FBI Names Greatest Domestic Terror Threat

Discuss --

From Der Spiegel (online English language edition) 05/19/05

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,356584,00.html

Relativizing Terrorism FBI Style

Be afraid, be very afraid. The FBI says the greatest domestic terror threat facing America comes from animal rights activists. Ticket scalpers may be next.

Terrorism is a great word. After all, it can be used to describe just about any infraction of the law you like. Just look at Uzbekistan. There, President Islam Karimov decided that demonstrators marching against poverty were terrorists and had his soldiers mow them down with gunfire. But even in the United States, the word has taken on new life. The FBI on Wednesday announced that the nation's top domestic terrorism threat comes from ... drum roll please ... animal rights activists. In other words, crimes often perpetrated by such activists such as arson, rescuing animals from labs and making harassing phone calls now fall under the growing umbrella of "terrorism."

"There is nothing else going on in this country over the last several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions," FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism John Lewis told reporters. He didn't say if the animal rights criminals would be packed off to Afghanistan of Guantanamo to be dealt with appropriately.

If you threw red paint on my fur coat on Michigan Ave, I would consider you a terrorist and start beating the shit out of you. That is a general "you". If you are terrorizing someone doesn't that make you a terrorist? Terrorist is a general over used word, like racist. they are used so much they have almost no meaning.

I don't know about paint on a jacket, but I do think blowing up buildings or planting bombs is terrorism.

I'm a really pissed off fag these days but I'm not going to go blow something up.

I suppose I'm an animal rights activist, insofar as I'm vegan and work in a vegan business, and I know lots of more active activists--they do information campaigns, lobbying, animal rescue (often illegal, but nonviolent) and such. Never has anyone even joked about blowing something up "for the animals."

I'm aware that it happens, but given the small portion of the population that does anything to forward animal rights, and the miniscule fraction of that group who ever break the law in those efforts, much less molotov a research lab, I suspect I could count on my fingers and toes the number of people that make up this "terror threat." Chances are they're a lot more caught up in some romanticized "Resistance" fantasy than in compassion for suffering creatures.

If they're our "greatest domestic terror threat," then we essentially have no terror threat, and the only organization trying to instill fear for political gain (aka terrorize) is the government agency making the announcement.

"Shock and Awe."

Doesn't suprise me that a German paper is trying to malign the FBI. The article makes it sound like they're talking about paint throwing, banner waving protestors. The fact is, they're talking about ELF (Environmental Liberation Front) and ALF (Animal Liberation Front), both of whom are no strangers to arson or bombing. Moreover, the ALF spokesman has said that ALF feels that violence against humans is warranted in order to protect animals. These sound like dangers to me.

Remember, they are talking about *domestic* terrorist threats, not imported threats like Al-Qeada. This is just another example of the rampant anti-American mood of the European press.


-Kiamat Dusk

paint on your fur coat is not a terror attack. it is assault at the very worst, and most likely a simple a civil suit for the destruction of property. you probably could take the person to small claims court. it is not as having your car turned into a time bomb.

this is really trivializing the pain and suffering of real terrorism and the issues that surround it.

Many people feel the FBI is a terrorism threat.

Some people like myself, own vintage furs. The majority of fur I own was given to my by my Grandmothers. So I have no dead rats on my hands. If my furs were ever damaged, they would be immediately replaced.

No I don't think so. Terrorism is already trivialized. I can hardly be blamed. The word is entirely overused and the government has decided to apply it to any and everyone who is doing something they don't like. If you are terrorizing me, you are a terrorist. Someone needs to invent a new word, because terrorist is played out, just like racist. If you cry wolf too many times people start not to care.

Thank you, at least someone is still thinking clearly.

i meant the fbi was doing the trivializing, not you! that they were creating the terms by which paint on your property was a "terror crime"

i think in light of ira, eta, alqaeda and various other groups, there is a distinction between terrorizing and terrorist. when we use the word terrorist it goes beyond the casual meaning of terrorising. i see what you mean though, that with constant abuse of the word like in the fbi's case we will need a new word.

let's see this for what it is. the fbi does not casually decide to use the word terrorist against peta. this is institutionalising the supression of dissent by associating it to the most horrific events in our recent collective memory. it's a really disgusting kind of thought police action. anyway, i hope it doesn't become our problem up here. but usually it does, because we get most of our culture off american cable.

Well, from the terrorist, violent/extremist cultist, anti-government militaristic, criminal, or whatever other wacked out point of view, sure they are. This is a good thing.

It astounds me that people here are able to draw so much from this two paragraph POS newsbite--FFS! Just a little biased are we? FIRST of all, where's the context? And if we're talking about non-international threats here, and I'm sure this is, can anyone think of anything bigger?

