[Senate Hearing 114-453]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-453
ISIS ONLINE: COUNTERING
TERRORIST RADICALIZATION AND RECRUITMENT ON THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL
MEDIA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
----------
JULY 6, 2016
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
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________________________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Christopher R. Hixon, Staff Director
Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Benjamin C. Grazda, Hearing Clerk
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Brian Callanan, Staff Director and General Counsel
Margaret Daum, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Kelsey Stroud, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Portman.............................................. 1
Senator McCaskill............................................ 4
Senator Ayotte............................................... 15
Senator Lankford............................................. 17
Senator Heitkamp............................................. 19
Senator Baldwin.............................................. 20
Prepared statements:
Senator Portman.............................................. 45
WITNESSES
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Michael Steinbach, Executive Assistant Director, National
Security Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation............... 6
George Selim, Director, Office of Community Partnerships, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, and Director, Interagency Task
Force on Countering Violent Extremism.......................... 8
Meagan M. LaGraffe, Chief of Staff to the Coordinator and Special
Envoy, Global Engagement Center, U.S. Department of State...... 10
Peter Bergen, Vice President, New America Foundation............. 33
Alberto M. Fernandez, Vice President, Middle East Media Research
Institute...................................................... 35
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Bergen, Peter:
Testimony.................................................... 33
Prepared statement........................................... 64
Fernandez, Alberto M.:
Testimony.................................................... 35
Prepared statement........................................... 82
LaGraffe, Meagan M.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 59
Selim, George:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 54
Steinbach, Michael:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 51
APPENDIX
Images submitted by Senator Portman.............................. 49
Statement submitted for the Record by American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee....................................... 95
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record
Mr. Selim.................................................... 100
Ms. LaGraffe................................................. 109
ISIS ONLINE: COUNTERING
TERRORIST RADICALIZATION AND
RECRUITMENT ON THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 2016
U.S. Senate,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:07 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Rob Portman,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Portman, Lankford, Ayotte, Sasse,
Johnson, McCaskill, Tester, Baldwin, Heitkamp, and Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN
Senator Portman. This hearing will come to order. We are
here to talk about an incredibly important issue, a critical
issue that affects the security of our country and the security
of our families.
When the Subcommittee first began planning this hearing, of
course, we did not know it would fall just 3 weeks after the
most deadly terrorist attack on American soil since September
11th. The evil terrorist attack in Orlando last month that
targeted the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)
community was yet another reminder of the urgent need to
reexamine and redouble our government's efforts to combat
violent Islamic jihadism both at home and abroad--and
particularly to disrupt and ultimately destroy the so-called
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). There is no room for
complacency on this issue. It warrants continuous scrutiny and
oversight from Congress as our government's understanding of
the enemy evolves. And we will hear some about that today.
ISIS, of course, specializes in savagery--violence inspired
by delusions of sectarian conquest from another age. Yet it has
effectively deployed modern technology of the information age
to spread its propaganda and recruit killers to its cause. ISIS
has developed a sophisticated information warfare capability.
It has pioneered a distinctive strategy of targeted online
recruitment, while disseminating sleek viral videos and
messages, primarily from two media centers--Al-Hayat and Al-
Furqan--through a constantly evolving set of online platforms.
As the Federal Bureau or Investigation (FBI) Director James
Comey has noted, even if we were able to keep foreign
terrorists physically out of the United States, online
communication and social media allow ISIS to, as he said,
``enter as a photon and radicalize somebody in Wichita,
Kansas.'' ISIS has weaponized online propaganda in a new and
very lethal way.
The damage wrought by that weapon is considerable: Orlando,
49 dead; San Bernardino, 14; Fort Hood, 13 dead; the Boston
Marathon, 3 dead and hundreds wounded. Each of these killers
was reportedly radicalized to some degree by online jihadist
content. And so many other attacks inspired by means of social
media have, thank God, been thwarted. Indeed, experts tell us
that throughout last year, social media played some part in the
radicalization of all of the 60 people arrested in the United
States for criminal acts in support of ISIS. Again, we may hear
more about that today. Most recently, of course, the FBI has
publicly stated that it is ``highly confident'' that the
Orlando killer, Omar Mateen, was ``radicalized at least in part
through the Internet.''
One longstanding aim of the ISIS propaganda machine is to
attract foreign fighters to ISIS-controlled territory. Often
ISIS tells its recruits tales of high adventure, joined with
false narratives of Islamic extremism as a utopia. The bizarre
images behind me over here,\1\ for example, appear in a ISIS
film exhorting Muslims around the world to join the Islamic
State; rather than show ISIS fighters for what they are--
murderers of innocent victims who are themselves overwhelmingly
Muslim--they are shown playing with laughing children and
shopping in local marketplaces.
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\1\ The images referenced by Senator Portman appears in the
Appendix on page 49.
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Appeals like these have helped draw an estimated 30,000
foreign fighters, including at least 6,000 Westerners, to take
up arms with ISIS. The good news is that the Defense Department
(DOD) reports a significant decrease in the flow of foreign
fighters to ISIS territory. At the same time, however, ISIS has
increasingly shifted its propaganda efforts to inciting
sympathizers to commit acts of terror in the West--including
right here in the United States.
Online propaganda, amplified by social media and Peer-2-
Peer (P2P) communication, is now a key weapon in ISIS' arsenal.
We should, of course, resist oversimplifying the problem. Not
all radicalization in the United States occurs online, and in-
person interaction often reinforces the process. But unlike the
more common European pattern of jihadist radicalization in
clusters, neighborhoods, or in prison, the U.S. threat so far
is predominantly that of the lone-wolf terrorist--an individual
radicalized on his own, often in front of his computer screen
with access to online jihadist content and videos that create a
sort of virtual training camp.
In addition to a clear military strategy and vigilant law
enforcement efforts here at home, the United States and our
allies need a more robust, coordinated strategy to expose the
enemy's lies, counter its false narratives, and encourage
credible voices to tell the truth to those most susceptible or
receptive to the ISIS lies. And that is true both of foreign
and U.S. audiences. Although the ISIS online radicalization
threat is well recognized, there is a range of opinion on how
best to combat it, and the U.S. Government's efforts are still
in their early stages, as we will hear about today. Today we
are going to examine the countermessaging initiatives that show
promise--and where the government has fallen short and could
accelerate those efforts.
In January, the State Department began a revamp of its
counterterrorism messaging and coordination efforts with the
launch of what is called the ``Global Engagement Center''--a
better funded and, at least on paper, more empowered version of
its predecessor, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications. We have had testimony in this room before
regarding the Global Engagement Center, and we look forward to
getting deeper into that today.
Previous efforts to address this threat have struggled to
overcome bureaucratic hurdles, unclear authorities, and a lack
of interagency communication and a unity of effort. These
structural deficiencies will continue to hinder future
administrations--both Republican and Democrat--unless they are
addressed. That is why I recently introduced legislation with
Senator Murphy to help resolve some of these issues and the
impact they have on our ability not only to counter propaganda
and disinformation from extremist groups like ISIS but also the
equally pressing challenges posed by some nation States and
their sponsored propaganda.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also recently
consolidated its countering-violent-extremism (CVE), efforts in
a new office call the ``Office of Community Partnerships
(OCP).'' Again, we have heard about this in this hearing room.
We look forward to digging deeper today. We will be hearing
more about these efforts, and I will be interested in exploring
whether these initiatives are backed by sufficient authorities
and sufficient resources.
In addition, social media firms including Facebook and
Twitter have stepped up their voluntary efforts to police their
own terms of service, which prohibit incitements to terrorism.
Twitter has closed more than 100,000 ISIS-linked accounts, for
instance, and Facebook has actively worked to remove offending
users while working in various ways to promote content to
counter jihadist propaganda. These actions have helped to
degrade ISIS' social media megaphone, according to the Middle
East Media Research Institute, but its online presence remains
strong.
So let us be very clear: To defeat ISIS, it is necessary to
destroy the enemy where they live and prosper--in Iraq and in
Syria and elsewhere--in their major cells around the world.
Online countermessaging is no substitute for a clearly defined
and vigorously executed military strategy. But a military
strategy must be reinforced by a coordinated effort to
undermine and disrupt the powerful disinformation spread by
Islamic jihadists. Today we are going to hear from three
Federal agencies involved in that effort, and I appreciate our
three witnesses before us today. We are also going to hear from
some distinguished experts who have been engaged on these
issues for many years.
With that, I will turn to my colleague Senator McCaskill
for her opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL
Senator McCaskill. Thank you, Chairman Portman.
I think the topic of today's hearing is extremely
important. Figuring out how to stop the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL)-inspired attacks at home and abroad is
vital to our national security, and it is a topic on which the
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has an
important role.
I would like to particularly note the efforts by Chairman
Johnson and Ranking Member Carper who have held a number of
oversight hearings in this Committee on this very topic and who
have worked on relevant legislation during this Congress.
This Subcommittee has a long and proud tradition of the
finest investigative work Congress has ever done, from work on
war profiteering and Mafia racketeering to the U.N. Oil for
Food Program and the financial crisis. And contrary to Senator
Rand Paul's assertion at our cable hearing last month, during
this Congress the Chairman and I have conducted many in-depth
bipartisan investigations of government agencies as well as the
private sector.
But today's hearing is not a typical PSI hearing. Because
of the short timeframe of planning for this hearing, we were
unable to speak with some of the people who I would like to see
participate in our discussion: social media companies, local
law enforcement groups, and those, importantly, directly
involved on the ground with the pilot programs that we are
currently funding through the Department of Homeland Security.
Having the opportunity to hear from these other groups is
especially important because, as today's government witnesses
will point out, we still have a lot to learn about how to best
counter the messages of violent extremism in this country from
ISIL and otherwise.
The efforts being undertaken by the Department of Homeland
Security's Office of Community Partnerships and the Department
of State's Global Engagement Center are just getting off the
ground. I hope to hear today what their plans are; how they are
specifically working with the private sector, whether through
grants, contracts, or other agreements; and how we can best
support them going forward, while also keeping taxpayers and
our oversight obligations in mind. This is a chance for
Congress to do oversight on the front end rather than the back
end after something has already gone wrong and massive amounts
of taxpayer dollars maybe have been wasted.
Further, as we will hear from our witnesses today, it is
absolutely vital that any effort our government undertakes to
counter violent extremism is done in partnership with and with
the full engagement of the Muslim community. After all, this
was one of the core rationales for establishing the DHS Office
of Community Partnerships in the first place. In order to
combat ISIL's propaganda, we must have a healthy, inclusive
dialogue with Muslim and other community leaders as well as
ensure that resources are available to families and friends
that may have concerns about loved ones who have become
attracted to extremist rhetoric.
Unfortunately, some of the rhetoric we hear from
politicians, including the national leader of the Republican
Party and their presumptive nominee for President, is
completely and utterly at odds with this policy approach.
Instead of inclusivity, the presumptive Republican candidate
for President is proposing that we bar all Muslims from
immigrating to the United States, even those who are trying to
escape the horrors of ISIL abroad. He also campaigns on the
suggestion that the entire Muslim community is complicit in
violent extremism, going so far as to suggest that Muslim
neighborhoods must be ``policed'' and subjected to special
surveillance for no other reason than their religious belief.
Not only is this strategy in opposition to recommendations
from every expert that our staffs have spoken with, it is also
in complete conflict with American principles and values. And,
most importantly, it would actually make the United States of
America less safe.
This extremist rhetoric plays right into ISIL's hands and
supports its propaganda's key message that this country hates
Muslims, making it more difficult for the government partners
we have today in this country to work with the Muslim community
to combat extremism.
Finally, as the mass shootings we hear about on a far too
regular basis remind us, we also need to make sure guns stay
out of the hands of terrorists and mentally unstable
individuals from all political and religious backgrounds. This
is a simple, common-sense idea that nearly all Americans
support.
Regrettably, we are still not ready to pass small steps,
reasonable and sensible, to keep guns out of the hands of
terrorists and making sure terrorists are not exploiting the
online and gun show loopholes for background checks. So if we
really want to counter violent extremism, we also need to spend
less time stirring up anti-Muslim rhetoric and more time
working on these issues and working with the majority of the
Muslims who are peaceful in this country and around the world.
