The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Intelligence lacking on domestic terrorism
U.S. and allies have not matched systems on international terrorists.
The United States and its closest allies have spent nearly two decades building an elaborate system to share intelligence about international terrorist groups, and it has become a key pillar of a global effort to thwart attacks.
But there’s no comparable arrangement for sharing intelligence about domestic terrorist organizations, including rightwing extremists like the one suspected in the killing of 49 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, according to current and former national security officials and counterterrorism experts.
Governments generally see nationalist extremist groups as a problem for domestic law enforcement and security agencies to confront. In the United States, that responsibility falls principally to the FBI.
But increasingly, nationalist groups in different countries are drawing inspiration from each other, uniting in common cause via social media, experts said. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the 28-year-old suspected gunman in Christchurch, posted a manifesto full of rage on Twitter in which he cited other right-wing extremists as his inspiration, among them Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Tarrant also had white supremacist slogans scrawled on weapons, according to video he took.
The intelligence services of New Zealand and the United States — along with those in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia — enjoy a close working relationship. The so-called Five Eyes routinely share highly classified intelligence about Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, gleaned from their respective networks of surveillance systems and human spies.
Some experts say the allies need to think about how they can turn their resources toward threats that may reside within their borders but arguably threaten their common security.
“With its mix of global inspiration and local action, far-right extremism has inspired killings inside the U.S. and every one of the Five Eyes, ranging from mass shootings and bombings to assassinations of political leaders,” said P.W. Singer, a counterterrorism researcher and strategist at New America, a think tank in Washington. “The sad events in New Zealand illustrate why we have to have the political bravery to stop ignoring what is a real terrorist threat that has killed more Americans than even ISIS.”
Current and former officials said if the United States had intelligence about an imminent attack by domestic radicals in another country, it would quickly alert authorities there. But as a routine matter, the countries’ intelligence services are not exchanging information.
Officials in the Five Eyes countries do discuss the rise of nationalist groups, but the topic doesn’t feature nearly as prominently as threats from transnational organizations, said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
“We talked about it in terms of how the process of radicalization in various forms of extremist groups compares to each other but not in the context of specific cases or intelligence exchanges,” he said.