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...Was shut down seven years ago.
From politico
Hindsight is 20-20
The GOP Shut Down a Program That Might Have Prevented Dallas and Baton Rouge - POLITICO Magazine
From politico
But seven years ago, when a little-known division in the new president’s Department of Homeland Security sought to explore the potential violence of returning veterans—one that might have aided local law enforcement with intelligence in Dallas and Baton Rouge—it was Congressional Republicans who succeeded in pushing to shut the program down.
The intelligence unit, called the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, undertook a sensitive mission when it was founded in the Bush administration in 2004: Studying and monitoring sub-sections of the population for potential signs of ideological and political radicalization. The group’s mandate allowed it to research radicalized groups without criminal cause—a counterterrorism think-tank, of sorts, that circulated early warnings to state and local law enforcement.
But a prediction found in a 2009 report, titled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” ignited the rage of conservative and veterans groups across the country. The DHS study warned that returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, traumatized abroad and underserved at home, would pose a particular threat to law enforcement while those two wars scaled down, in part by being drawn to radicalized movements inside the country.
“We were looking at the precursors to terrorism, precursors to criminality, which we call radicalization,” says Daryl Johnson, the unit’s former chief. “If the unit was still functioning today, we would definitely be on top of what’s going on—issuing a threat advisory, talking to law enforcement about how there’s a new emergence of violent groups.”
Johnson’s 2009 report, which was classified only for the eyes of law enforcement, leaked almost immediately, and became the first scandal, real or imagined, of the Obama presidency. It was also the moment when the political career of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano abruptly ground to a halt. “There was a backlash to it by the Republican establishment, as well as Fox News,” says Johnson, who today works in private security consulting that focuses on domestic terrorism. “The day after that thing was leaked, all of our work stopped.”
Hindsight is 20-20
The GOP Shut Down a Program That Might Have Prevented Dallas and Baton Rouge - POLITICO Magazine