Although the work of the agencies represented at this
hearing is important and is one part of the strategy to defeat
extremism in this country, there are steps we can take
immediately to make us safer starting today.
I thank the witnesses for being here, and I look forward to
their testimony.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator McCaskill.
We will now call our first panel of witnesses for this
afternoon's hearing.
Michael Steinbach is the Executive Assistant Director of
the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. Previously, Mr. Steinbach held multiple
positions with the FBI, including serving in Afghanistan as the
FBI's deputy on-scene commander for operations and as the
assistant section chief for international terrorism operations
in the Counterterrorism Division. Thank you for being here.
George Selim some of you know from his exposure to the
Committee through his work at the Department of Homeland
Security. He is Director of the Office of Community
Partnerships at DHS. He also leads the Countering Violent
Extremism Task Force. Prior to his time at DHS, Mr. Selim
worked at the White House on the National Security Council
staff as Director for Community Policing, where he was
responsible for policies related to domestic and global
security threats. Before the White House, Mr. Selim was a
Senior Policy Adviser at DHS' Office for Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties. Thank you for being here.
Meagen LaGraffe is the Chief of Staff for the Global
Engagement Center at the State Department, which was developed
to disrupt and undermine extremism propaganda, as we talked
about. Prior to joining the State Department, she was Chief of
Staff for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense. Ms. LaGraffe previously
served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Homeland
Security and as an aide to Senator Ted Kennedy.
I appreciate all of you for being here this afternoon and
look forward to your testimony. It is the custom of this
Subcommittee to swear in all of our witnesses, so at this time
I would like you to stand and raise your right hand. Please
repeat after me. Do you swear that the testimony you are about
to give before the Subcommittee will be the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Steinbach. I do.
Mr. Selim. I do.
Ms. LaGraffe. I do.
Senator Portman. Great. Let the record reflect that the
witnesses answered in the affirmative. And to our witnesses,
all of your written testimony will be printed in the record in
its entirety. I would ask you to keep your comments to 5
minutes so that we will have a good opportunity for some
questions and answers. Mr. Steinbach.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL STEINBACH,\1\ EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY BRANCH, FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
Mr. Steinbach. Good afternoon, Chairman Portman, Ranking
Member McCaskill, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you
for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
challenge of combating the widespread reach of terrorist
propaganda.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Steinbach appears in the Appendix
on page 51.
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Preventing terrorist attacks remains the FBI's top
priority. In today's hyperconnected world, this mission is
tightly intertwined with technology and the ability it provides
to reach out to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Just as we use technology throughout the course of our day,
so do the bad guys. The widespread use of technology propagates
the persistent terrorist message to attack U.S. interests,
whether in the homeland or abroad.
Many foreign terrorist organizations use various digital
communication platforms in an effort to reach individuals they
believe may be susceptible and sympathetic to the message. But
no group has been as successful at drawing people into its
message as ISIL. ISIL's extensive reach through the Internet
and social media is most concerning as the group continues to
aggressively employ the latest technology as part of its
nefarious strategy.
ISIL's messaging blends both officially endorsed
sophisticated propaganda with that of informal peer-to-peer
recruitment through digital communication platforms. No matter
the format, the message of radicalization spreads faster than
we imagined just a few years ago. Like never before, social
media allows for overseas terrorists to reach into our local
communities to target our citizens as well as to radicalize and
recruit.
From a threat perspective, we are concerned with three
areas: those who are inspired by terrorist propaganda and feel
empowered to act out and support; those who are directed by
members of foreign terrorist organizations to commit a specific
directed act in support of a group's ideology or cause; and
those who are enabled to act after gaining inspiration from
extremist propaganda and communicating with members of foreign
terrorist organizations who provide guidance on method or
target.
A bad actor can fall into any of the above categories or
span the spectrum, but in the end the result is the same:
innocent men, women, and children killed, and families,
friends, and whole communities left to struggle in the
aftermath.
To identify and disrupt these bad actors, we must overcome
two challenges: volume and encryption.
The issue of volume is no surprise to those of you who have
heard Director Comey's remarks over the last year and a half.
The digital world knows no bounds. We do not just look at a
person's physical associates, but now we must, too, look to
their digital connections and from that assess who is a passive
connection versus an active connection.
The digital world has fostered a global neighborhood of new
people to meet and new ideas to follow. It is up to us to sort
through the noise and identify those signals that are most
concerning. Sifting through the numerous online monikers and
communication platforms is not a light lift. It requires both
technical capabilities and eyes-on analysis. This takes time--
time we do not always have.
Not only do we face the overwhelming volume of information
we have uncovered; the second challenge is the lack of
accessible information when a person is using encrypted
communications. Encryption takes many forms. Encryption hides
stored digital communications, sometimes it masks the trail of
communications, and at other times it erases the content. In
many cases, we have seen concerning individuals connect via
publicly available communication platforms and then switch to
private encrypted applications. These apps make conversations
more secret than ever before. We know that bad actors have used
encrypted communication platforms prior to conducting attacks,
as was the case in Garland, Texas, in May 2015, where to this
day we still do not know the content of the pre-attack text
messaging.
To successfully combat today's threats, we must adapt and
confront these challenges. We are not in this alone. We rely
heavily on the strength of our Federal, State, and local
partners as well as our international partnerships. The key
part of these partnerships includes an emphasis on streamlining
information sharing. In today's threat environment, it is not
sufficient to say information sharing is important. It is the
speed of information sharing which is critical to our success.
Law enforcement and the U.S. intelligence community (IC) will
continue to utilize the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) and
the fusion centers to do just that. There is not a body of
people more unified and more dedicated to the singular mission
of protecting our communities. Having all member agencies
collocated, working the same threats, and bringing their
agency's skills and resources collectively to work the
investigations is powerful. We must now work to develop the
same success internationally.
Chairman Portman, Ranking Member McCaskill, and members of
the Subcommittee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify
concerning terrorists' use of the Internet and social media. I
am happy to answer questions you may have.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Steinbach. Mr. Selim.
TESTIMONY OF GEORGE SELIM,\1\ DIRECTOR, OFFICE FOR COMMUNITY
PARTNERSHIPS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, AND
DIRECTOR, INTERAGENCY TASK FORCE ON COUNTERING VIOLENT
EXTREMISM
Mr. Selim. Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman Portman,
Ranking Member McCaskill, and distinguished Members of the
Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify here today. I
welcome the opportunity to appear before you to discuss
priorities and key actions that the Department of Homeland
Security is conducting to address ISIL and other terrorist's
attempts at online recruitment and radicalization to violence.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Selim appears in the Appendix on
page 54.
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I have considerable personal and professional equities in
protecting our homeland. By way of background, I have spent
over a decade as a civil servant at the Department of Homeland
Security. I have also served as the Department of Justice (DOJ)
and on the National Security Council staff at the White House.
In addition, I am a commissioned officer in the United States
Navy Reserve and view the call to public service as one of the
greatest honors our country offers all people, regardless of
race, religion, or nationality.
As Secretary Johnson has stated, we are in a new phase of
the global terrorist threat. The threat today is more
decentralized, more complex, and difficult to detect. We have
moved from a world of terrorist-directed attacks to a world of
increasingly terrorist-inspired attacks. ISIL and other
terrorist groups are turning to the Internet to inspire lone
offenders. This is a pattern we saw last December in San
Bernardino and most recently in Orlando.
By their nature, attacks involving self-radicalized
individuals are harder for intelligence and law enforcement
officers to detect, and they could occur with almost little or
no warning. So what are we doing about it?
The threat from homegrown violent extremism requires going
beyond traditional counterterrorism approaches and focusing not
just on mitigation efforts but also on preventing and
intervening in the process of radicalization. This prevention
framework is known as ``countering violent extremism,'' or the
acronym CVE.
In 2015, Secretary Johnson announced the creation of the
Office for Community Partnerships at DHS. This is the office
that I lead and is focused on the Department's efforts in
countering violent extremism and working to build effective
partnerships with communities across the country for that
explicit purpose. Our CVE efforts depend on working in a
unified and cohesive manner across the U.S. Government. That is
why we have established the CVE Task Force, currently
headquartered at DHS, to organize all CVE Efforts across the
U.S. domestically. This new task force could not be possible
without the strong partnership from the Department of Justice
who have appointed my Deputy Director and several key staff on
the task force.
A unified efforts is necessary given the threat environment
we face today. Terrorist groups such as ISIL have undertaken a
deliberate strategy of using social media to reach individuals
susceptible to their message and recruit and inspire them to
violence. The Office of Community Partnerships and the CVE Task
Force depend on our stakeholder partners to reach these
individuals before they become radicalized.
Our partners in Federal, State, and local governments and
law enforcement, civic and faith-based organizations,
educators, social service organizations, mental health
providers, and the private sector are essential to this
mission. Our efforts are federally driven, but they are locally
focused. Our goal is to empower credible voices within
communities that are targeted by violent extremists.
Research has proven that young people, Millennials, victims
of terrorists, and community-based organizations are the most
credible voices to discourage those in danger of being
radicalized to violence, and our role in the Federal Government
should be to give those community partners the tools and
support to raise their voices. Some of those tools can be
provided by key technology companies. We are engaging with the
private sector to encourage efforts to counter ISIL online as
well as other groups.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of
Justice, including Secretary Johnson and Attorney General
Lynch, have also engaged with social media industry
representatives in the past year-plus. One of our efforts, the
Peer-2-Peer Challenging Extremism competition, empowers
university students around the world to develop their own
authentic narratives to counter violent extremist recruitment
through social media.
Facebook became the first technology partner to join the
Peer-2-Peer project in the summer of 2015. Facebook's
participation has allowed the initiative to expand to many more
international schools. In addition to the Peer-2-Peer program,
the CVE Task Force will include a dedicated communications and
digital strategy team. We hope to continue to work with the
private sector to ensure our country's most transformative
technologies and innovations can be harnessed to promote and
enable civil society messages of tolerance, inclusion, and
pluralism as a means of degrading the appeal of the ISIL brand.
Our efforts to develop locally driven, prevention-based CVE
frameworks incorporate both online and in-person efforts. Thank
you for the $10 million of CVE grant funding that Congress has
appropriated and the fiscal year (FY) 2016 Omnibus
Appropriations Act. We can now take our CVE efforts across the
country to the next level.
Just this morning, Secretary Johnson announced that just
today the fiscal year 2016 CVE grant program has been
officially launched and the Notice of Funding has been issued
this morning. This is the first Federal assistance program
devoted exclusively to providing local communities with
resources to counter violent extremism in our homeland. This
grant program was developed by the DHS Office of Community
Partnerships in conjunction with our partners at the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This grant opportunity is
an important part of our ongoing work to build a comprehensive
CVE model that incorporates both cyberspace and community
spaces.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak here
today and for your continued support at DHS. I look forward to
any questions you and the Committee may have.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Selim. Ms. LaGraffe.
TESTIMONY OF MEAGEN M. LAGRAFFE,\1\ CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE
COORDINATOR AND SPECIAL ENVOY, GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ms. LaGraffe. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member McCaskill,
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify and answer your questions today.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Lagraffe appears in the Appendix
on page 59.
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I am here to discuss our government's international efforts
to counter violent extremist propaganda, online, in social
media, as well as in traditional media. This is a critical
effort, especially when it comes to our whole-of-government
efforts to degrade and destroy ISIL because it is clear that,
to our enemy, the information battlespace is as important as
the physical battlespace.
Prior to March of this year, I served as the Chief of Staff
in the Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
at the Pentagon. I feel confident that our U.S. military and
coalition has significant capabilities to eliminate militants
from the battlefield and is doing so each and every day. Daesh
has already lost nearly half of its territory in Iraq and 20
percent in Syria.
At the same time, we must also confront the messages that
these groups push out daily to recruit people and inspire them
to violence. Addressing radicalization to violence and
recruitment in the information battlespace is a key piece of
any serious, meaningful, and enduring approach to countering
violent extremism long-term.
