DHS Goes Further Down the CVE Rabbit Hole

The article below was originally published by the Sharia TipSheet in a slightly different form.

DHS Goes Further Down the CVE Rabbit Hole

by The Sharia TipSheet
August 13, 2019

The Department of Homeland Security is poised to spend $35 million on a new Center of Excellence in Terrorism Prevention and Counterterrorism Research. Universities will apply for grants to develop “multidisciplinary, customer-driven solutions while training the next generation of homeland security experts,” according to the press release announcing the Center. “Once awarded, this COE will leverage emerging technologies and analytic techniques to provide innovative solutions for preventing and countering terrorism,” the press release went on to say. The Center “will support academic-led innovation that supports DHS in staying a step ahead of emerging terrorist tactics.”

What does all this mean, exactly?

This publication asked DHS whether the new Center will focus on radical Islam and, if so, through what specific projects. A DHS press officer indicated he would put the question to a staff member working on the Center, but initially just provided another grant document instead.

This response being totally inadequate and not what was promised, the Sharia TipSheet contacted the press officer again:

The document you reference only mentions Islamist terrorism once and does not mention white supremacism or eco-terrorism at all.

How can anything useful be developed concerning “integrat(ing) technologies and concepts into DHS operations to avoid, prevent, or stop a threatened or actual act of terrorism” if no specific group is being examined?

Similarly, how can anything useful be developed concerning “break(ing) the cycle of recruitment, radicalization, and violence” if no specific group is being examined? Wouldn’t recruitment, for example, differ from group to group?

Perhaps it is envisioned that specific groups will be the subject of the grants even though they’re not mentioned in the grant announcement. If that is the case, please advise as to what percentage of the Center’s activity is expected to be about:

  • Abortion extremism
  • Islamist extremism
  • animal rights extremism
  • environmental extremism
  • sovereign citizen extremism
  • anarchist extremism
  • Puerto Rican extremism
  • militia extremism
  • white supremacist extremism
  • black separatist extremism
  • bombing matters
  • other (please identify)

Finally, the document is clearly written from a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) point of view. Early in the Trump administration, it was reported that DHS was moving away from CVE in several ways. What happened to the initiatives listed below, and why doesn’t the document you referenced reflect them?

Changes Initially Made at DHS Regarding CVE

a.   rebranding Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) as “terrorism prevention”
b.   rebranding CVE as “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism”
c.   undertaking an end-to-end review of all CVE programs
d.   developing a new counterterrorism strategy
e.   shifting counterterrorism grants from community engagement to law enforcement
f.   cutting staff working on CVE
g.   downgrading the authority of remaining CVE staff
h.   reformulating counterterrorism programs to be risk-based
i.   reformulating counterterrorism programs to be intelligence-driven
j.   reformulating counterterrorism programs to be proven effective
k.   reformulating counterterrorism programs to be focused on front-line actors
l.   reorganizing an Office of Terrorism Prevention Partnerships to “lead the charge”
 

There was no response at all concerning the fate of DHS’ moves away from CVE early in the Trump administration. With regard to the Center of Excellence and its areas of focus, the press officer responded:

I will try to get some more clarity on this issue for you, but in general, we did not itemize specific types of groups so as not to limit the thinking of the potential research. We’re not telling them who to study nor how to study it, but to propose what they would do with those mentioned goals in mind. We are looking to establish a new Center to conduct this research, and want to see what the various universities submit in their proposals.

The press officer later provided an additional response from a program manager:

For the new Center of Excellence for Terrorism Prevention and Counterterrorism Research, DHS S&T [Science and Technology Directorate] seeks to competitively select the best lead and partner organizations that submit packages outlining the most comprehensive approaches to advance the Department’s ability to mitigate the terrorism threat and to develop, in our workforce, the capacities and capabilities to effectively protect the Homeland. The process solicits input from many subject matter experts outside and inside DHS to comment on the benefits and negative aspects of each of the packages we receive to provide the greatest benefit for the resources invested.

