House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson has drawn up a resolution that would require DHS to explain to Congress why it created the warning about “right-wing” groups, reports Fox News. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, initially balked at a Republican request to probe the motives of DHS and said it was a “GOP stunt aimed at embarrassing the new administration,” an absurd accusation considering the fact the report was crafted during the Bush years and rehashed after Obama took office.
In the wake of the exposure of the DHS’ “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” another document surfaced on May 5. It is entitled the “Domestic Extremism Lexicon” and was issued by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis in late March. The lexicon lists definitions for key terms and phrases used by Homeland Security analysts “that addresses the nature and scope of the threat that domestic, non-Islamic extremism poses to the United States,” Audrey Hudson reported for the Washington Times on May 5.
Democrats sitting on the House Homeland Security Committee are determined to block — at least partially — any investigation of the document’s origins. Republicans want documents and source material that supposedly justified the threat assessment, while Democrats merely want DHS to explain to Congress why it designated Second Amendment advocates, pro-life activists, and veterans as threats to the country.
As with nearly everything in the district of criminals, the DHS report has turned into a partisan football to be used to score points and make the other side of the one party system look foolish. Republicans are not so much interested in getting to the bottom of the report as they are in using it to lambaste the Obama administration (while ignoring the fact the document was created during the Bush administration). Democrats want a perfunctory explanation from the DHS and then relegate the report off to the memory hole.
In fact, it does not take a crack researcher to figure out where the source material and inspiration for the report came from — the Anti-Defamation League.
On April 22, DHS Secretary Napolitano appeared before the Anti-Defamation League National Leadership Conference in Washington. In a speech, she said that “the ADL and DHS have had some good partnerships. In recent years, the Department has placed our employees in your advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists.”
It was the same under Bush. “The Department of Homeland Security has contracted with the Anti-Defamation League to provide its specialized training and expertise on extremism, hate groups, domestic and international terrorism, and civil liberties to high-level agency personnel,” an ADL press release dated May 1, 2007, states. “In remarks to the ADL’s National Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the briefings are one way his department, the government’s third largest, is partnering with ADL to address issues of immigration, civil liberties and extremism.”
“Our trainings are intensive and offer a range of detailed information about anti-government extremists, hate groups, extremism and terrorism on the Internet and hate groups,” said David C. Friedman, ADL Director of National Law Enforcement Initiatives.
According to the ADL press release, Homeland Security’s training included “a briefing from Brig. Gen. Nir Meri-Esh of the Israel Police, who shared his firsthand experiences and knowledge in preventing and responding to terrorist attacks.” It was not explained how Meri-Esh’s expertise relates to “anti-government extremists” in the United States.
Not only the DHS, but the FBI as well is indoctrinated by the ADL. An ADL press release dated November 3, 2005, includes remarks by Robert S. Mueller III, director of the FBI, who said the “Anti-Defamation League and the FBI share a strong bond of friendship.” The FBI, said Mueller, benefits “greatly from education and training programs” provided by the ADL.
“The real meaning of a partnership between the ADL and the FBI and of the FBI’s willingness to accept the ADL’s judgment on the ‘changing nature’ of terrorist threats is that the FBI will devote less of its resources to the investigation of actual criminal activity and more of its resources to helping the ADL counter the people the ADL considers ‘extremists’: which is to say, people who have views the ADL labels ‘extreme,’” writes Dr. William Pierce.
On April 6, 2009, in the wake of the Pittsburgh police shootings, the ADL labeled radio talk show host Alex Jones as an extremist of the sort of interest to the DHS and FBI. “According to ADL, [Richard Poplawski, the accused shooter] frequented ‘Infowars,’ the Web site of the right-wing conspiracy radio talk-show host Alex Jones, where he shared links to its stories with others and sometimes posted his own messages to the site,” an ADL press release declares. The ADL makes the insinuation that Jones and his radio show — along with the white supremacist website Stormfront — influenced the alleged cop killer Poplawski.
An earlier ADL press release characterized Joe Banister, Tommy Cryer, Pat Shannan, Dave Von Kleist, Jack McLamb, Greg Dixon, Ted Gunderson, and Michael Badnarik as dangerous extremists.
Finally, it should be noted that the ADL has used illegal methods to gather information on its political enemies. In 1993, an ADL contractor was arrested for illegally spying on numerous groups, including the NAACP, ACLU, Mother Jones magazine, Greenpeace, Jews for Jesus, the National Lawyers Guild, Democratic U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi, and former Republican U.S. Representative Pete McCloskey. The San Francisco district attorney at the time accused the ADL of conducting a national “spy network.”
It is precisely this spy network — in existence since the 1930s — that the
Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are interested in tapping into and resulted in
the production of the now infamous and embarrassing (for the government) “Rightwing
extremism” report. (Infowars, 5.20.2009, Kurt Nimmo)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dhs-may-be-called-to-explain-%e2%80%9crightwing-extremism%e2%80%9d-report.html