The Rise of Right-Wing Extremism, and How U.S. Law Enforcement Ignored It

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

[1] This is the Daily.

[2] Today.

[3] Despite repeated warnings over the past two decades, federal law enforcement officials have ignored the threat of violence from right -wing extremists.

[4] Now, they have no idea how to stop it.

[5] It's Thursday, December 13th.

[6] It's mid -August 2017, and there's a police lieutenant named Dan Stout.

[7] Janet Reitman is a contrarian.

[8] Tributing writer for the Times magazine.

[9] Who is sitting in his living room in Gainesville, Florida, watching TV.

[10] I was doing chores around the home and had the news channels on and flipping around.

[11] Good afternoon.

[12] We're coming on the air now with breaking news from Charlottesville, Virginia.

[13] Suddenly, you know, everybody started covering the protest in Charlottesville, and I just sat down and started watching the event.

[14] He's watching people that are carrying long guns, guys with a flamethrower, guys with flagpole spears.

[15] seeing the violent protest and just sheer mayhem.

[16] And he's...

[17] And I was just like probably everyone else just shocked.

[18] Shocked.

[19] And he was also just really perplexed.

[20] As a law enforcement officer, I was wondering, why were the officers, why weren't they engaging?

[21] Why was this level of violence being allowed to continue unchecked?

[22] As he is watching all of them, this play out.

[23] He hears on TV that...

[24] The part that really just about pulled the rug out from underneath my feet is I said, okay, and where is Richard Spencer going to go to see next?

[25] Richard Spencer, who is one of the key organizers of the event.

[26] Richard Spencer will speak at the University of Florida.

[27] He's speaking at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

[28] His...

[29] He'll be going to Gainesville, Florida.

[30] He's coming to his town next.

[31] We'll take a stand anywhere and everywhere.

[32] So you're going to have to get used to And at that point, Dan goes, oh, my God.

[33] Oh, my God.

[34] This is coming to my town.

[35] And he just knows that...

[36] The only thing I could think of was, we're not ready for this.

[37] You know what?

[38] We are not prepared.

[39] But he also goes, you know what?

[40] Who's ever problem this is going to be?

[41] I feel kind of sorry for them.

[42] And on Monday morning, he shows up for work.

[43] And his belief chief says, you know, what, Dan?

[44] Hey, Dan, you're going to be our mobile field force guy.

[45] Basically...

[46] You're in charge.

[47] Riot control.

[48] So as the guy in charge of preparing for this Richard Spencer speech in Gainesville, what's the first thing that he does?

[49] So...

[50] The first thing we started trying to do is what is the active intelligence that is out there?

[51] He goes through, obviously, whatever files his own department may have, which isn't much.

[52] Who were these people that were just in Charlottesville?

[53] Is there anybody that can tell me more about it?

[54] He then goes to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

[55] He reaches out to the FBI.

[56] There was not a whole lot of good, clarified, active intelligence that anyone from the state level or the federal level could offer us.

[57] And then he studies videos from Charlottesville, particularly those people who are being very violent.

[58] And he goes back to the state authorities and says, you know, does anybody have any clue about any of these people?

[59] We were getting nothing.

[60] Nothing.

[61] And it was just kind of shocking that there was nothing there.

[62] And so he's basically reached out to every authority above him on the state and federal level and gotten nothing.

[63] This should have been something that I believe we should have had some information on.

[64] And it was just kind of baffling to me that there was this void.

[65] There's like a Bermuda, triangle of intelligence.

[66] So, Janet, why did this happen?

[67] Why is there almost no intelligence on the alt -right?

[68] So interestingly enough, there used to be a lot of scrutiny of the far right back in the 1990s.

[69] And the hivot point was...

[70] It was the deadliest terror attack aimed right at the heart of America.

[71] A car bomb today, all but demolished the U .S. government building in downtown Oklahoma City...

[72] The 1995 of Oklahoma City bombing.

[73] 50 children were in a daycare center on the second floor.

[74] I dove under my desk, and then the glass hole came in.

[75] Spoken debris and fire on the ground.

[76] This is just devastating.

[77] One suspect, according to our sources, is in custody now.

[78] Which was committed by a guy named Timothy McVeigh.

[79] The pre -cut John Doe number one in the FBI sketch.

[80] The former soldier who had cycled actually through a number of far -right ideologies.

[81] Right -wing, white supremacist groups.

[82] To ultimately come up with a plane.

[83] with a couple of others to bomb the Moorah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, including a number of children.

[84] If this cowardly bomb was designed to send a message that no one, no place is safe, it sadly succeeded.

[85] And so after Oklahoma City, the FBI and the DOJ, they sent FBI agents into the field to infiltrate various militia groups.

[86] they arrested people, and they kind of succeeded in driving the far right to some degree underground.

[87] And then 9 -11 happens.

[88] And then what happens after that is Robert Mueller, who is then FBI director and other senior national security officials across the entire government.

[89] They direct all of their agents to focus their energies on this new mission, which is countering Islamic extremism abroad and in the United States.

[90] And people aren't talking about Timothy McVeigh anymore.

[91] No. The entire national security apparatus is focused on preventing another September 11.

[92] But there's one guy who's been studying white supremacist movements inside the Department of Homeland Security.

[93] His name is Daryl Johnson.

[94] So I was hired in 2005 to come over and head up a team of analysts that looked at domestic non -Islamic extremism.

[95] And what do we need to know about Daryl Johnson?

[96] So Daryl Johnson is actually a pretty straight arrow.

[97] He's an Eagle Scout.

[98] He was raised a Mormon.

[99] He's a registered Republican.

[100] And he comes into DHS, focused on domestic terrorism analysis.

[101] I was originally kind of a lone ranger at DHS for about a year.

[102] And he puts together a small team.

[103] We looked at the wide range of domestic extremist movements that we have here in the United States.

[104] These can span the far right of the political spectrum or the far left of the political spectrum.

[105] And that team starts looking at left -wing organizations that the government has designated as domestic extremist groups.

[106] Like what?

[107] Specifically, radical environmentalists, animal rights organizations that have been designated as, actually the government's number one domestic terrorism threat in 2005.

[108] So by 2007, Bush administration is almost over, and Daryl gets a call one day from a friend of his on the Capitol Police, and they're the people that protect members of Congress.

[109] And they call Daryl, and they tell him, we have this first -term black Democrat senator who is about to announce that he is running for president.

[110] And that asked us to monitor internet websites for extremist chatter involving any threats to then -Senator Barack Obama.

[111] So Johnson has never heard of Obama, and he's also heard nothing because white supremacist groups have been fairly quiet during this period of time.

[112] So he goes to his little team and says, let's look around and see what's out there.

[113] Let's see if there are any threats, if there's any kind of chatter on these message boards.

[114] Right.

[115] And what he finds...

[116] Good evening stormfronters and fellow white people throughout the world.

[117] We did see an increase in threats by white supremacists.

[118] This isn't the country of our forefathers.

[119] There's this vibrant...

[120] Far -right movement...