To meet that challenge, President Obama signed an Executive
Order in March which created the Global Engagement Center,
revamping our countermessaging strategy.
Prioritizing countermessaging is nothing new in the
national security arena, and, in fact, it is not even new in
this administration. The Center's predecessor organization, the
Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC),
focused on al-Qaeda propaganda. But while al-Qaeda was
producing videos that took months to get out, our adversary
today is using social media in ways not seen before.
The quality and volume of violent extremist messaging has
advanced dramatically since our predecessor organization was
established 5 years ago, or even from the time when Daesh began
metastasizing into its current form 3 years ago.
The Global Engagement Center is charged with coordinating
integrating, and synchronizing all government communications
directed at foreign audiences abroad used to diminish the
influence of violent extremists.
The Center is designed to be as agile and as adaptive as
our adversary. We are armed with new authorities, new
personnel, and cutting-edge technology.
The Center is using state-of-the-art digital analytics
tools from the intelligence community, from the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and from the private
sector. These tools and technologies help us tailor our
messages to our audience as well as measure those messages'
effectiveness.
Importantly, the President's Executive Order grants the
Center expanded hiring authorities as well, allowing us to hire
leaders and experts from the private sector to join us in this
effort.
When fully operational, the Center will comprise staff from
the private sector as well as the Departments of Defense,
Treasury, Justice, State, Homeland Security, and the
intelligence community. Working across these agencies, the
Center is already identifying efficiencies and opportunities in
the messaging space.
Even more substantial than changes to personnel or to
budgets, the Center is taking a fundamentally new approach in
the information battlespace. We have pivoted toward partner-
driven messaging and partner-driven content. While the U.S.
Government has a good message to tell, we are not always the
most credible voice to tell it.
Instead, there is an abundance of credible and diverse
voices across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, their
governments, non-governmental organization (NGO's), and civil
society groups, all of whom we are now leveraging in this
fight. We are not publicizing who many of our partners are, of
course, so that we do not undermine their credibility, but I
would like to give you one example.
In Kosovo, we recently completed a training program with
local NGO's, designed to amplify credible voices there. We ran
workshops to train local influencers about designing and
executing their own messaging campaigns. Kosovo is a compelling
location for this kind of work because it has not only the
highest number of foreign terrorist fighters in Europe, it also
has an active NGO community focused on this very issue.
Using a partners-first, data-driven approach, the Center is
particularly focused on changing audience behavior rather than
changing attitudes and beliefs. While we may have less success
altering what an individual thinks, we can certainly be more
effective at preventing individuals from turning those beliefs
into violence.
I appreciate this Committee's oversight and continued
support as we revamped our fight against violent extremism in
the information battlespace. As you all know, any long-term
success in this space cannot focus exclusively on killing
terrorists. We also have to stem the recruitment of new ones.
Thank you very much for your time, and I am happy to answer
any questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Ms. LaGraffe, and good point.
And I appreciate the testimony from all three witnesses and
look forward to the opportunity to get into a more in-depth
discussion in questions and answers.
We have one business item we need to dispose of here, so I
apologize for this interruption. We are going to take a quick
break and report a nomination to the floor. I want to thank the
Chairman of the full Committee, Senator Johnson, who is with us
here today, for his courtesy in providing us this hearing room
today for our important hearing. This will just take a minute,
so everybody please keep their seats.
With that, the Subcommittee will be in recess subject to
the call of the Chair.
[Recess.]
This hearing is now back in session, and, again, I thank
the witnesses very much for their testimony, and we look
forward to having a good back-and-forth.
We have a number of Members here, so I am going to be very
short, knowing that I am going to be around until the end of
this hearing and have a chance to ask you questions. But let me
just start, if I could, with you, Mr. Steinbach, just very
briefly.
Your boss, the Director of the FBI, said last October that
he believes the main threat facing the United States comes from
lone-wolf terrorists who are radicalized online. Is that still
the FBI's assessment?
Mr. Steinbach. Yes, sir, it is.
Senator Portman. Thank you. I think that is important to
lay that as a predicate for our questions. Senator McCaskill.
Senator McCaskill. I just also have some questions for Ms.
LaGraffe. Part of the problem we face from a messaging
standpoint is the efforts of our government to message and
realizing that our government is probably not the right
messenger if we are going to combat an ideology that sees our
country as part of the problem, not part of the solution. They
see that wrongly, I might add, but nonetheless that is what
they see.
There is a built-in bias against truthfulness about
anything that comes from the U.S. Government. So to get around
that, I understand that you and your predecessor are developing
partnerships with voices perceived as more credible to
disseminate the counter violent extremism message. What I am
trying to understand is how this works from an oversight
perspective. Are we pushing money out to groups? Are we sending
them checks? Are we in a contractual relationship with them as
contractors? How is this actually working in terms of how money
is being passed along to messengers that we think would be more
effective?
Ms. LaGraffe. Thank you, Senator, for your question. You
are absolutely correct. The Global Engagement Center is focused
on building a network of partners around the world, and as I
mentioned, those partnerships take many forms. We partner with
foreign governments; we partner with NGO's; we partner with
local civil society groups as well.
With that in mind, the partnerships we currently have, we
use a variety of different funding streams in order to make
sure that these groups are empowered and armed with the right
tools and resources to get these messages out. For example, if
I may, we have a foreign government partnership called the
``Sawab Center.'' It is a joint message----
Senator McCaskill. UAE.
Ms. LaGraffe. Exactly, and that is a partnership where we
have provided technical assistance and staff so that the
government can then provide their own content and their own
messaging across nearly two dozen countries in the region. That
is one example.
Senator McCaskill. That is a government. But aren't we also
partnering with private groups and NGO's?
Ms. LaGraffe. We absolutely do.
Senator McCaskill. How do we get them money?
Ms. LaGraffe. I think one of the benefits of having the
Global Engagement Center as an interagency group, we work very
closely with not only our colleagues within the State
Department but more broadly within the broader interagency to
identify funding streams for potential projects and shared
priorities. So the Global Engagement Center is not a
grantmaking organization. We work very closely with the
interagency to identify appropriate funding streams.
Senator McCaskill. So the money you are getting is not
going to partners?
Ms. LaGraffe. Not exclusively. I would like to get you the
numbers of how exactly our budget breaks down in terms of what
money we give out via contracts. But, again, the Global
Engagement Center itself does not offer grants.
Senator McCaskill. I understand, but I am trying to figure
out how we are funding this, and we cannot get a straight
answer.
Ms. LaGraffe. OK.
Senator McCaskill. Our staff has tried.
Ms. LaGraffe. OK.
Senator McCaskill. I have watched money go for good causes,
and it disappeared. And I am trying to get a handle on how we
are actually doing this. I mean, it all sounds great, and I
want it to be great. But I also know that if we are not paying
attention as to who we are paying and how, that is how money
walks away.
Now, the second part of my question is performance metrics.
You said you were data driven. Do you have data you can share
with us? Have you set up performance metrics for these various
groups that we are partnering with on messaging? How are we
ever going to figure out if what they are doing is effective?
Because it is very hard to quantify what you prevent.
Ms. LaGraffe. We are currently building our data analytics
shop so that we cannot only do measuring on the front end of
any messaging campaign to identify what particular messages
might resonate with a particular audience, but also on the back
end of any campaign measure our effectiveness. So thus far,
what that looks like is making sure we know the potential reach
for a particular message and how that message plays out over
time.
For each campaign, we sort of build in, we bake in an
expectation for analysis on the back end so we can continue to
refine our messages each and every time we----
Senator McCaskill. Well, I would love to see the data. I
would love to see how that data is actually being set up and
how it is being collected.
Ms. LaGraffe. OK.
Senator McCaskill. So there are two assignments: one, how
are we funding these efforts, where is the money coming from,
who is getting it, and what form is it taking; and, second, the
data that will help us figure out if this money is doing any
good.
Ms. LaGraffe. Absolutely.
Senator McCaskill. Thank you.
Senator Portman. Senator Johnson.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. LaGraffe, you talked about the progress we have been
making on the ground in Iraq and Syria, 50 percent territory
reclaimed in Iraq, 20 percent in Syria. And yet the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Brennan testified before the
Senate Intelligence Committee a couple of weeks ago and said
that ISIS remains a formidable, resilient, and largely cohesive
enemy and that we have not reduce their terrorist capability
and global reach. Do you agree with that assessment?
Ms. LaGraffe. Senator, I can only speak from the messaging
perspective, and if we are using the number of foreign
terrorist fighters as a measure of efficacy of policy, I would
say that we see promising signs of having an effect in the
messaging space against the enemy in Iraq and Syria.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Steinbach, do you agree with CIA
Director Brennan's assessment that we have not reduced their
terrorism capability and global reach?
Mr. Steinbach. I agree with that assessment completely.
While we have reduced the space in Syria in Iraq, their reach
globally with their affiliates is just as devastating, if not
more so.
Chairman Johnson. We talk about lone wolves. Now we are
starting to see wolf packs, correct? We have witnessed not only
the inspiration, these attacks being inspired by ISIS, but now
we have evidence of them actually directing, for example, the
attack in Brussels and probably in Istanbul. Is that correct?
Mr. Steinbach. I think ISIL has for some time now focused
on an external piece, which includes directed attacks in Europe
and in other places, so yes.
Chairman Johnson. Do you believe that increased activity in
the 22 months since President Obama declared our goal toward
ISIS was to degrade and defeat them? That was 22 months ago.
Have they increased their ability using social media?
Mr. Steinbach. So I think from my perspective--and I stated
this before--that as we squeeze ISIL in space in Syria and
Iraq, they will seek to reach out and lash out where they can.
So my perspective is that as we have success on the ground in
Syria and Iraq, we may see a more dangerous world in the short
term because they will try to message that to their advantage
by conducting attacks worldwide.
Chairman Johnson. The analogy I have been using is that of
a beehive. Let us say you have a beehive of killer bees in your
back yard. I think the solution is obvious. You take out the
hive, you kill the bees. But what we have been doing is we have
been poking it with a stick. We have maybe been damaging the
hives, but the problem is we have stirred up the bees, and they
are leaving the hive, and they are setting up new hives in
Libya, Afghanistan, and other places. Correct? Is that a
relatively accurate analogy and assessment?
Mr. Steinbach. I would say that they are definitely pushing
out a campaign to develop more affiliates, like you mentioned,
all those places you mentioned--Afghanistan, Indonesia, and
other places. They continue to expand globally.
Chairman Johnson. So we have not reduced their capability.
There was an interesting article in the New York Times last
week, a pretty good analysis that said since September 2014,
again, the month that President Obama declared our goal to
defeat ISIS, there have been 97 ISIS-inspired or--directed
attacks outside of Syria and Libya--or Syria and Iraq, over
1,200 innocents killed in those attacks. That is a pretty
frightening assessment, is it not?
Mr. Steinbach. I would agree. Yes, sir.
Chairman Johnson. I really have no further questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Chairman Johnson.
Senator Carper has left us. Senator Ayotte.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AYOTTE
Senator Ayotte. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Steinbach, to the point that Senator Johnson was
making, as we look at the metastasizing essentially of ISIS,
you see them in Libya, Philippines, Sinai, Somalia, and
branching out in other areas. And then you see the pattern of
attacks. You see Istanbul, Brussels, Paris, Saudi Arabia,
obviously our own country, San Bernardino, Orlando. Aren't they
just expanding the battlefield?
Mr. Steinbach. I think they are expanding the battlefield,
but I think they are doing it because of the lack of success
they felt in Syria and Iraq. And I think they will continue--if
we squeeze them in Syria and Iraq, they will continue to seek
other places where ungoverned space or places where they can
thrive and conduct attacks.
Senator Ayotte. And what I wanted to ask you, in terms of
the tools that the FBI needs, as we look at the use of
social media--and you talked about this a little bit in your
testimony--as we look at the use of the Internet, some of the
basic tools, I would imagine that in every terrorism
investigation now not only in the preventative context of
knowing what is happening online, but also, unfortunately, when
we have had an event, it is critical that the FBI also has
those tools in advance to prevent terrorism attacks and if we
have one, God forbid, that you can investigate them. And,
recently, on the Senate floor, we had a vote on an amendment
offered by Senator McCain which would have given the FBI
National Security Letter authority with respect to electronic
communications, transactional records, and terrorism
investigations. And, unfortunately, that vote failed, as I
understand, 58-38.
