Though Walid Shoebat’s message to about 300 South Dakota police officers that all Islamic organizations in America are the enemy and that Islam and terrorism are inseparable may be an extreme case, there is growing concern about the antiterrorism training being delivered to law enforcement and other first responders around the country.
Shoebat, who was hired by the South Dakota Department of Homeland Security to speak to law enforcement officers, claims to be a former terrorist who converted to Christianity and offers, via his foundation, what he says is an inside view of what a terrorist looks like. He says to look for a mark on the forehead of fundamentalist Muslims — but no facial hair. After years of praying with their heads to the ground, they obtain a mark on their forehead. “A Muslim with a mark on his forehead but no beard is up to no good,” said Keith Davies, Shoebat’s business partner.
Shoebat’s credentials have been doubted. He’s described as an opportunist who, after the flood of homeland security grant money that followed 9/11, emerged from the woodwork as a “terrorist expert.”
In 2010, the Columbus, Ohio, Police Department hired a retired FBI agent to teach a two-day antiterrorism training course, but the course was stopped after the first day because the trainer provided “incorrect, blanket statements” about who might be involved in terrorism, the department said.
Army Lt. Col. Reid Sawyer, who heads the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, recently expressed concern to National Public Radio that many individuals are speaking with authority that comes without merit, and they’re giving state and local law enforcement false impressions about the terror threat. His colleague Bill Braniff, director of the center’s practitioner education, said it is happening “fairly consistently” around the nation.
Everyone acknowledges the growing threat from the homegrown, radicalized terrorist, but the training being provided worries some people. In a letter to U.S. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Maine, asked for assurance that federal funds for antiterrorism training are not being wasted on programs that could undermine the effort to deter homegrown terrorism.
Since Osama bin Laden was killed in May, 19 Americans have been arrested for terrorist activities (as of early October). Al-Qaida is a splintered group and is, along with other groups, inspiring homegrown attacks on Americans. For example, the five Muslim men from Alexandria, Va., arrested in 2009 for plotting to kill Americans showed no signs of radicalization. They reportedly became acquainted with an al-Qaida operative through social networking websites.
It’s this splintered effect that makes it difficult for law enforcement to find these individuals.
How We Got Here
Several years after 9/11, urgency was placed on training state and local law enforcement officers on homeland security and antiterrorism, and the feds flooded states with money to make it happen. Since 2006, the DHS has spent almost $40 million on antiterrorism training, according to reports.
The DHS responded to Lieberman’s letter by saying the department has “robust standards to ensure that counterterrorism training funded by DHS is taught by qualified instructors and based on the latest intelligence and most effective policing techniques.” To receive funds, the DHS said, counterterrorism programs must meet course certification guidelines reviewed by an independent, third-party panel.
Matt Mayer, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said there are “tons and tons of courses” available, many of which are “too thin, too awareness oriented, not technical enough or just not effective.” Mayer, who was a senior official at the DHS under secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, said, “We had worked to try to create a very basic core template from awareness through technical levels that would allow the training to happen. My sense is that it kind of got away from us.”
What happened was that every entity wanted to have a training program approved to please its constituents, Mayer said, and this created a cornucopia of courses without a focus on standards or topics that would get high-risk areas up to speed.
The strategy for most law enforcement agencies, he said, is to educate officers on the basics of Islamic-inspired terrorism — but that’s not enough.
“We need to start digging a whole lot deeper on [suspicious activity reports] training to make sure we’re not sending a whole lot of data that’s not meaningful and throwing more hay on a haystack, making it harder to find the needle,” Mayer said. “We’ve taken the broad brush stroke rather than a surgeon’s scalpel approach.”
A DHS spokesman said the department isn’t a standard-setting organization and can’t control who a state agency hires to speak about terrorism, but added that there’s an effort under way to streamline the process of approving courses. And agencies can’t use DHS grants to fund training courses that the department hasn’t approved.
Adopt the Mission
A culture change among law enforcement is necessary if the nation is serious about combating homegrown terrorism, Mayer said. The law enforcement community, except in Los Angeles and New York, he said, is still mired in a culture of “aggressive enforcement” and is reluctant to change, which inhibits the ability to combat terror threats.
Part of the reason for that is that law enforcement has always looked at terrorism as a federal government priority, and as federal funding to states dries up, that will continue to be a challenge.
“Law enforcement really needs to adopt this national security mission and understand that they are the tip of the spear,” Mayer said. “And in some cases, they’re going to be the ones that detect and prevent bad things from happening.”
Law enforcement agencies should go beyond the See Something, Say Something campaign, Mayer said, and learn the structure of al-Qaida, how it works, its typical modes of operation, the triggers of terrorist activity, as well as the laws surrounding civil liberties and how not to violate those. “Not just, ‘There’s a guy taking a picture of a bridge,’ but trying to understand a little bit more about the sophisticated elements of what they’re doing that aren’t going to be that obvious. It’s one of the key things we need to think through.”
Mayer said whether the nation is focusing too much on Islamists will be the “great question.” But for now, the focal point should be on the homegrown radicalized threat and the continued threat from al-Qaida.
Continued training and refreshing law enforcement on the latest intelligence is important, Mayer said, even if the training is via distance learning.
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