While not specified in the RFP, we would certainly expect the Center to conduct research projects in the areas you mentioned. This is very early in the process and no formal decisions have yet been made on specific research projects at this stage.

So, there you have it. The new Center will spend $35 million on fishing for new ‘comprehensive approaches’ to counter and prevent terrorism. Pardon my cynicism, but it is not at all clear the taxpayers will receive anything of value for his money, given the homogenized, generic, CVE-flavored gobbledygook in the press release and grant document. This reminds me of an early experience I had as an intern with the muckraker Jack Anderson. I learned that the Energy Department had conducted a study of a new technique to make gasoline burn more efficiently and more cleanly at a cost of a penny a gallon. When I called up the Energy Department to find out what happened to the study, I was told that it was sitting on a shelf with all the other studies.

Meanwhile, the Koran still says 164 times in various ways ‘slay the infidel’. The words are still on the paper and they’re not going away. Your government wants you to believe those words had nothing to with the attacks on 9/11, Mumbai, or any of the hundreds of Islamist attacks since — that all those attacks were a perversion of Islam when in fact the Koran is very clear about what is to done with non-Muslims. The Sharia TipSheet has taken on the mission of forcing the issue and getting the federal government to come to grips with the fact that unvarnished Islamic doctrine in and of itself is a threat to the homeland.

That is what my FOIA case against the FBI is about, what my queries above to DHS are about, and what my letters to my contact in the White House are about. Job One for the federal government is to keep people safe, and that can’t happen unless the government admits Islamic doctrine per se is a national security problem. There’s a lot of mindless romanticism about ‘inclusiveness’ these days, but the obvious question is: Why would we want to include people who want to kill us?

I will be monitoring the output of the Center of Excellence and reporting on it in future articles. Will it be overloaded with the fad du jour (e.g., white supremacy)? Will it advance the state of the art for dealing with radical Islam? Will it say anything about Islamic doctrine at all? Or will it be abstracted mush taking DHS further down the CVE rabbit hole?

Only time will tell.

17 thoughts on “DHS Goes Further Down the CVE Rabbit Hole

  1. Perhaps we should start with Amendment 1 to the Constitution by exempting Islam as a religion and calling it what it is, i.e., a militant political system and an enemy of the Constitution and the people of the United States – therefore expelling the existence and practice of Islam from the United States. By what-ever-means-necessary…

    • Yes, that is the obvious first step. It’s politically inconceivable right now, but that may change.

  2. Translation: we’ve come up with another excuse to shovel tens of millions of dollars to cultural Marxists in universities.

  3. Islamic TERROR will only be stopped by Americans willing to do what is needed, period. Those behind the curtain are laughing their [fundaments] off at ALL of us. They are terrified that we will come together and blow their house of cards down. Seems Americans who care should turn their tactics around against them. But, but, exactly you bunch of lard-[bottoms], can’t be asked to better your future, can you?

  4. If you begin with the premise (supported by The Constitution, the writings of the Founders, and several SCOTUS precedents) that the Government is not and cannot be responsible for people’s “Safety,” then you may come to the logical conclusion that We The People are individually and severally responsible for our own “safety.”
    The Government can only be responsible to maintain our national Sovereignty by maintaining our national borders and protecting our overseas interests. (Though Gov. Bureaucrats and Politicians will ALWAYS want you to BELIEVE that your safety is their job – it gives them Power that they shouldn’t otherwise have.)
    We (as a people) have become so comfortable allowing the Government to “make us safe,” with the result that, when a terror attack is successfully executed, we blame the Government for failing. Well, let’s put the blame where it lies: WE, US, for trying to put OUR responsibility on Government, and for allowing them BS us into believing that THEY could ever “keep us safe!”
    There is no certain Safety, and can never be. We can minimize risk (thus increasing the possibility that we might be harmed), but there are NO guarantees.

    • Yes, I agree exactly. The federal government has only a handful of legitimate functions — protecting the borders, defending against invasion, and the coining of money as legal tender, inter alia — and “keeping us safe” isn’t one of them. Citizens keep themselves safe, while the government makes sure that criminal and feral foreigners do not enter the country.