How important is it that you have that ability to do that?
Because having been a prosecutor myself, and was surprised to
learn of what I understand was an oversight in leaving this
language out of the statute, that we could not even get that
passed on the Senate floor, because in your basic online
investigation of a child predator, I could get that information
as a prosecutor in a criminal case. And right now regarding the
FBI, we are making it difficult for you to get it in a
terrorism investigation. So how important is it that we give
you tools like that?
Mr. Steinbach. So as you stated, ma'am, I think that the
world that we live in today, the threat starts online in many
cases. So we need a robust set of tools to focus on the online
space. We need open-source tools as well as high-side data
sets. We need to lay those over each other to fully identify
what we have. Tools like the National Security Letter (NSLs)
and the ECTR fix allow us to very agilely identify not only the
bad guy but the bad guy's network. Twenty years ago, we had
telephones, and you looked at the telephone, you looked at the
to-from to see who the bad guy was communicating with. Now, in
today's world, with the spread of social media, with the spread
of the online threat, we need those tools in the online space
to identify who the bad guys are contacting.
Senator Ayotte. And right now essentially where you are is
you can get the telephone records, you can get the financial
records, but you cannot get the basic Internet records--which
do not involve content, by the way, but that I could get if I
were prosecuting a basic criminal case. So I hope we take this
back up because I know that this is Director Comey's No. 1
priority, and, this is one where it is kind of hard to believe
in the context that we live in that the Senate did not pass
this. So I hope we do this again and take it back up and pass
it in light of what we are hearing today.
I wanted to also follow-up, as you think about the tools
that you need, and looking at what happened recently in
Orlando, can you share with us at all in terms of how the
Internet played in the terrorism attack that occurred in
Orlando and what lessons we have learned in terms of
investigative tools that would be helpful in the context of
that? And also in San Bernardino? I think one of the challenges
we are facing here is we obviously want to engage people online
to prevent this, but also have good intelligence up front if an
attack is coming to be able to stop it before it happens.
Mr. Steinbach. So I think the challenge we face today is
that we start in a place where people are passively consuming
content, which, of course, is not against the law. So our
challenges, as I mentioned in my opening comments, is to look
through the volume of individuals who are online consuming,
passively consuming this material, and look for those
individuals who are doing more than just passively consuming
that online content who have expressed an intent to do harm.
So when we go through this volume, we have to have tools
that help us identify trends, patterns, so that we can then lay
over our deeper-dive analytics to reach into those particular
cases, to figure out what the noise is and what the signals
are, to identify the subjects away from just people exercising
their constitutional right to consume and repost material. That
is the challenge we are in, and the tools we have are a set of
tools that will need to be continually expanding as technology
changes. We need to, on a regular basis, reassess exactly what
tools we have, both in open source and on the high side, and
make sure they are robust enough to address the threat.
Senator Ayotte. My time is up, but just to be clear, the
individual in Orlando was consuming this type of information,
as I understand it.
Mr. Steinbach. The individual in Orlando was consuming
material, yes.
Senator Portman. Senator Lankford.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD
Senator Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. LaGraffe, can I pick up where Senator McCaskill left
off on this? It is extremely important to us to get some kind
of data analytics, the metrics for how the different outside
sites are evaluated, and we are all for trying to get multiple
hooks in the water to be able to help other people, help us
with our messaging and to make it clear. Trying to determine
where those dollars go and how they are being well spent by the
taxpayer is extremely important.
With that, you had mentioned a lot about outside sources
and mentioned a lot about--I am sorry, a little bit about some
of the things the State Department is doing specifically. I
want to ask you about how you are evaluating the ``Think Again
Turn Away'' Twitter page and some of those internal sites that
the State Department is running, compare that to some of the
outside--because my understanding that ``Think Again Turn
Away'' site is about a $5 million investment to be able to do
that Twitter page. So help me understand value in metrics and
evaluation.
Ms. LaGraffe. ``Think Again Turn Away'' was a product that
was produced by our predecessor organization. We no longer use
``Think Again Turn Away.'' As I mentioned in my opening
statement----
Senator Lankford. Why? Because that had to be a metric-
driven piece, too, that helps us understand how things were
evaluated.
Ms. LaGraffe. As I mentioned in my opening statement, when
the CSCC, our predecessor organization, was stood up, it was
designed to fight a different enemy in a different time. We as
the Global Engagement Center (GEC) are now fighting a more
agile enemy, Daesh, in a social media space. So we have moved
away from some of the direct online engagement of our
predecessor organization.
I think that that is a reflection of the kind of analysis
we are trying to build into our organization. Inevitably, there
will be things that we do not do well and we want to adjust, be
agile, move on, and get better.
Senator Lankford. So tell me the process of how you
evaluated, for instance, that site, other sites, things that
were internal, to make the decision we are going to turn this
off and not do this, we are going to turn in a different
direction? Tell me about the process of how that decision is
made.
Ms. LaGraffe. For the Global Engagement Center, when we are
preparing our proposed messaging, as I mentioned, we do
analytics on the front end to assess the target audience
susceptibility as well as doing analytics on the back end of
every campaign to see the reach and resonance of what we are
doing.
Senator Lankford. That will help us. We want to get a look
at some of those analytics and see how things are evaluated so
we can also participate just in that conversation, just as good
stewards with it.
Mr. Steinbach, good to see you again. Thank you for all
your work. Thank you for all of your work in this area, by the
way.
Mr. Steinbach, I want to just run back through the past 5
days and some of the things that are happening internationally
and here in the United States, because social media played a
part in all of these, or at least had some connection with an
ISIS threat.
In Indonesia, in the last 24 hours, in Saudi Arabia, 48
hours ago, three different, separate attacks there. In Iraq,
250 people dead in one attack in Baghdad. In Bangladesh, 20
people at least that we know of that are dead. And then, on
Friday, something that I know you did not miss but a lot of
Americans missed, the FBI picked up a gentleman names Mohamed
Jalloh, and he was a person plotting an attack similar to a
Fort Hood attack here in the United States that seems to be
self-radicalized online by watching videos of Anwar al-Awlaki.
That could have been a very different day for America, Friday,
but the FBI was engaged.
What can we learn just about the engagement of that
particular or things like what happened with Mohamed Jalloh and
ways that social media or outside sources help influence him?
Mr. Steinbach. Thank you, sir. So as I mentioned in my
opening remarks, in general, we have three types of attacks--or
three types of plots: directed, enabled, and inspired. And, of
course, the largest threat to the United States is that HVE
subset, the group that is inspired or enabled to conduct an
attack and that are, quite frankly, the hardest because they
are not communicating. So as Director Comey has spoken in the
past, we have roughly 1,000 of these HVE cases across the
country. They are difficult at times, and we need to use social
media to the extent possible. As was mentioned, the majority of
our cases last year, the arrest, all had significant aspects in
social media. Many of the cases began with an anonymous online
moniker, and so we need to understand that that is the dynamic
of the world we live in.
So as we focus on the HVE threat, we need to focus on the
online space so that we can properly identify and predicate
investigations and then use all the tools that we are afforded,
all the tools in our tool chest to quickly act on individuals
who have the intent and stop them before they obtain that
capability to conduct an attack.
Senator Lankford. So a way to be able to guess at this
point for the FBI, cases like Mohamed Jalloh, that have
happened in the past year where the FBI learns about this
individual, self-radicalized online, preparing to actually
carry out an attack, and then there is an engagement by the
FBI.
Mr. Steinbach. So I think the most concerning trend that we
have seen in the past year when we identify these individuals
online is the speed with which they mobilize. So that flash-to-
bang effect you have heard us talk about is going now in days,
even weeks, as opposed to months and years. That for us is a
very concerning fact. We have to quickly identify and work to
mitigate the threat faster than we had to do even 2 years ago.
Senator Lankford. Thank you.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Lankford.
We have a vote that has been called, and so we have a short
amount of time. We are going to try to get three people in here
quickly. We have Senator Carper and then Senator Heitkamp and
then Senator Baldwin. And if any member wants to run over and
vote and come back, we will keep this going. Otherwise, we will
recess briefly, have the votes, and come back. Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Let me yield to the other Senators. Thanks.
Senator Portman. Senator Heitkamp.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HEITKAMP
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Two issues, and I want to thank you for coming over to my
office, Mr. Selim, and briefing us on the kinds of efforts that
we can engage in locally, with local law enforcement, with
local communities, the need to have--what I would call it--a
``force multiplier.'' There are not enough of you to actually
be out there when we are talking about volume. Obviously,
encryption is a unique issue, but certainly we can do more to
multiply the force. And I think the other piece of this is best
practices, what I would call a ``best practice kind of model.''
When we did training on school shootings when I was Attorney
General (AG), we did trainings and did major initiatives on
fighting methamphetamines. We are in the process now on
opioids. We need to have the ability to, No. 1, say these are
tactics and strategies that work, this is what we are going to
request of and engage with local law enforcement and local
communities, faith-based communities. We talked a little bit
about the information that we know of in Canada and how Canada
engages in anti-radicalization kinds of efforts.
And so, No. 1, what are we doing, George, in terms of
multiplying the force by working with local law enforcement,
working with local communities? And what message should we all
take back to our hometowns, to our law enforcement communities,
in terms of what role DHS is going to play?
Mr. Selim. Senator, thank you for those questions, and I
appreciate you and your staff making time to really get engaged
on these issues and understand the message that we are trying
to communicate and taking that back to your constituents as
well.
Your first question in terms of multiplying the efforts,
two immediate thoughts. The business model of the Office for
Community Partnerships at DHS is to supply products and
services to a range of stakeholders across the country. Our
three major sets of stakeholders are: State and local law
enforcement, first responders, homeland security professionals
across the country. Our second major set of stakeholders is
municipal officials--mayors, county council members, people in
elected or appointed local positions, whether they be security
or not security related. And the third real set of constituents
we have is civic leaders, civil organizations, not-for-profit
organizations and so on.
So in terms of getting out the message for the products and
services DHS is offering and further taking advantage of the
grant opportunity that we announced today to multiply and
expand efforts across the country at this, our ultimate goal
here is to create a much broader prevention framework in cities
and municipalities----
Senator Heitkamp. My concern is that you can give people
tools, but if they do not see how they fit into a broader
strategy of anti-radicalization, it may be difficult for them
to utilize those tools. But I think the more that we get out
there with grants, the more we work with communities, the more
we will establish a pattern of best practices, which I think is
the kind of critical development that we need here, and it
really is incumbent, I think, on a community policing model
where you really look at the entire community. Obviously,
tensions in communities can lead to stress and can lead to bad
outcomes. And so how do we avoid polarization which could lead
to isolation which could lead to radicalization? How do we
avoid that? And what are you looking for--in 2 years, what do
you hope you have learned from all of the grants and all of the
resources that you have provided?
Mr. Selim. Senator, fundamental to the work of countering
or preventing violent extremism in the homeland is community
inclusiveness and those types of interpersonal relationships
that you are referring to. That is foundational in this
business. The ability for individuals who sense someone's
behavior may be changing, there might be something they are
concerned about, having the ability to say something to someone
if they do not trust law enforcement to do so, having the right
mental health, social service, and education providers to do
so.
At the end of the next 2 years, for example, the impact
that we are trying to develop is creating a more integrated
approach in cities and municipalities across the country where
not just a community policing model exists but a more
integrated approach of mental health, social service, and
education providers are part of this prevention framework.
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you so much. I look forward to
hearing more about the grant applications and understanding
more what the overall strategy is.
Senator Portman. Senator Baldwin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BALDWIN
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We often do not hear about the good news or the encouraging
news, but earlier this year, Mr. Steinbach, the FBI prevented a
terrorist attack in my home State of Wisconsin. It reached the
newspapers that a 23-year-old man had a vicious plan to kill at
least 30 people at a Masonic temple in downtown Milwaukee.
