House Homeland Security Committee chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) on Tuesday will unveil his new counterterrorism strategy, a proposal meant to suggest ways to overhaul how the United States can confront the the threat of homegrown terrorism.
A draft of the proposal, “A National Strategy to Win the War Against Islamist Terror,” was reviewed by The Cipher Brief before Tuesday’s release. The policy document is highly critical of the current administration’s approach and calls for broad strokes reform across the board.
According to a congressional aide familiar with the strategy, the congressman’s proposal aims to make the point “that we are woefully, egregiously far behind when it comes to countering radicalization at home in our own backyard.”
McCaul’s strategy comes in the wake of several incidents linked to homegrown terrorism over the weekend. The man suspected in bombings in New York and New Jersey is now in custody following a shootout with police on Monday. The suspect is a 28-year-old New Jersey resident and U.S. citizen who was born in Afghanistan. The investigation is ongoing. Former Director of Analysis at the NYPD Mitch Silber told The Cipher Brief that “right now we know the means to the violence, we know the individual who is a suspect and who potentially wanted to create the violence, but we don’t know what that person’s motive was.”
Meanwhile, at a mall in Minnesota on Saturday, a man identified by his family as a 22-year-old Somali-American stabbed at least nine people before he was shot dead by an off-duty police officer, according to authorities. ISIS’ Amaq news agency later claimed the assailant as a “solider of the Islamic State.” The FBI and local police say they are investigating the knife attack as a potential act of terrorism and authorities are exploring whether the suspect was either communicating or inspired by a foreign terrorist group.
The chairman’s counterterrorism strategy tackles three major areas that “would get at what we saw in New York, New Jersey and in Minnesota,” according to the aide, and help the U.S. try to prevent “radicalization left of boom.” The proposal calls for increasing assistance to communities — generally ramping up personnel, dollars and training — to help them spot warning signs to detect these types of plots and respond to incidents through grant programs to provide active-shooter training and prepare law enforcement to better identify and protect against improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Boosting counter-messaging efforts at home is also a key area.
While the Department of Homeland Security has courses and training for active-shooter scenarios and has also recently proposed a $10 million grant program to promote countering violent extremism efforts, the aide said this strategy is about solidifying these efforts for the long-haul, rather than as short-term projects based on that year’s budget funding. The aide also noted that the DHS counter-messaging grant program stemmed from McCaul’s own proposal, and the emphasis in this counterterrorism strategy is to hammer home that “more needs to be done in that space.”
While the proposal calls for a “top-to-bottom fix” from the White House down concerning homegrown radicalization policy, the strategy says that control should be maintained “at the local level, with the federal government empowering key stakeholders through best practices, guidance, and other enabling tools.”
The proposal also encourages developing formalized guidelines for prosecutors and investigators to take “a non-prosecutorial approach,” when appropriate, in cases where an individual has been radicalized. Immigration and refugee admittance processes must also be overhauled, according to the proposal, with applicants’ social media presence considered an important part of the review.
For the refugee screening process — widely considered the most intensive vetting process of any group arriving in the U.S. — the proposal calls for a “mandate that the FBI validate the integrity of the background check process for refugees, require agencies to complete a fraud assessment of the refugee-processing system, and regularly review the digital footprint of applicants in addition to standard data.”
Details are scant on how some proposals listed in the draft could be implemented, although the strategy is aimed at serving as a guide with possible ideas for the next president.
For instance, within the document is a recommendation for the president to restructure the National Security Council as well as require it to put together “a resource plan for global coverage of Islamist terror threats—including proposals for a renewed intelligence offensive against the enemy.” The paper also wants reform of the FBI and DHS “in order to become intelligence-driven counterterrorism organizations” and of TSA to boost the level of security provided.
The Texas Republican’s paper also calls for increased engagement from the private sector, with the government and intelligence community reaching out more to discuss how the threat is evolving and encouraging those in technology to push for best practices to address counter-messaging and terrorist propaganda on their platforms.
“Companies could also use emerging technologies to automate flagging of questionable content, such as those already in place to detect child pornography. Additionally, the tech sector should continue to examine ways to redirect potential extremists from jihadist content and toward counter-messaging that pushes back against warped terrorist narratives,” the draft states.
At the center of McCaul’s counterterrorism strategy is language. It repeatedly highlights that the threat that must be countered is specifically “radical Islamist terror.”
“This is not mere semantics; instead, identifying the threat is a strategic and military imperative,” the draft states. “We must make it clear who the enemy is: Islamist terrorists.”
The congressional aide said this emphasis is not about politics, where the phrase has become particularly controversial in this election year, but about “reorienting these policies and programs to focus on the broader movement and not just one group.”
The Obama administration’s 2011 National Strategy for Counterterrorism focuses principally on al Qaeda, its affiliates and its adherents — “the Islamist terror movement is much larger than al Qaeda” and having a “broader frame” is key, according to the aide.
“The current administration has mismanaged the response to the threat, focusing too narrowly on a specific group instead of the broader Islamist terror movement,” the draft reads.
Overall, the strategy’s design was considered “to keep pace with an evolving enemy” and aims to bring homeland security policies “into the digital age,” the aide said.
Americans have come to “view radical Islamist terrorism as an existential threat to our values and way of life” and “the evil of Islamist terrorism threatens our people’s lives, livelihoods, and way of life,” the draft states. “Complacency is not an option.”
Victory, according to McCaul’s document, “results in a world where Islamist terror is not a significant factor affecting U.S. national security and where its adherents are localized, uncoordinated, and only rarely able to conduct attacks.”
McCaul will hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, followed by a speech at AEI, to formally release the plan.
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief.
