(Washington)
They’re carrying out sporadic terror attacks on police, have threatened
attacks on government buildings and reject government authority.
A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the
Department of Homeland Security earlier this month and reviewed by CNN,
focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen
extremists, and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House
conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism.
Some federal and local law enforcement groups
view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal
to — and in some cases greater than — the threat from foreign Islamic
terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.
The DHS report, produced in coordination with
the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks around the
U.S. since 2010.
The government says these are extremists who
believe they can ignore laws and that their individual rights are under
attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being
required to obey a court order.
They’ve lashed out against authority in
incidents such as one in 2012, in which a father and son allegedly
engaged in a shootout with police in Louisiana, in a confrontation that
began with an officer pulling them over for a traffic violation. Two
officers were killed and several others wounded in the confrontation.
The men were sovereign citizen extremists who claimed police had no
authority over them.
Among the findings from the DHS intelligence
assessment: “[Sovereign citizen] violence during 2015 will occur most
frequently during routine law enforcement encounters at a suspect’s
home, during enforcement stops and at government offices.”
DHS has documented examples of violence by sovereign citizen extremists since 2010. They range from incidents that occurred in the home and at traffic stops to attacks on government buildings.
DHS has documented examples of violence by sovereign citizen extremists since 2010. They range from incidents that occurred in the home and at traffic stops to attacks on government buildings.
DHS has documented examples of violence by
sovereign citizen extremists since 2010. They range from incidents that
occurred in the home and at traffic stops to attacks on government
buildings.
The report
adds that “law enforcement officers will remain the primary target of
[sovereign citizen]” violence over the next year due to their role in
physically enforcing laws and regulations.”
The White House has fended off criticism in
recent days for its reluctance to say the words “Islamist extremism,”
even as the conference this week almost entirely focused on helping
Imams and community groups to counteract the lure of groups like ISIS.
Absent from the White House conference is any
focus on the domestic terror threat posed by sovereign citizen, militias
and other anti-government terrorists that have successfully carried
multiple attacks in recent years.
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An administration official says the White House
is focused on the threat from all terrorists, including from sovereign
citizen and other domestic groups.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say the [White
House] conference didn’t address this at all,” the official said, adding
that President Barack Obama addressed the need to combat “violent
ideologies” of all types.
An official at the Justice Department, which is
leading the administration’s counter-radicalization effort, says many of
the tactics aimed at thwarting radical Islamic recruitment of young
people can also be used to fight against anti-government extremist
groups.
While groups like ISIS and al Qaeda garner the most attention, for many local cops, the danger is closer to home.
A survey last year of state and local law
enforcement officers listed sovereign citizen terrorists, ahead of
foreign Islamists, and domestic militia groups as the top domestic
terror threat.
The survey
was part of a study produced by the University of Maryland’s National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
In 2013 a man who held anti-government views
carried out a shooting attack on three Transportation Security
Administration employees at the Los Angeles Airport, killing one TSA
officer. Last year a couple killed two police officers and a bystander
at a Las Vegas Walmart store.
Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern
Poverty Law Center, said by some estimates there are as many as 300,000
people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps
100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said.
The federal government’s focus on the domestic
groups waxes and wanes, Potok said, in part because the threat from
foreign groups like al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Potok says sovereign citizen groups have
attracted support because of poor economic conditions. Some groups
travel the country pitching their ideology as a way to help homeowners
escape foreclosure or get out of debt, by simply ignoring the courts and bankruptcy law.
The DHS report’s focus on right-wing terrorists
is a subject that garnered political controversy for the Obama
administration in the past. In 2009, a DHS report on possible
recruitment of military veterans by right-wing militia groups prompted
an outcry from veterans groups.
The report was produced by staff during the Bush
administration, but wasn’t published until then Homeland Security Janet
Napolitano had taken office. Napolitano criticized her own agency for the report.
http://govtslaves.info/dhs-intelligence-report-warns-sovereign-citizen-uprising/
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