-Domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal
terrorist threat in the homeland.
-Why is the radical right growing?
Why are these ideas resurging in such a dramatic way?
-We've been unwilling to really grapple with our history.
We have to understand where this problem has
been in the past and what's kept us from addressing it.
-The time has come.
-When Obama appeared on the scene, there was a massive
freakout on the radical right.
-Domestic extremism touches on the nerves of the polarization
in our country.
It is used to score political points.
-[Cheering]
-At this defining moment,
change has come to America.
-I never dreamed that I would see a person of color as the president of
our nation.
I never dreamed it.
-To put their hands on the arc of history…
-I was up following the results.
-…and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
-I got up and I looked out the window,
and the church was ablaze.
-My phone rang.
And the words I heard was, “They are burning our
church to the ground.”
And what was left was rubble, charred ruins
and, well, who did this?
-Three men set a massive fire that destroyed the
Macedonia Church of God in Christ.
-Prosecutors say it was a racially motivated crime, an expression of
anger that an African American was elected president.
-It’s devastating.
To have them to declare, we did it because it was
Barack Obama was elected president, just reinforced for me the
hold that racism and hatred has on this country.
In the years before Barack Obama's election, many groups on
the extreme right had kept a low profile.
But that was about to change.
-People on the extreme right understood that the percentage of
white people in America was dropping every year.
So when Obama appeared on the scene,
there was a massive freakout on the radical right.
-On election night, the largest white supremacist web forum shut down.
The server crashed because they were getting so much traffic.
-Hate crimes are on the rise.
Burning crosses and Black effigies hanging from nooses have been
found.
-Fifty new militia training groups have sprung up in less than two years.
Recent attacks carried out by lone wolf actors motivated by
radical ideology.
-We started seeing white supremacist groups holding rallies.
And in these rallies, the number of participants continued to grow.
Daryl Johnson was part of a small team at the Department of
Homeland Security that tracked domestic extremism.
In early 2009, while the government was focused
on the threat from overseas, he wrote a report warning that the
threat at home was re-emerging.
-The report was a warning that you better start preparing yourselves for
this shift in the threat landscape from Al Qaeda to more homegrown
violent extremism.
-The government is our first enemy.
The report warned conditions in the country appeared similar to the
1990s, when a weak economy, illegal immigration and a crackdown
on gun ownership helped spark a rise in extremism.
-Nobody in America wants the illegals here.
Nobody.
Except for these corrupt politicians in that
building back there.
The report was quickly leaked and Johnson found himself at the center
of a political firestorm.
-Outrage tonight over an intelligence report.
-…prompted all kinds of comments and criticism online.
-It really smeared large groups of people.
-I would like him to be fired from the Department of Homeland Security.
-When I got back in the office, utter chaos had erupted.
The primary accusations were the term
“right wing'' equated to conservatives.
They thought it was unfairly demonizing Republicans, that we
were going to be spying on all conservatives.
-This is nothing but a partisan hit job filled with lies and innuendo that
portrays any conservatism as right-wing extremism.
The section that prompted the most outrage was a warning that
extremists would try to recruit military veterans.
-They served their nation, and they have left the military service, and
they’ve been good citizens of this congressional district, and yet
they’re lumped in with Timothy McVeigh.
-Is this America?
Is this what we’re used to?
We are normal God-fearing people who love this country.
And now we’re the threat?
-Politically you can't say that the military is being recruited by
extremist groups.
People working domestic extremism, we all knew
that that report was accurate.
-This is very consistent with other reports issued before Obama was
president.
They’re being issued now.
-The recruitment of active and retired military was a goal for
groups such as the National Alliance in the '80s and '90s and
2000s.
It always has been.
Under pressure, the Obama administration apologized to
veterans…
-I've apologized for that report.
It was not authorized to be distributed.
… withdrew the report and restructured Johnson's unit.
-We got rid of the domestic terrorism focus and they reassigned
those in my former unit to look at Al Qaeda and critical infrastructure
threats.
The Department of Homeland Security, which was also facing
accusations of downplaying the threat from Islamic extremism, has
defended its handling of the report, calling it thinly sourced and overly
broad.
And both Homeland Security and the F.B.I.
say they did continue to gather intelligence on domestic
terrorism.
But 13 years later, the report has been called an example
of how politics undercut the fight against extremism.
-It quashes this window of an opportunity we have to recognize
this problem because it sends the message that this is an issue that
we can't really have a discussion about.
-The mere fact that, you know, the report got pulled back really said, is
the government completely behind this effort to,
to fight domestic terrorism?
-There was a great reluctance among many officials to say what
was obvious, which was the radical right was growing, and it was
becoming more lethal, more dangerous by the day.