunity.”
Writer and Researcher Ethan Masucol contributed to this report
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