President Obama’s support for Mexico’s drug war looked like it might be upstaged this morning by a growing wave of outrage over a recently released intelligence assessment by the Department of Homeland Security that many conservative groups blasted as a political attack against them. And despite an apology issued to military veterans by its new secretary, Janet Napolitano, it remained unclear whether she had quelled a brewing political storm.
The April 7 assessment warned that the faltering economy and the election of the country’s first African-American president could fuel support for right-wing extremist organizations. And it said that proposals for new restrictions on firearms could lead some groups to begin stockpiling weapons and ammunition.
But the comments that stirred the most outrage referred to war veterans. The assessment cautioned that returning veterans who faced trouble reintegrating into their communities could “lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”
The blogosphere was abuzz on Wednesday with reaction to the memo. Republican legislators issued a flurry of angry statements. And in a blitz of appearances from Mexico City on this morning’s news shows, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued an apology to veterans who read the assessment as an accusation.
“An apology is owed,” Ms. Napolitano said. “We greatly respect our veterans. We have a number of veterans in our department.”
Homeland Security issues several such threat assessments a year to advise state and local law enforcement agencies about trends or issues considered potential threats. And they have identified threats on both ends of the political spectrum. In a February report, for example, the agency cited trends that suggested left-wing groups were “maturing and expanding their cyberattack capabilities with the aim of attacking targets in the United States.”
Ms. Napolitano said that the assessment was not meant as a, “blanket accusation.”
She said that she had seen the report before it was distributed, and that as a former United States attorney at the time Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma
City, the information in the assessment, “struck a nerve with her.”
“All this was meant to do was to give law enforcement what we call, ‘situational awareness,’ ” Ms. Napolitano said in an interview on Fox News. She said the assessment was meant to inform authorities about, “some of the things that go on. Some of the things that have happened in the past and could recur that people just need to be aware of.”
Whether Ms. Napolitano’s apology and explanations on several television shows this morning will appease critics remains unknown.
Representative John Boehner, the Republican minority leader, said, “To characterize men and women returning home after defending our country as potential terrorists is offensive and unacceptable.”
And in a letter to Ms. Napolitano, David Rehbein, the commander of the American Legion, wrote, “To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical disgruntled military veteran is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam.” Ms. Napolitano indicated that she would meet with Mr. Rehbein upon her return to Washington.
In supporting its assertions about veterans, the DHS assessment cited an F.B.I. report written under the Bush administration which said “some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.”
In that July 2008 report, titled “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11,” the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division found said that “military experience is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement as the result of recruitment campaigns by extremist groups and self-recruitment by veterans sympathetic to white supremacist causes.”
It added that a “review of FBI white supremacist extremist cases from October 2001 to May 2008 identified 203 individuals with confirmed or claimed military service active in the extremist movement at some time during the reporting period.”
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