In my conversations with the FBI, officials indicated that
fusion centers and FBI databases, such as eGuardian, which
allow law enforcement to share intelligence were particularly
useful. I know that FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces can be
critical in sharing time-sensitive information, gathering
evidence, and making arrests.
So I want to hear from you about how we can expand and
support these sort of law enforcement-coordinated efforts while
also ensuring privacy protections and how we can better utilize
coordination tools such as fusion centers and FBI databases to
continue to prevent attacks like the one that was thwarted in
my home State?
Mr. Steinbach. Yes, ma'am, thank you. So I think it begins
with all of those tools. The threat is changing. It is dynamic,
and it is much faster. So it is not just--as I mentioned in my
opening remarks, it is not just sharing information. It is how
quickly--the speed of information sharing. So having fusion
centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces with multiple agency
participation in them, active participation, as the information
or the intelligence comes in, whether it is through eGuardian,
through a tip, through foreign partners, when we get that
information, we very quickly assess it using databases to
identify the totality of what we know and then quickly act and
use all of the tools that we are allowed to use, understanding
that the individual's right to privacy is paramount to how we
do things.
So we quickly assess the information with our partners,
State and local. As you know, State and local are force
multipliers for us, and we quickly act within the limits of our
authority to mitigate that. And the case that you refer to was
an example of that that we try to replicate over and over
again.
Senator Baldwin. And then, quickly--I know our time is
running out--thank you, Mr. Selim, for being here. And if you
covered this before I arrived, I apologize for the repetition,
but, obviously, as a part of this effort that you lead, it is
critical that no group is targeted or discriminated against on
the basis of religion or national origin. And it is also
important that CVE grants are not used to perpetuate the
alienation of any group or population.
And so what I want to hear from you is, if you could speak
to any specific training that your staff receives, civil
liberty training that your office receives, and also oversight
mechanisms that will be in place after the grants are awarded.
Mr. Selim. Thank you, Senator, for that question. It is
really important to underscore the civil rights, civil
liberties, and privacy protections that are in place on all CVE
initiatives across government domestically.
The first point I would add is of my 10 years at DHS, 6 of
those years were spent worked in the Office for Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties, so I appreciate the spirit of your
question.
On the CVE grants question, we have built into the Notice
of Funding which was released this morning a comprehensive
scoring and evaluation that we have for any potential applicant
who applies for those grants that has to demonstrate, the
intent of what the money will go towards, partnerships that
have been developed, and a whole range of options. If we see
any applications submitted that are in any way, infringing on
an individual's or group's civil rights, civil liberties, or
privacy, we are not even going to score those applications.
Within the Department, part of the evaluation of those
applications, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
provides outstanding oversight to my office on all our
programs, and they are partners with us on the oversight of
this grant initiative as well. So that is built in and baked
into everything we do.
And the last point I would mention, Senator, is that the
programs that we are administering, whether they are grants or
initiatives we take in other places in the country, are
completely voluntary. We are being responsive to community
requests for CVE-related programming. And it may not be termed
``CVE.'' It might be ``building or enhancing community
resilience'' or ``preventing extremism'' or some other title.
And so our job is to supply the product services or technical
assistance irrespective of what a locality might call it, but
be responsive to their needs, and we are not imposing a DHS
model per se. We are responding and helping customize localized
approaches.
Senator Portman. Mr. Selim, thank you for that answer.
We are going to now recess subject to the call of the
Chair. I apologize. Again, I ask the indulgence of the panel if
you would not mind hanging around for a little while longer. I
am going to be playing tag team with Senator McCaskill as we
run back and forth and vote. But we do have some additional
questions for you that I was not able to ask earlier in order
to allow some of my colleagues to ask questions.
So we will now recess subject to the call of the Chair, and
we will be right back.
[Recess.]
The hearing will come to order. Again, I appreciate the
indulgence of our two--now three distinguished witnesses who
have come back to the table. I do not know if I am going to be
joined by any of my colleagues because we have another at least
two votes coming up. I am going to run back and forth. I will
let you all go after my questions, of course, and then we will
take another recess and ask the second panel if they would be
willing to stick around, because I know Senator McCaskill is
coming back, and I assume some of my colleagues are as well.
But I thought we got into a lot of good back-and-forth with the
previous questions that were asked, and, again, going back to
how we started, Mr. Steinbach talked about the fact that he
agrees with the assessment from last year, which is that the
lone-wolf terrorist radicalized online is the main threat
facing the United States. And we talked a lot about the two
programs that are represented here today: one is the new
program at the Department of Homeland Security called the
``Global Engagement Center''--I am sorry, the ``Office of
Community Partnership,'' and then, of course, the State
Department's Global Engagement Center. So what I would like to
focus on a little bit is whether you feel you have the
authorities you need to be able to do your job right.
On the domestic side, Mr. Selim, you are not as aggressive
as they are on the global side, in part because of some legal
challenges that you face. They can do and say some things that
you cannot. You also have not had the amount of time they have
had to put together your digital effort. I think that is fair
to say. By the same token, I think it is clear, including from
some of the back-and-forth you had with some of my colleagues,
that there is an enormous opportunity here domestically to be
able to develop a message that is more compelling than the ones
we currently have out there. We talked earlier about some of
the messages coming from the jihadists, and, in fact, we had
some photographs here earlier of sort of a romanticized version
of jihad.
And so I guess my first question to you would be: Are you
happy with the progress that the Department has made,
particularly on the digital counterterrorism communications
front? And, specifically, how many online campaigns has DHS,
particularly your office, devised or funded or launched, even
through third parties, over the past year? What is the scale
and composition of the audiences you have reached? How do you
measure your results? Do you feel as though on the domestic
side we are beginning to catch up?
Mr. Selim. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your question. In
terms of the first point you made regarding the authorities
that we have, we have looked at this issue. Our current posture
in the programs that we are implementing, we do not see any
immediate impediments in terms of regulations or authorities
for promoting and really taking to scale the programs that we
have just started. The program----
Senator Portman. Let me interrupt you there just for a
second. I was going to get into this further with regard to the
Global Engagement Center, but one of the things that, of
course, this Committee is interested in is to ensure that you
have the authority to be able to be an effective interagency
leader, and that requires you to be able to direct and task
people. We talked earlier about the FBI's role in this, which
is a law enforcement role, but obviously, there is some
interaction between your role as the communications person in
the law enforcement side.
Do you feel specifically that you have the tasking
authority you need to be able to be an effective interagency
leader?
Mr. Selim. As of today, I can say that I do. I have been
fully empowered by the Secretary and in my role as the Director
of the CVE Task Force. Deputies across departments and
agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Justice, the
National Counterterrorism Center, and a range of other agencies
came together to affirm this body come together and help
coordinate and synchronize our domestic CVE efforts. So I feel
like I do have those authorities, sir.
Senator Portman. Good. Well, that is something that
certainly was the intent of this Committee to support you in
that, to be able to have that tasking authority, which,
frankly, your predecessor organization I am not sure felt like
they had in terms of that interagency cooperation. So if you do
not mind, go ahead and I will let you answer the question about
the digital communications efforts, the campaigns.
Mr. Selim. Yes. In terms of the campaigns that we have
initiated, the methodology that we are currently implementing
is not for the Department or Department personnel to issue or
to create campaigns and then implement them via social media or
some other means. We are really utilizing the methodology
behind prizes, challenges, competitions, and engaging young
people and Millennials on these issues. So the effort that I
mentioned in my beginning statement and in my written
statement, the Peer-2-Peer Challenge Extremism competition,
what we have done is essentially we have created a 15-week
academic curriculum for college and university students both in
the United States and across the globe to, in a 15-week
academic semester, identify a target audience for challenging
extremism, create a campaign, implement the campaign, and
measure the effectiveness of that campaign on a 15-week
academic semester.
Mr. Chairman, you asked for some statistics. Roughly, to
date we have run this program for about three academic
semesters with approximately 150 colleges and universities
across the globe. This coming fall, we are interested in
scaling that effort significantly with up to 200 colleges and
universities across the globe. And our metrics for assessment
are on an individual university-based program and then on an
aggregate, the level of impressions and influence that each of
those campaigns are having.
To date, of the programs that we have implemented, we have
anywhere between 30,000 and a million social media impressions
and campaigns that have made micro impressions on various
social media platforms that have attempted to counter or negate
the message of ISIL in terms of recruitment and radicalization.
I think this is one of the initiatives that we can take to
scale significantly in the semesters to come, and the program
has the flexibility to allow us to scale or tweak or adjust our
measurements, our assessments, and the number of universities
we are implementing on a semester-by-semester basis.
Senator Portman. On the composition of the audience, what
kind of metrics do you have and what kind of information do you
have to share with us today? In other words, who are you
reaching?
Mr. Selim. So there are several different criteria of
audiences, audience criteria that we are assessing. At-risk
individuals on the fence are those that can be amplifiers of
positive or alternative narratives. And each of the campaigns
that is initiated is required to assess how to best target or
communicate with that audience and then implement the campaign
to effectively do so.
Senator Portman. Do you have metrics?
Mr. Selim. We do. Again, on a university-by-university
assessment we do, and then as an aggregate we do overall.
Senator Portman. But not in terms of the audiences that are
being reached, the composition of the audiences who you are
reaching?
Mr. Selim. We do, and I will share with you one set of data
and analytics as an anecdote. Just a few weeks ago, at the
State Department we launched the completion of our third
successful semester of this competition. One of the finalist
universities from the United States was the Rochester Institute
of Technology from New York. They had one specific statistic
that was worth mentioning. Prior to the implementation of their
campaign, roughly 87 percent of respondents of a 300-person
survey they conducted associated Islam with terrorism and had a
negative interpretation of the religion or of Muslims writ
large.
After the implementation of their campaign, 97 percent or
98 percent of the respondents of that same survey understood
the distinction between Islam, Muslims, and terrorism and had a
positive or favorable view in terms of both the Middle East,
American Muslims, and American Arabs and felt the need to be
compelled to do proactive work with their communities in terms
of reaching out to Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities.
Senator Portman. Well, again, I think we are catching up.
The jihadists we talked about earlier have been at this really
for 3 years, I would say it is fair to say. It has been an
evolution but in a very sophisticated way online. You talked
about three semesters. That is good that we have gotten
started, but we have a lot to catch up on. And I think having
this data on the composition is important. It is important that
we are distinguishing between the Muslim community and the
terrorist community, as you just said. It is also important,
though, we are meeting some of these vulnerable people online
where they live and communicating that message. And I guess
that would be what I and I think the Committee would be very
interested in, is to know how can we come up with a better
metric to judge that. Every marketing department in practically
every company in the United States, certainly every online
company, is focused on this. How do you reach your audience?
And that is certainly something that--Peer-2-Peer is a good
start in my view. I support it. But I think it needs to be even
broader than that and we need to have better data coming back.
I would say, Mr. Steinbach, as a general matter, it seems
to me there is both a public and an encrypted part of this
communication strategy on the public part, as I understand, and
you correct me. There is a wide net being cast by the jihadists
who are online to create this sense of interest or excitement
in the jihad or the mission, and that is very public. And we
see it, you see it. Mr. Selim, your people see it. That is what
you are countering, I hope, with these messages, is telling the
truth, dealing with the disinformation.
Then there becomes, once those people make contact, I
assume that is when what you talked about earlier occurs, which
is the encrypted part of the communication, which is more
challenging. Is that an accurate assessment of what is going
on?
Mr. Steinbach. I think that is a very simple but accurate
model. We see the volume piece, the initial piece, public
information pushed out through a variety of means of social
media, the hundreds and hundreds of companies casting a wide
net, trying to identify individuals who are like-minded, who
are willing to act, who are willing to travel. And then once
they identify somebody who raises their hand and says yes, then
the conversation switches to mobile messaging apps that are
encrypted so that there is complete secrecy.
Senator Portman. And this is the challenge you talked about
earlier and Director Comey has talked about in this Committee
publicly, is how do we deal with that second stage. Is there
anything you can tell us today about any attempts that you are
making to be able to break through on that second tier? And
what is the way in which we can intervene there as well?
