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House Hearing On Homeland Threats
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- 6 HRS AGOLawmakers Tussle Over Role Of Extremists In Protest-Related Violence
- 7 HRS AGOBiggest Worry On Election Security Is Americans' Loss Of Confidence, Wray Says
- 7 HRS AGOWray: Russian Interference Heavy On Agitation, Less So State Cyberattacks
- 8 HRS AGOWray Touts Feds' Often-And-Early Strategy To Thwart Disinformation
- 9 HRS AGOGreatest Domestic Threat Is Lone Actors Self-Radicalizing Online, Wray Says
Republicans, Democrats and witnesses on Thursday were fighting in microcosm the national political argument over the demonstrations — and some violence — that have followed the police killing of George Floyd earlier this year.
The often bitter debate, which played out Thursday at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, is about the political legitimacy of that movement. Its supporters, mostly Democrats in this context, argued that it's a true grassroots response to injustice and bias by law enforcement. Only a small number of those taking part cause any problem, supporters say.
Critics, most of whom were Republicans in this hearing, focused on antifa, which they described as a well-organized domestic terror organization. They pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray about what they called antifa's sources of funding and asked him what the bureau is doing to smash it.
Wray tried to take pains to describe the FBI's perspective, which is different from the characterizations made by the members of Congress. Antifa, he said, is a "real thing," but he also characterized it as more of an "ideology or a movement," as opposed to a terror organization.
An analysis of federal court records in June showed no signs of anti-fascist links in cases brought because of the unrest. Another look at cases in Portland, Ore., showed most federal charges there were misdemeanors. That's despite Attorney General William Barr's repeated assertions that antifa is fueling or organizing the violence.
On Thursday, Wray told lawmakers that the protest-related violence "does not appear to be organized or attributed to one particular group or even movement."
He acknowledged that the FBI has opened investigations into "violent anarchists, extremists" who he said are tied to the antifa movement. The bureau, Wray said, has seen people who self-identify as antifa coalescing regionally into "small groups or nodes," but he stopped short of declaring it an organization.
That frustrated Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, who said he thought Wray was "downplaying it." Antifa has "uniforms," Crenshaw said. It raises money to buy laser dazzlers for use against police; it adopts similar tactics at different protests and so on, he said.
Other Republicans focused their remarks on the deaths and injuries suffered by police in the demonstrations following Floyd's death.
Their narrative in the hearing room mirrored the message projected at the Republican National Committee this year and other venues: The nation is under siege by anarchists in this telling, and the movement responding to law enforcement in Black communities must be viewed warily because of the extremists who have infiltrated it.
Democrats, especially the panel's Black lawmakers, pressed Wray from a completely different perspective. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., for example, asked Wray about whether the FBI viewed the Black Lives Matter movement as a target for investigation.
Richmond, his colleagues and Black political activists view the FBI with deep suspicion because of its history of surveillance on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders.
The FBI in modern times has tried to put that history away with deliberate outreach to people of color, particularly Black audiences.
The bureau's director told members of Congress that the FBI isn't plumbing political organizing groups for leads. The process works backward from acts or threats, he said.
"We investigate the violence," Wray said. "We're agnostic about the ideology. But when the ideology inspires violence, we will investigate the violence aggressively."
NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas contributed to this report.
The greatest peril posed to American elections is that the cloud of fear and uncertainty about them will cause citizens to stop believing they matter, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress on Thursday.
Wray was asked in a House Homeland Security Committee hearing about his No. 1 concern as the FBI and other agencies work to quash the manifold foreign threats posed to this and future elections. He said the worst danger isn't something within the power of a foreign government.
"The steady drumbeat of misinformation and amplification of small instructions, I worry, contribute over time to a lack of confidence in American voters and citizens in the validity of their vote," Wray said. "That would be a perception, not a reality ... but I worry that people will take on a perception of futility because of all the noise and obfuscation that's generated."
The FBI director didn't mention one of the biggest critics of the validity of U.S. elections — his own boss, President Trump.
Trump and another of Wray's supervisors, Attorney General William Barr, have sought to cast doubt on the integrity of an election expected to involve the most-ever voting by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic. Doubts raised about the election followed years of unfounded allegations by Trump about fraud, including claims that a panel appointed by the president could not verify.
The FBI director said several times Thursday that he doesn't want to step into political controversies in a way he considers inappropriate, which is likely why he phrased his answer to the House committee as broadly as he did.
The dilemma for Wray and U.S. officials, however, is how effective they can be in defeating what he called a stream of malign influence when so much doubt about the integrity of U.S. democracy is being raised from within.
Russia's interference in this year's presidential race relies as heavily on disinformation and agitation as the "active measures" of 2016, but less so on cyberattacks targeting state election infrastructure, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House panel on Thursday.
