Learning From Our Mistakes: How Not to Confront White Supremacist Violence

Learning From Our Mistakes: How Not to Confront

White Supremacist Violence

Mike German*

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

I. THE LONG HISTORY OF PROSECUTING DOMESTIC TERRORISTS SHOWS

EXISTING LAWS ARE EFFECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

II. OVERESTIMATING SUCCESSES IN INTERNATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM

RISKS REPEATING ERRORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

III. TARGETING PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT COMMITTING TERRORIST ACTS OR

SUPPORTING VIOLENCE IS NOT AN EFFECTIVE COUNTERTERRORISM

STRATEGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

IV. ABUSES OF COUNTERTERRORISM AUTHORITIES DIVIDE COMMUNITIES AND

UNDERMINE PUBLIC SUPPORT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

V. WAR ON TERRORISM TACTICS ARE UNHELPFUL TO COMBAT WHITE

SUPREMACIST VIOLENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Learning from mistakes requires acknowledging them, which can only come

with constant and rigorous evaluation of policies and practices, and independ-

ent oversight.

INTRODUCTION

As a Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) agent who worked on successful,

proactive undercover domestic terrorism operations for almost a decade before 9/

11, and as a whistleblower who reported continuing mismanagement of counter-

terrorism cases to Congress after 9/11, I have seen the intelligence agencies’ fail-

ure to submit their policies and practices to objective evaluation undermine their

ability to know what works and what doesn’t. The failure to protect against the

January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has followed a pattern that has become

all too familiar since 9/11. Immediately after an attack law enforcement was

clearly not prepared for, intelligence agency leaders claim they saw no intelli-

gence predicting the assault, despite the attackers’ public declarations of their

violent intentions. Shortly thereafter, leaks and investigations reveal that numer-

ous critical warnings had come in from the f‌ield, yet managers overlooked or

* Mike German is a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. He served as an

FBI special agent from 1988-2004. He is the author of, Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of a Former

FBI Undercover Agent (2007) and, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages

Democracy (2019). © 2021, Mike German.

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