  5. Well, they are busy looking into Ilhan Omar’s anti-semitism, AOC’s collectivist genocidal impulses and Black Lives Matter’s assassinations…wait, they’re not?

  6. “Job One for the federal government is to keep people safe,…”

    This statement is incorrect and part and parcel of what’s wrong with modern thinking in regards to the actual and original duties, of fedgov, to those who are it’s creator. The role of fedgov is to protect the nation, including the raising the of armies to fight enemies in war, war hardly being a good way to “keep people safe”. The rightful role of government in defense is to defend the nation. Please don’t get nudged left.

    In fact, the government has no obligation to keep anybody safe by law and by the Law of God, and at any rate I reject all notions and any attempts at keeping me safe for my own good. I’m not a child and live at the risk of death every minute of every day, and free men MUST prefer it this way, yay, demand it, or be made serfs and the servants of tyrants.

  7. Isn’t it about time to conclude the Constitution is recognized as toilet paper by the Deep State. And that the political class has allegiance to the Deep State and uses the Constitution as a pretense they are acting within the limits of the law.

    They are all aligned with the Communist Doctrine as is the Democratic National Committee, which is wholly controlled by the Communist Party USA.

    If one accepts these facts then its very easy to understand the hard left direction of the Democrats and their plans for the country when they take over the USA. And it will be a takeover.

  8. I use to drive my car and not have to worry about buckling my seat belt. But the government got worried for my safety, and passed a law, threatening me with a fine if the police found me not wearing my seat belt while driving. I use to ride my motorcycle unhelmeted, but the government got worried for my safety and passed a law, that said the police could ticket me, which lead to a fine, if I didn’t have a helmet on when I rode my motorcycle. Then the same with me riding my bicycle with out a helmet. The government worried about the safety of my hand guns, so a law was passed saying I had to pass a safety class before I could purchase any more weapons. Then the government got worried for my health and safety and passed laws and regulations concerning my intake of salt and sugar. As time passed the government began worrying about the ecology, plant and animal life and finally climate, so tobacco use was restricted, even tobacco advertising. Water that could have been used for agriculture was allowed to flow unencumbered to the sea, because some fish swam in it. The government in its wisdom doing away with plastic straws, and also decided to try and force me out of my car and onto public transportation. why even building a multi-billion dollar train, for me to ride to….where? I don’t know. But I’m sure it was for my safety. At the same time, slowing government began to allow people to defecate where ever people wanted to defecate, urinate, and shoot up drugs, even giving the needles to people. All for safety. The government said, for safety, there must be sanctuary cities, even states. Finally, government said, borders are to disappear, and I ask, for my safety? This is very troubling I expressed to my elected government officials. Don’t worry about your safety, hasn’t the government always looked out for your safety? But….

    • Hi don vito,

      May I pick you up on your point about public transportation? I recently discussed this with an American friend who lives partly here in the UK, partly in Oklahoma. She said Americans value the freedom of having a car, so they can go where and when they want, without having to wait for a bus or whatever. Which is all very well, but in congested cities cars take up far more road space per occupant than buses, let alone trains and metro systems, causing traffic jams where nobody goes anywhere.

      In rural districts, people who can’t afford a car, or are unable to drive, are absolutely dependent on reliable public transportation, to get to work, shop, keep medical appointments, etc. It’s a problem here, and must be worse in, say, the US, where the distances are so much greater.

      • If you want to get into the public service versus libertarian debate, note that the first thing a “public” service like a municipal or state funded bus company does is sponsor ordinances which stop the private competition that generally beats out the government service with lower prices and better service.

        So, the argument that people would not be able to transport if government didn’t supply the transportation is not supported by history.

  9. Well, here in the Disunited Kingdom, we manage with MI5 (internal security), MI6 (overseas security- think James Bond), GCHQ (communications monitoring), Border Force and Scotland Yard’s Special Branch (cops who are also spies).

    The US, being so much larger, has the CIA, FBI, ATF, ICE, and I daresay a couple of acronyms I’ve forgotten; obviously it needs another one!

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