He was most likely using the term domestic threats to mean "originating from within the US", NOT including state sponsored or terrorist sponsored threats.

http://www.cnn.com/aol/story/2005/05/19/cnn_US_domestic.terrorism.html

"Before Sept. 11, 2001, the most lethal terrorist attack on U.S. soil was McVeigh's crude 4,800-pound fertilizer truck bomb, which killed 168 people in Oklahoma City. But the World Trade Center attacks made foreign terrorists the priority for the FBI and other federal agencies, and some experts believe attention to domestic threats lost ground."

http://www.timesleader.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/nation/11430890.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

And our greatest domestic terrorist threat is ALF? Oh, please.

The FBI, remember, is the same organization that infiltrated the civil-rights and anti-war movements back when I was young, in some sort of whacked-out paranoid McCarthy fantasy. Meanwhile, the madman in the Oval Office was secretly bombing the hell out of countries we weren't even at war with.

Get the right-wing militias and violent hate groups with stockpiles of illegal weapons under control, and then we can discuss the crimes of groups with zero human fatalities to their credit.

I hope we're not going to have to relive the sixties before the men in black grow up. Oh, wait, no, that's not what I hope at all...

Courage.

well terrorisem in general the point of it is to cause a certain amount of fear so that people wont do ceratin things. and where the goverment allows thease people to speak out thier views the activist should not force their views on others.

only reason they are on that list is because they are doing a level of harm to others.

Vandals and arsonists need to be caught and prosecuted (arsonists in particular, since their actions show a wanton disregard for public safety).

But... a "domestic terror priority"? When certain individuals affiliated with the KKK, the Right to Life movement, and a host of others are murdering people in cold blood?

Why is the FBI downplaying much deadlier threats to our health and safety in favor of going after some nutcases who trash labs and spraypaint slogans? Could it be that the lucrative animal torture industry has more pull in DC these days than family planning doctors and African Americans?

It's like the intellegence effort to link Martin Luther King with the Communist Party... even if it had been true, it would have been his constitutional right of free association and consequently a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

It seems that the biggest crime one can commit today is pissing off a big campaign donor.

If that's the biggest domestic terrorism threat then I'd like my civil liberties back please.

No, it's not the same organization. Do you know that employee turnover in the FBI is very high? Saying it's the same organization when it is now run by almost a completely different set of people and/or people who have changed departments, not to mention the massive restructuring going on, is just inaccurate.

I'm curious why what they're saying is so easily shrugged off. How can you just automatically dismiss this as politically motivated without even listening to the reasoning behind it?

Since it seems as if nobody is open minded enough about this to click links...

"John Lewis, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, said animal and environmental rights extremists have claimed credit for more than 1,200 criminal incidents since 1990. The FBI has 150 pending investigations associated with animal rights or eco-terrorist activities, and ATF officials say they have opened 58 investigations in the past six years related to violence attributed to the ELF and ALF.

In the same period violence from groups like the Ku Klux Klan and anti-abortion extremists have declined, Lewis said."
...

"No deaths have been blamed on attacks by those groups [ELF/ALF] so far, but the attacks have increased in frequency and size, said Lewis.

"Plainly, I think we're lucky. Once you set one of these fires they can go way out of control," Lewis said."
...

""The most worrisome trend to law enforcement and private industry alike has been the increase in willingness by these movements to resort to the use of incendiary and explosive devices," he said."

Sounds dangerous to me... sounds like a domestic terrorist threat too. What would they have to do for it to be considered a terrorist act? If they haven't crossed that line yet, they're pretty damn close. It's estimated that they've caused millions of dollars of damage in the last decade (actually that's an understatement).

Now I don't know the full reasoning behind saying they're the greatest domestic threat either, maybe they are and maybe they aren't. But I'm not going to shrug this off as "politically motivated" either. If we had a Democrat president and a Democrat congress, would this report change? I doubt it. The FBI's duty is to be objective and non-political, and really I don't see what the FBI has to gain from being political anyway.


Terrorism: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

ELF fits the description fine.

Tresspassing is a criminal incident, as is keying a Hummer. I'm not advocating either of these activities, just pointing out that there are myriad degrees of civil disobedience that fall short of terrorism, and criminals or not, the perpetrators should not be labeled "terrorists" just because someone with similar beliefs committed a terrorist act.

In any case, most of us are not denying that ALF/ELF might be our biggest domestic terror threat. We're just pointing out that they're a whale in a bathtub; domestic terrorism is not a thriving industry just now. And yes, I'll also mention that keeping people afraid, especially of an "Enemy Among Us," is always a good political move for law enforcement agencies. It keeps payroll fat and oversight slim.

I'm glad you brought more detail into the discussion, Garoad. Hasn't particularly changed my view, of course

This ridiculous definition quite clearly makes culprits of the current administration and probably all govmnts around the planet.

- unlawful use of force.
- intimidating or coercing societies or governments.

Paranoia brought about by encouraging misinformation and rumour. One particularly nasty method for any extremist administration to keep it's sheep in line is to utilise paranoia.

I feel like I'm revisiting old-world Roman times again.


Deja-vu!

This got brought up on the radio yesterday morning... apparently animal testing labs have specific protections against animal rights terrorists that no other type of company is given. Can we say "unequal protection under law"?

They'll have to pry my cat out of my cold, dead hands...