Mr. Steinbach. So I think it is important to understand
that the FBI looks at this as an important issue for the
American public to vigorously discuss, and that really is
privacy versus national security, encryption versus national
security. I think all of us as citizens, myself included, want
strong encryption. But we need to continue to have
conversations about where the limits of that are, and we would
argue that strong encryption, although important, must be
balanced with national security interests so that when a judge
or a magistrate provides authority, we have the ability, law
enforcement has the ability to see those unencrypted
communications or have access to that. We feel that is an
appropriate balance.
Ultimately, it is a decision for the American public
through Congress, but that for us is fundamental. We see today
more and more of our bad actors using encrypted communications
in a variety of ways. Without the ability to see those
encrypted communications, we are dark, we are blind as to their
operational intent. So we try to identify workarounds, but
those are few and far between.
Senator Portman. Well, I appreciate that, and that is not
really the topic so much of this conversation. And, in fact, a
lot of that is better, I guess, undertaken in a classified
setting. But the reality is that the funnel starts in a more
broad and public way, and to keep people from going into that
funnel, I would say the funnel of darkness, we have an
opportunity on the public side. And I think that is where Mr.
Selim and Ms. LaGraffe have an opportunity of working with you
to try to avoid so many people going into that place where it
is much more difficult for you to be able to understand what
their communications are.
Are there any models, to you, Mr. Steinbach, or you, Mr.
Selim, that you look at globally that you think are working
better in terms of dealing with this challenge of online
recruitment and online propaganda and disinformation?
Mr. Selim. I would say as we think about countering violent
extremism domestically, it needs to be a blend of both online
and offline programs. While the radicalization and recruitment
can start online, what we have seen and what the data has shown
us are primarily from closed and processed FBI investigations
is that individuals around someone who is being radicalized--
friends, neighbors, peers, associates--see some type of
behavior that may be out of place, but do not report it for one
reason or another.
So to the extent that radicalization and recruitment starts
online, it can end offline, like we have seen tragically happen
in several American cities. And so we are really working
diligently toward an integrated approach where there are
countermessages online and there is a prevention framework
offline as well. And it is really that combination that we are
working toward.
Senator Portman. And I assume a prevention framework online
as well.
Mr. Selim. Correct.
Senator Portman. In other words, part of the audience we
talked about earlier is the vulnerable potential jihadists, but
it is also to the friend and the co-worker and the neighbor.
Mr. Selim. Correct.
Senator Portman. And the family member, and San Bernardino
being perhaps the most recent tragic example of that, where
there are people who after the fact said, ``Something seemed
strange, but I felt that I was constrained, I could not report
it,'' for some reason. And that is part of your effort, I
assume.
Mr. Selim. It is to raise awareness. The three primary----
Senator Portman. And you empower people to step forward.
Mr. Selim. Exactly. The three primary objectives of our
office are: No. 1, really raise awareness as to the nature and
scope of threat of radicalization and recruitment, online and
offline, and we have discovered, dozens of cases where
community-based groups are not aware to the extent that
radicalization is happening online. We need them to come in and
provide tools and resources to those communities and help
develop and sustain long-term partnerships for them, whether
they be with Federal, State, and local law enforcement or other
trusted community institutions--mental health, social service,
and education providers.
Senator Portman. When I was looking for a model, I was
hoping you would talk about the British Research Information
and Communications Unit (RICU), which has gotten some good
plaudits internationally for being very aggressive in pumping
out messaging, being very aggressive online, using third
parties, as you are now doing with Peer-2-Peer. They use
traditional media as well as social media, as you know.
I think we have some legal constraints the British do not
have in this regard, so we cannot do exactly what they are
doing. But what do you know about what they are up to? And why
have they been successful and what can we learn from them? For
either one of you.
Mr. Steinbach. I am not familiar with that, sir.
Senator Portman. OK. George?
Mr. Selim. I am pretty familiar with the British model on
this. I was recently there would Deputy Secretary Mayorkas,
General Taylor, and a senior leadership team from DHS. They
provided a deep dive in terms of their program, their analytics
and so on. Senator, as you pointed out, their legal structure
affords them a number of different flexibilities that we do not
have here in the homeland, and from my perspective as the
Director of the CVE Task Force, it is important to have a
comparative understanding of what is happening not just in the
U.K. but in Germany, France, other Western European and,
frankly, other coalition countries outside of Europe. The RICU
model is an interesting model. They have some interesting data
and analytics that has proven effective so far. And it is
important that both the U.S., the U.K., and other partner
countries keep in close contact with not just best practices
but really promising practices that are showing effectiveness.
Senator Portman. This brings us really to the global
effort, and, again, if you do not mind providing more
information to us as to what you think we can learn from them
and with regard to the legal constraints, just to be sure we
are all on the same page, we understand what constraints you
feel you might have. I know you also likely are going to tell
us today that you have some resource constraints. You would not
be doing your job if you did not. And, that is another issue
that I think maybe the British have put a greater emphasis on
this in terms of their resource allocation, as I understand it,
within their budget.
But on the global side--I do not want to leave Ms. LaGraffe
out of this conversation--do you think that the Global
Engagement Center, which is also aimed at changing attitudes
over the long term, is adequately using the data analytics
tools we talked about here to focus on those who are most
vulnerable to radicalization? And to the extent you can, can
you give us one or two examples of where the Center has done
that kind of micro targeting?
Ms. LaGraffe. Thank you, Senator. To answer your first
question, the data analytics shop within the Global Engagement
Center, as you know, is in its sort of early stages, and we are
working very closely with the State Department Office of the
Legal Adviser to make sure the analytics tools we identify to
be potentially most appropriate for our organization are in
keeping with the regulations specifically related to the
Privacy Act.
Thus far, what that has looked like in practice is that we
have identified tools that give us access to aggregate data, so
we are able to see in near-realtime trends on social media
platforms to really assess what messages and what themes are
resonating most with potential target audiences.
Senator Portman. Yes, I think it would be good, to the
extent you are able, to explain what you are talking about to
the Committee today. You are talking about the Privacy Act, I
assume.
Ms. LaGraffe. Yes.
Senator Portman. Which you mentioned the Office of Legal
Adviser at the State Department giving you advice on this. My
understanding is that the Privacy Act prevents the government
from collecting certain information about Americans or lawful
permanent residents but not about foreigners. Is that accurate?
Ms. LaGraffe. I am not an attorney. I think the way you
characterized it is accurate. My understanding of the challenge
we face at the Global Engagement Center is, as you have said,
we are not a law enforcement agency, nor are we an intelligence
agency and, therefore, have restrictions related to the Privacy
Act. These restrictions mostly focus around what is called
``user-level data,'' so we have worked, as I mentioned, closely
with the legal adviser's office to determine what tools we need
to get aggregate-level data, but the user-level analysis is
something that we as the Global Engagement Center do not have
authority to access.
Senator Portman. I think we should have further discussion
of this because I think it is in all of our interest that you
do micro target. Again, as I mentioned, every company in the
United States practically, as well as those online companies,
are doing this--and wouldn't it be ironic if our own State
Department is not able to do that to fight terrorism?--to be
able to understand who the people are who are most vulnerable
to these potential disinformation campaigns and then provide
them the countermessaging.
So I am concerned about the way in which the State
Department has interpreted the act. I think what they would
say--and, I am a recovering lawyer so I have to be careful
here, and did work at one point during law school at the legal
adviser's office. But I think what they are saying is that it
could inadvertently collect information about Americans. So it
is not that you are unable to collect information about
foreigners or, again, this vulnerable overseas group we are
talking about. It is that apparently they think that there
could be information collected about Americans inadvertently.
Is that your understanding?
Ms. LaGraffe. It is.
Senator Portman. OK. What are you losing by not being able
to do that kind of micro targeting?
Ms. LaGraffe. I do not think we as an organization have yet
fully fleshed out what missed opportunities there may be in
either lack of analysis in this realm or any other. Frankly, it
is so early days for the Global Engagement Center--we have been
up and running for just a few months--that we are focused more
on what opportunities we can identify to actually start having
a result in the aggregate.
Senator Portman. Well, again, I think we are in a crisis
mode in the sense that, as Mr. Steinbach has talked about
today, this online messaging is a huge part of the
radicalization effort, and certainly this relates both to
domestic and overseas. So I would want to be sure that, as hard
as your task is, it is not made harder by constraints that keep
us from targeting the very population that is most vulnerable
or more predisposed to accepting the disinformation and the
message from the jihadists.
So I would just say, as one member of the Committee, I
would like to follow-up on that further with you all and to get
some information about how the State Department is interpreting
the privacy rule as it relates to foreigners and what that
keeps us from doing in terms of being able to target these
groups.
Senator McCaskill has now returned, so I am going to turn
to her for her questions. And, again, we are going to sort of
tag team here. I may not have the opportunity to speak to the
three of you again, so thank you very much for your service to
our country And I know each of you has a distinguished
background of service in various law enforcement and State
Department and now communications areas, and we need you very
badly right now to be able to have an effective countermessage
out there. I think it is as important as anything else that is
being done, and everything else, as I said at the outset of the
hearing, can be done successfully, the military side,
protecting the homeland in other ways, and still, if we do not
deal with this threat of the disinformation online and the
radicalization that is going on, we will not be successful. So
we thank you for your hard work and for your willingness to
continue to work harder to do even better to redouble our
efforts to be more successful. Senator McCaskill.
[Pause.]
Senator McCaskill. Sorry. We are trying to figure out how
we can vote and do this hearing at the same time.
Senator Portman. Call the second panel whenever you want.
Senator McCaskill [Presiding.] OK. A couple of things.
Mr. Steinbach, I was the elected DA in Kansas City in the
1990s, and we had an awful lot of work that the Justice
Department did through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
and other parts of Justice about gangs and how did we stop
somebody from being radicalized into a group that was intent on
violence. And there were millions and millions and millions of
dollars spent on how we gain cooperation of the community, how
we identify young men--and sometimes young women but primarily
young men--from entering gangs.
I am reading a lot of things in preparation for this
hearing, and so much of it began to take on a ring of
familiarity. And I am wondering to what extent have we taken
out the volumes of research and work that were done in terms of
accessing communities, getting the help of communities,
identifying someone who is being radicalized to a life of
violence. The only clear difference I see here is that
obviously this is being clothed in a false costume of religion,
and it is convincing people that they should die for this,
although the young gang members at the time would say, they
were proud of going--I do not know if you remember. You
probably do remember this. You were probably working as an
agent at that point. I am guessing. Were you or are you too
young to have worked as an agent in the 1990s?
Mr. Steinbach. No. I was an agent.
Senator McCaskill. OK. So you know that one of the saddest
things that law enforcement encountered were some of these
young men that were 12 and 13 years old going with their first
pile of cash to buy caskets and to plan their funerals. So they
were anticipating their death.
Has there been any work--I mean, Homeland Security was not
around then, but has there been any work at Justice to try to
pull off some of the strategies that proved to be effective in
fighting the gang wars of the 1990s as it applies to radical
extremism that we are working with now?
Mr. Steinbach. Yes, ma'am. I think you are right on. I
think at the core, the reasons for disaffected youth joining
something they can belong to, whether it is a gang or radical
Islam, there is something to that. So in partnership with all
these agencies at the table, we look to the communities to
answer our questions. So just as we used the communities and
developed trust within the neighborhoods, we do the same thing
with the communities of interest now. We work with the
communities, focusing our efforts, empowering them to
identify--because once an individual comes to the FBI's
attention and we have predicated an investigation, it is too
far down the road. It is gone. It is too late. We need to
identify those individuals as they start down that path of
radicalization, and the key to that, quite frankly, is in the
communities. The only difference between the 1990s and today is
the online space and working within the online arena, which is
where I think George's efforts are focusing on.
Senator McCaskill. And have we looked at--I mean, I know
that we are talking about calling in psychologists and
psychiatrists and paying money to contractors. I mean, what I
am really wanting to make sure is we are not reinventing a
wheel that we have already spent a lot of taxpayer dollars
researching since the problems are so similar. Is anybody
pulling out any of the work that was done by professionals? Are
any of you familiar with any of that work that was done by
professionals back when we were dealing with extremism in the
form of gangs?
