In a report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in April of this year, department officials charged Americans who believed in topics like anti-abortion, illegal immigration or disgruntled military members may fall victim to domestic extremist groups similar to Timothy McVeigh.
The report in question garnered information from internet websites and news stories found on the internet rather than relying on hard facts and statistics from agencies such as Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Alcohol Tobacco and Firearm (ATF) or Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). James Carafano, Homeland Security expert said, a good report would included credible sources from the DEA, FBI and ATF.
The DHS report sparked outrage back in April from military groups, veteran’s groups as well as ordinary citizens.
Consumer advocacy group Americans for Limited Government decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request a few days after the DHS report was released in order to find out what was really going on.
ALG was stunned to find the lack of research used by a governmental agency charged with protecting the United States.
“Under Napolitano’s watch, government officials who were supposed to be gathering real intelligence on domestic terror threats were instead surfing the web and reading wacky websites, all to create the public perception of right-wing extremism,” said Bill Wilson of ALG.
Included in the DHS response to ALG was reference to website the officials used at least 11 times www.whatdoesitmean.com. “We are demanding that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano resign her post for the Department’s use of a crackpot conspiracy website in drafting and issuing this ‘right-wing extremism’ threat to law enforcement in April,” said Alex Rosenwald of ALG.
He goes on to say that the use of a ‘kook’ website used to indict the American people in the right-wing extremist memo without using proper intelligence gathering is deplorable, highly dubious and extremely insulting to tens of millions of Americans who were targeted by the DHS memo.
Wilson said, “The DHS assessment was actually a political document designed to fuel the public’s perception of right-wing extremism, nothing more.” He continues, “Taking part in a deliberate intimidation campaign against the American people under the guise of protecting them is wrong. The only honorable thing for Napolitano to do is step down.”
DHS declined to comment on the report.
For more stories; www.examiner.com/x-10317-San-Diego-County-Political-Buzz-Examiner
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