Domestic Terrorism Threat Is ‘Metastasizing’ in U.S., F.B.I. Director Says

 

The F.B.I. director warned senators on Tuesday that domestic terrorism was “metastasizing across the country,” reaffirming the threat from racially motivated extremists while largely escaping any tough questions about the bureau’s actions before the siege of the Capitol.

The director, Christopher A. Wray, who had largely remained out of public view since the riot on Jan. 6, condemned the supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who ransacked the Capitol, resulting in five deaths and scores of injuries to police officers.

“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it was behavior that we, the F.B.I., view as domestic terrorism,” Mr. Wray said. “It’s got no place in our democracy.”

He also revealed that the number of domestic terrorism investigations at the F.B.I. had risen to 2,000 since he became its director in 2017. The Capitol riot was part of a broader threat that had grown significantly in recent years, Mr. Wray said.

He did not break down the inquiries along an ideological divide, but The New York Times has reported that agents opened more than 400 domestic terrorism investigations last year as violence flared during racial justice protests, including about 40 cases into possible adherents of the far-left antifascist movement known as antifa and another 40 into the Boogaloo, a far-right movement seeking to start a civil war. The F.B.I. also investigated white supremacists suspected of menacing protesters.

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Indeed, there were several indicators of the potential for violence on Jan. 6. Federal law enforcement officials knew that members of militias such as the Oath Keepers and far-right groups such as the Proud Boys planned to travel to Washington, some potentially with weapons. Many adherents of QAnon, a dangerous conspiracy theory that has emerged as a possible domestic terrorism threat, were also expected to attend a protest rally where Mr. Trump spoke before the attack.

In addition, the F.B.I.’s office in Norfolk, Va., produced a report a day earlier warning of possible violence and mentioned people sharing a map of tunnels at the Capitol complex. However, the information was unverified, and a portion quoting a warning of an impending “war” appeared to come from a single online thread.

The F.B.I. provided the report to the Capitol Police, although its former chief, Steven A. Sund, has said it never made it up the ranks.

Mr. Wray said that F.B.I. officials relayed the Norfolk information on at least three occasions to other law enforcement agencies. He said that he had not seen the report until after the riot, but that the handling of it was typical for such intelligence.

It seems that in so many of these cases, from 911 to the Jan. 6 events, there is either a failure to share information, or a failure to act upon information that has been shared. Instead of fixing those problems, we give them more money, more personnel and more authority to invade the privacy of individual citizens.