Mr. Selim. Senator, if I may, we are indeed very familiar
with a great body of that work, which is the wealth of
information that the Justice Department as our partners and the
Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, many of whom have been
prosecutors at the State, local, and now at the Federal level
for the past several decades, bring to bear in this regard. I
think when we are thinking about prevention models, whether it
be gang prevention, we have looked at the model of the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), how does
that public-private partnership with law enforcement and NGO
work, how do you prevent whether it is human trafficking and
smuggling, prevent recruitment and radicalization to
transnational gangs and other models like that, we have
definitely pulled heavily from that body, and that has helped
inform the models that we apply today.
Senator McCaskill. Mr. Steinbach, I know that you all are
engaging in the Muslim community in the United States. Can you
give us anything in this setting as to what percentage of the
leads that you all work actually are generated by Muslims who
are concerned about someone at their mosque or someone in their
community that they believe might be subjected to some kind of
radicalization of their faith?
Mr. Steinbach. Yes, ma'am, and the answer is no, I do not
have those numbers with me. And part of the problem is when
incoming tips come in, we are not cataloguing them by the type
of person that provides it. But I will say that every field
office commander through all 56 field offices of the FBI works
closely in partnership with the communities of interest, with
the mosques, the churches, the temples, and develops strong
relationships for a number of reasons. They recognize, those
field office commanders, that the leaders of those communities
do not want that bad apple, those bad apples affecting their
children or impacting in a negative way their areas of worship,
their places of worship, their communities. And so there is
quite a bit of communication back and forth at the foundational
level in the communities. I could not give you a number on the
number of tips. I will say that we get a lot of information and
assistance from those communities, however.
Senator McCaskill. Is it your sense from talking to your
SACs that are out there in the field and that are working with
these communities, do you sense a frustration with them that
these communities are failing to cooperate? What is your
overall impression about the willingness of the Muslim
community in the United States to try to be helpful as opposed
to the way they are sometimes categorized in the media or by
other politicians?
Mr. Steinbach. I would say overwhelmingly the religious
communities across the United States are very helpful to us in
identifying sources of radicalization, whether that is Islam,
Christianity, Judaism. We could not do our job without them. So
I would not characterize it as an adversarial relationship or a
negative relationship at all. It is a very positive
relationship.
Senator McCaskill. I am usually here preaching about
interagency cooperation, and now I am going to ask a question
that I did not really anticipate that I would ever be asking.
But we now have the National Counterterrorism Center, the DHS-
led Interagency Task Force, and the Global Engagement Center,
and there are probably a few others. Now we are in danger of
the interagency groups not coordinating with other interagency
groups because we have a plethora of interagency groups.
Can any of you speak to any sense you have of how well we
are cooperating with these various interagency groups that are
all ostensibly driving towards the same purpose?
Mr. Selim. I will start, and I will ask my co-panelists to
join in. From where I sit at the Director of this Task Force,
what we have done by creating the Global Engagement Center, the
CVE Task Force, and other models across the Federal Government,
including the National Counterterrorism Center, we have really
honed in and specialized in what the key tasks and objectives
are. So the National Counterterrorism Center is a part of the
intelligence community, and they cannot play the same role that
a DHS or a Justice Department official has due to their
authorities and regulations and so on.
In terms of cooperation with my colleagues at the State
Department on the Global Engagement Center, the Department of
Homeland Security has a full-time detailee at the Global
Engagement Center, again, a very discrete mission set different
from ours, and we meet regularly. If not several times a month,
every few weeks we get together, our leadership gets together
to figure out how we can better coordinate or integrate our
efforts abroad and domestically.
And so I think what you have identified, Senator, is a
number of interagency bodies that have been really honed in on
a specific set of tasks rather than aggregated overall to a
department or agency's mission.
Senator McCaskill. It would be really helpful, to the
extent that you can in a nonclassified setting, not for
testimony today but if somebody would put on paper how you
would diagram this in terms of responsibilities. The thing I am
most concerned about is being sure who is accountable for a
situation. That is the other thing that happens sometimes when
you have more than one group in charge. I have seen it. I will
not give specific examples, but I could, bunches of them. If
you just look at contracting in Iraq, it was a big old quagmire
of a mess between United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the Comprehensive Everglades
Restoration Plan (CERP) funds and, there were just a lot of
things that there was not really--it was not clear who was
watching all the money.
And so I would love a diagram as to what are the different
responsibilities between these different interagency task
forces and who is reporting to whom and who is ultimately
accountable--besides the President, who obviously is ultimately
accountable.
I am sure I will have other questions for the record.
I really appreciate all of your work, your dedication. I
like to remind people that are so cynical about their
government, I have not met any of you types that came into this
line of work for money. And, frankly, for the vast majority of
you and your colleagues, it is not for glory either. So it is a
sense of purpose and a sense of serving the public and a sense
of accomplishment. So please convey to all of your colleagues
how appreciative we are. Even though you do not get probably
enough love day in and day out other than from your families,
what you do is really important, and I respect it very much.
And we will call the next panel.
[Pause.]
Thank you all for being here.
Peter Bergen is vice president of New America where he
directs the international security program which conducts
research and analysis on extremist groups, homeland security,
and other things. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy
Magazine, a professor at Arizona State University, and writes a
weekly column for CNN. Mr. Bergen is also a member of the Aspen
Security Group and a documentary producer and author.
Alberto Fernandez is the vice president of the Middle East
Media Research Institute and a member of the board at the
Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington
University. From 2012 to 2015, he served as the State
Department's Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications and prior to that was a Foreign Service Officer
for over 30 years.
Thank you both for being here today. It is the custom of
this Subcommittee to swear in all witnesses, so at this time I
would ask both of you to please stand and raise your right
hand. Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give
before the Subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Bergen. I do.
Mr. Fernandez. I do.
Senator McCaskill. Let the record reflect the witnesses
have answered in the affirmative.
All of your written testimony will be printed in the
record, and we would ask that you try to limit your oral
testimony to 5 minutes.
Mr. Bergen, we will hear from you first.
TESTIMONY OF PETER BERGEN,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT, NEW AMERICA
FOUNDATION
Mr. Bergen. Senator McCaskill and other Members of the
Committee, thanks for this opportunity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen appears in the Appendix on
page 64.
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You asked a question of Michael Steinbach, and I think I
have an answer. He did not have an answer for the reasons he
laid out, but we looked at more than 330 jihadi terrorist cases
since 9/11. We found based on the public record that a third of
them, a third of those cases were generated either by community
tips or family member tips. So there is a high degree of
cooperation amongst the community.
Turning to just my overall comments, on Friday we saw
something that I think is indicative of something we need to be
concerned about, which is terrorists are now the media. Maggie
Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, famously said that
terrorists were--the ``oxygen of publicity'' is terrorism. She
said that in 1985. Well, what if terrorists themselves control
the media, they completely bypass the traditional media? We saw
on Friday, for instance, that the attackers in Bangladesh
murdered the people in the cafe. They immediately posted it all
to Amaq, which is effectively ISIS' news agency, which then in
turn published it.
So now we have an interesting situation where the
terrorists are the perpetrators, the producers of the media
around this, and the propagators. And this is something new.
We saw in Paris the ISIS-inspired militant last month who
killed the French police official and his partner. He
immediately posted pictures and videotape a whole disquisition
about his allegiance to ISIS on Facebook.
In the Orlando case and in the San Bernardino case, as you
know, the perpetrators immediately pledged their allegiance to
Facebook in the middle of the attack.
So one big idea is terrorists are now the media, and that
is something that is new. They have always tried to influence
the media.
The second, I think, big idea is that ISIS is effectively
crowdsourcing jihad, and we have had a lot of testimony today
about that fact. But there are obviously results. In the United
States, in the last 2 years we have had six ISIS-inspired
attacks, two of them lethal in San Bernardino and Orlando, four
of them luckily not lethal in places like Garland, Texas, in
New York City, in Philadelphia, and in California. But even in
the nonlethal cases, people were severely wounded in a couple
of these cases.
So who is ISIS appealing to in the West? At New America,
where I work, we looked at--and also in the United States, we
looked at 715 cases, again, based on public records and trials,
and we found that one in eight were women, which is
unprecedented. In previous jihads we had never seen that. The
average age is 25. The average age for the females is 22. Many
of them had family ties to jihad. A third of them had family
ties to jihad, a brother or father who went, they got married
over there. And we found that the profile of the Americans who
joined the jihad or tried--either succeeded or attempted to
join ISIS was very similar. So one in seven were women, the
average age was just under 25, a fifth of them had family ties
to jihadism; and, crucially, more than three-quarters were very
active online, meaning not that they were just sending emails
but they were posting jihadi material on Facebook or Twitter.
So I think none of that is necessarily surprising, but I think
that has implications for how you try and contest this.
What are ISIS' messages? Again, if we understand what the
message is, we can contest them. One is they are victorious,
and, at one point they controlled territory the size of the
United Kingdom and a population the size of Switzerland. That
is now going down. They created a utopian society, it is the
caliphate. There is a cool factor, there is a romanticist
factor. The message shifted in early 2015 from joining the
caliphate to attacking the West if you look at their kind of
messaging.
What to do? In the 1 minute I have left, I have a few
ideas.
One is I think with CVE there has been kind of a rather
crucial conceptual confusion between countering radicalization
and countering recruitment. And these things are related. But
at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is stop people
joining the gangs in the 1990s or joining ISIS, and trying to
stop radicalization. It is not illegal in this country to have
bad ideas, and it is a very hard task. Tens of millions of
people probably have militant ideas. Very few of them join
ISIS. Maybe 60,000 over the last 2 years have actually--30,000
from around the world have joined ISIS.
So employing defectors is useful. Employing clerics like
Imam Magid, who works not far from here, who has personally
intervened with a number of cases in Northern Virginia. Twitter
obviously enforcing its terms of use. The military campaign has
had some success.
Finally, just to round it up, what we should not do is ban
immigration from Muslim countries, as is being proposed. That
would have absolutely no effect on this issue. Every lethal
terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been
carried out by an American citizen or American legal permanent
resident. And so I will leave it at that.
Senator McCaskill. I will certainly give you time for any
other ideas in a minute as soon as Mr. Fernandez finishes his
testimony. Mr. Fernandez.
TESTIMONY OF ALBERTO M. FERNANDEZ,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT, MIDDLE
EAST MEDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Mr. Fernandez. Thank you, Senator. I am happy to be here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Fernandez appears in the Appendix
on page 82.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we look at the space that the Islamic State and its
rivals and colleagues occupy, we do see over the past couple of
years some small measures of incipient progress. Certainly, the
military campaign has begun a little bit to dent the victory
narrative that the Islamic State has propagated.
Social media companies, government, and the private sector,
civil society groups have begun to at the very least dismantle
the diffuse online networks that the Islamic State had for many
years.
In 2014, none of this stuff was being taken down. In 2016,
the stuff is being taken down more rapidly. When people return,
they return with less followers. So the space of the fan boys,
the space of the online networks is being shrunken and being
contested, has been contested, there is more material, there is
more messages of defectors. There is a really good NGO, the
International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism which
is producing defector videos, which I highly recommend. So
there is more stuff happening.
However, the ISIS brand has to a large extent been
internalized and metastasized to a large extent of the
population. Now, of course, we are talking about minorities. We
are not talking about 1.5 billion Muslims. We are talking about
a small percentage of the population where the ISIS message has
been internalized. It does not even need new material. It is
old material that functions. It is old things that work. It is
not the latest thing.
By the way, in the time that this session has taken place,
the Islamic State Al-Furqan released a 15-minute high-quality
video talking about itself, talking about how great it is,
which they announced on social media ahead of time this morning
that they were going to do. I think it underscores Peter
Bergen's point, that they are able to get--despite the pressure
that we put on them, despite the fact that we are taking stuff
down quickly, they are able to surge and get their message out
at will when and where they want.