Foreign nations can select from many weapons when targeting a democratic election, but two broad strategies boil down to: changing minds or changing votes.
Russian influence-mongers spread disinformation, turn up the volume on controversy and generally try to pit Americans against each other, including with fake accounts and support for what they consider marginal candidates or for some groups not to vote at all.
The goal is to make some Americans so angry they support a preferred candidate and others so angry — and disaffected — they don't vote for another.
The U.S. intelligence community has revealed its assessments about which candidates are being supported or opposed by certain foreign malefactors. Russia is working against former Vice President Joe Biden, Democrats' nominee, having supported President Trump's election in 2016.
Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, also targeted a number of state election systems in 2016 with malware that could have stolen or altered or sabotaged the way they operate. Ultimately, no votes were changed, but the FBI and Department of Homeland Security and state agencies were put on their guard about the prospect for disruptions or other problems from cyberattacks.
Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee that the FBI and other intelligence agencies are seeing disinformation and agitation this year along the lines of 2016, but not so many cyberattacks as before: "We have not seen that second part yet, this year," he said.
The dilemma, as always in the spy world and including with election security, is what don't U.S. officials know about what's taking place?
The FBI and Big Tech platforms are trying to combat foreign disinformation by rooting it out early and often to deny it mass and momentum, Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Thursday.
The more fake accounts that can get started sharing false stories or increasing agitation, the more consequential those efforts can become, Wray said.
So his strategy working with platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has been to act as swiftly as possible to step in and stop those efforts at the seedling stage before they grow into something more substantive and problematic.
"It's only effective if it seems credible and it's only credible if its built up a certain reservoir of credibility," Wray said. "If we're able to shut them down and knock them back quickly, it's not going to stop it — but it means it's much, much less effective."
Wray gave the example of a recent operation in which the FBI told Facebook that it had identified some nascent mischief by Russia's now-infamous trolling and agitation mill, the "Internet Research Agency," and Facebook then deleted the accounts being used in that scheme.
This strategy and the cooperation it requires was the result of painful recognition by U.S. officials and Big Tech about the 2016 election, in which they missed or downplayed the importance of that year's social media agitation. The weeds, in this metaphor, took over the garden.
Wray says now the goal is to stay on top of those efforts, although he acknowledged what he called room to improve by both the FBI and the tech platforms.
"The strides we've made at the FBI has been very encouraging — I'd like to see more progress especially from [Big Tech] but we're moving in the right direction."
FBI Director Christopher Wray says individuals who self-radicalize online and take advantage of readily available weapons pose the most significant threat domestically.
Wray was asked during a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee what domestic group poses the greatest threat to the homeland, and whether it belongs to the political left or the right.
The FBI doesn't see politics in that way, he said.
"We assess that the greatest threat to the homeland, to us here domestically, is not one organization, certainly not one ideology, but rather lone actors largely self-radicalized online who pursue soft targets using readily accessible weapons," Wray said. "Those include both domestic violent extremists of a variety of sorts, as well as homegrown violent extremists who are motivated by foreign jihadist type sources."
Those two groups, Wray said, pose the greatest threat in part because of the difficulty of identifying them before they commit violence. The FBI director acknowledged that the bureau has pursued inquiries involving recent demonstrations but said it does based on peoples' actions, not the causes they espouse.
"When ideology leads someone to commit criminal acts, the FBI will not hesitate to take appropriate action," he said.
The empty chair at the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday can't answer members' questions about the recent goings-on within the Department of Homeland Security.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf rejected a subpoena to appear, but DHS says acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli was prepped in his place.
Majority Democrats on the committee suggested Thursday that the move was an attempt to shield department leadership from facing difficult problems within the sprawling department. (Follow updates on the hearing here.)
One recent story concerns allegations by a whistleblower who says she observed medical neglect of detainees held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of DHS, as well as what the complainant calls questionable hysterectomies.
Nurse Dawn Wooten surfaced that complaint, and Democrats have demanded an investigation; critics called it the latest example of what they say is a trend of neglect of detainees by agencies within DHS.
Before that, former Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Brian Murphy filed a complaint alleging that DHS leadership, working in concert with the White House, had pressured him and his team to shade their intelligence findings to match the political priorities of President Trump.
Murphy said he was told to assess that more likely terrorists were coming over the southern border than truly do, in order to justify work on a border wall. And he says he was told not to emphasize findings about Russian interference in the election because they'd meet an unwelcome reception in the White House.
Trump administration officials have defended their actions and those of DHS.
Meanwhile, there are outstanding questions about Wolf's and Cuccinelli's status as leaders and whether they were appointed improperly.
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