Now, what has not been touched? I think there are several
points that we need to think about when we think about what we
have done and what has not been done. We still have not gotten
the full benefit we have out of the slow but real military
progress we are making on the ground.
We should be talking in the last few days about ISIS'
defeat at Fallujah and ISIS' near defeat at Mambij. And instead
what are we talking about? Orlando, Istanbul, Medina,
Bangladesh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They have
succeeded in changing the narrative. Instead of talking about
how they are physically under great pressure in the field, we
are seeing how the digital caliphate and the work that they do
overseas is kind of serving as a substitute for military
victory. So that is an area where they are still undented.
The other area where they are still undented and something
that almost no one either in the United States or overseas
touches is the ideology, the building blocks of the ISIS
message. The Salafi jihadist world view which empowers it and
generates it is largely untouched. I can understand the
government not wanting to do this. This is something that the
U.S. Government is probably not very good about talking about,
the intersection of politics and religion. But this is not
something that is happening anywhere.
As a thought process, when I was writing my testimony, I
went on YouTube, and I put in some of the key terms that Salafi
jihadists like ISIS use to radicalize people. I put them in
English on YouTube. I thought, ``What if I was a 17-year-old
boy, I am confused, I do not know what is what,'' and I put in
these terms. And every single time the immediate return you got
on YouTube was that of extremists, not of humanistic, tolerant,
good people that we have in the Muslim community in the United
States or overseas.
One of the key terms, ``Al-Wala wal-Bara,'' which is about
loyalty to radical Islam and hating the West and hating the
country you are in, the No. 1 person that returned to it was
Anwar al-Awlaki. So Anwar al-Awlaki 5 years after his death is
still helping to radicalize people.
So the ideological challenge of the Islamic State has not
been challenged yet, and the sectarian dimension, even our
victories in the region, are tainted by the sectarian
dimension. So while we are making real progress on the ground
against the Islamic State and even in cyberspace, some of the
key building blocks for the Islamic State of today and of
tomorrow are actually untouched or even enhanced by events on
the ground.
Thank you.
Senator McCaskill. Thank you, and I have 2 minutes left to
go, and Senator Portman has not returned. So I am going to ask
you to sit tight. I am going to run to vote. He will be back I
am sure before I will, but we will be back in--and I apologize
for this, but it cannot be helped.
Senator Portman [Presiding.] Thank you, and I assume we did
not recess. OK. Thank you all very much for your patience. I
apologize. I have gotten my exercise for the day literally
running back and forth. We think we are done voting. We may
have one more, but we will not ask you to stay if we leave
again. I promise you.
First of all, I apologize not to be here to hear your
testimony, but I got a chance to review your testimony, and as
I said at the outset, I really appreciate both of you being
here and your distinguished backgrounds in this area trying to
figure out, what the best things are to do. The government
panel we heard from a little while ago told us that--and the
FBI Director had said this late last year--the lone-wolf
radicalization online he believes is the biggest threat to our
national security here at home. And we now know the nature of
that threat, but we need to get a deeper understanding of some
of the trends that we are seeing. That is where you guys can be
really helpful.
In these attacks here, in all but one, I think there was no
what you would consider, I suppose, direct contact between the
terrorists and an ISIS cell overseas. Is that accurate, Mr.
Bergen?
Mr. Bergen. Yes. The only case is the Garland, Texas, case,
where there was an actual attack in motion where they had
communicated with ISIS.
Senator Portman. Why do you think there has not been an
overseas element in most of these U.S. attacks? Either one of
you.
Mr. Bergen. Let me try to answer that. On 9/11 there were
16 people on the no-fly list. Now there are 47,000. There are
like a million and a half people on the Terrorist Identities
Datamart Environment (TIDE) list. On 9/11, the FBI and the CIA
barely talked to each other. On 9/11, there was no NCTC, TSA,
DHS. We have tripled our intelligence budget, and we are a much
harder target. In fact, the last time a foreign terrorist
organization tried to attack us unsuccessfully was May 1, 2010,
with the Faisal Shahzad Pakistani Taliban attack. So the point
is the reason we are talking about lone wolves is because we
have erected these very large defenses against foreign
terrorist organizations directing somebody, training somebody,
sending them to us.
Senator Portman. You note in your testimony that about 20
percent of American ISIS members had a familial connection to
jihad. That was your quote.
Mr. Bergen. Yes.
Senator Portman. Can you elaborate on that point? I ask
because I think it implies that even here in the U.S. there
might be a strong in-person element to radicalization, which is
an interesting wrinkle to the story, in addition to what
happens online.
Mr. Bergen. Well, an example of that is the Khan family
from Chicago, three teenagers, 19, 17, and 16, they have kind
of radicalized together, two boys and one girl. They were all
planning to join ISIS. They were arrested at O'Hare airport.
That is one kind of example.
Another kind of example is people go to join ISIS, of which
there have not been that many Americans who have succeeded, but
sometimes they marry somebody in ISIS or associated with ISIS
when they get there.
Senator Portman. And the content of the ISIS propaganda and
how it is uniquely suited to the Internet is something you both
have addressed. Ambassador Fernandez, you have noticed that
this brand can be all things to all extremists. Mr. Bergen, you
have also commented on this, and you have noted that the thrust
of the ISIS message is that it offers a sense of purpose and
community--we talked about this earlier--to the vulnerable, the
disillusioned, the alienated.
To both of you guys, what kind of countermessaging
challenges and opportunities does that present for us?
Mr. Fernandez. Well, a couple of things. No. 1, of course,
is the most effective countermessaging are people that know the
Islamic State best, and those are defectors, those are families
of victims. The Islamic State is essentially a Sunni Arab
Muslim organization. Yes, it has thousands of non-Arabs in it,
but in terms of its world view, it is a Sunni Arab Muslim
organization. That is where the issue comes from. That is the
heart of its core. Those are the voices that are most useful.
We often focus on many of the victims who are not Sunni Arab
Muslims. Obviously, we care about all the victims, including
Americans. But it is that core audience that it appeals to that
we need to work on.
The other thing, of course, is that the ideological
dimension of the ISIS appeal is rarely touched. What are these
elements that mobilize people, concepts of jihad, of kufr, of
shirk, of Al-Wala wal-Bara, of taghut? These terms which are
complicated, nuanced terms in Islamic history which ISIS uses
as bumper stickers to kill. It is not Islam for Dummies. It is
Salafi jihadism for Dummies. And so those are two of the
challenges that we face in that space.
Senator Portman. In some of your testimony, you talk about
the fact that our messaging can be more effective, and we
talked a little bit about that yesterday at the staff level
about, what works and what does not work. You mentioned
defectors, for instance. That seems to be more effective, for
instance, than, as you say, someone who is not connected.
You also talk about the victory narrative and that that is
something that we need to respond to because that victory
narrative encourages more people to feel as though they are
part of something that is working.
In your written testimony, you contrast our message that
you thought was relatively ineffective after retaking Fallujah
with that of a more productive messaging after taking a
different Iraqi city. From a message perspective, can you talk
about the difference between those two and just elaborate on
your comments on what is most effective in terms of messaging?
Mr. Fernandez. Sure. Both the taking of Fallujah and the
taking of Mambij in Syria are good. They are good because you
are taking something from ISIS. You are defeating them. So
there is benefit even in a flawed retelling of military
victory. So even Fallujah, which has been controversial in the
pan Arab media and the Sunni Arab media--these are, Iranian
militias and Shia death squads. That is some of the rhetoric
out there. But even the way it has turned out, taking it from
the Islamic State is a good thing.
The point I make is that it could have been a better thing.
It could have been a victory of a united Iraq, a united
multiethnic, multireligious Iraq against the Islamic State. And
that is not exactly how it was portrayed.
In contrast, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish
Allied Forces in northern Syria that we support took a
different tack. What they did is they put up front Sunni Arab
Muslims who were allied with the Kurds in the taking of Mambij,
and this is what is called the ``Mambij Military Council.'' So
they took a back seat. They had the Arab Muslims take a front
seat. That presented a less sectarian, less provocative way of
doing things. They were both good. Victory in Fallujah is good,
and victory in Mambij is good. Any defeat of the Islamic State
is good. But you want to wring all the benefit that you can out
of military victory, and we are not doing that. We are talking
too much about what they are doing and not what we are doing to
them.
Senator Portman. Well, thank you. I have some additional
questions for you both about the narrative and specifically
what we ought to be doing better. But I would like to give my
colleague an opportunity to ask questions. Senator Ayotte was
here earlier. She has a background as a prosecutor and is on
the Armed Services Committee and has spent a lot of time on
these issues, and I would like her to have a chance to ask some
questions.
Senator Ayotte. Thank you so much, Chairman.
Mr. Bergen, when you testified before the Committee before
and I see it again in your written testimony, the discussion
about--unlike prior terrorist groups that we have dealt with,
that they have been--that there are many women involved, and
you and I had an exchange on that.
As I read your testimony today from where we were before,
that continues, I think, to be the case, no diminishment in
that, and obviously we saw with the San Bernardino situation,
while that was more of a radicalization here, still, obviously,
she was a big driver in this.
So have you seen any diminishment in that and what we
should be doing in terms of, as we are thinking about
individuals that were involved in ISIS--and in your steps of
recommendations, you say--and I think that Mr. Fernandez just
talked about that as well. If you have been a member of ISIS,
get people who have been part of it, and then also get them to
go out online and obviously talk about the real experience.
What about with women? Are we having any success with how we
are going to engage women who join ISIS and why it is so
attractive to women as well?
Mr. Bergen. I mean, Senator, yes, I think they are still
recruiting women. Part of it is sort of a romantic message,
that you can marry the man of your dreams in part, which has
been reinforced by people who get married there. What the
countermessaging is to that I am not really sure, except I
think I completely agree with Ambassador Fernandez that
defectors are the most effective approach. And, the New York
Times ran a very interesting massive piece with two women who
defected. They gave them pseudonyms. They painted a very bleak
picture.
I think the United States faces an interesting question,
which is we have a guy in Alexandria, Virginia, Mohamad Khweis,
who is 26, who has defected. He could face 20 years in prison.
He has obviously defected because he thinks ISIS is against
Islam. So, the kind of bigger question is: What do we do with
people who are defectors, American defectors? Do we throw them
in prison for 20 years, or do we come up with something more
creative?
Senator Ayotte. Ambassador, did you want to comment on
that?
Mr. Fernandez. Yes. One of the problems we have, even when
we have defectors, I am sure you have seen the images. The ISIS
spokesman is looking at you, unmasked, telling you about his
life, telling you about his personal testimony. He is
unashamed, unembarrassed. And then we have all too often the
defector, and what does the defector look like? The defector is
masked or covered, obviously----
Senator Ayotte. Because they are afraid.
Mr. Fernandez [continuing]. For security reasons. So this
is the disadvantage that we have with them.
Senator Ayotte. Right.
Mr. Fernandez. Their personal testimony is more powerful
than ours, and it is more numerous than ours. So this is the
challenge that we face, kind of a technical basic problem that
we face.
Senator Ayotte. I was interested also, Mr. Bergen, as I
looked at your action items, this idea that you had about a
database of foreign fighters, because we do know obviously that
there are a number of individuals who have flown back and
forth, especially fewer Americans, significant, a couple
hundred Americans, but also with the Europeans, thousands. And
as you raise the issue, it seemed clear to me that we still
have significant information-sharing issues across our allies
in Europe, and even with countries like Turkey, and that we
probably do not know all are collecting in one place, people
that we do know, in fact, have joined. And I think that is a
significant issue that you point out that we should address.
Mr. Bergen. Yes, I mean, Interpol has 5,000 names. We have
30,000 people who have joined from around the world.
Senator Ayotte. Right.
Mr. Bergen. So we are 25,000 short. And my intuition is we
had no idea about any of these people who blew themselves up
over the past month in Bangladesh and Turkey. I think with the
British and other European partners there is pretty good
information sharing, but clearly a lot more has to be done.
Senator Ayotte. And even if you look at countries like what
happened in Belgium, with the deficiencies there, with some of
the law enforcement deficiencies there in terms of compiling
that, that seems something in terms of an intelligence tool
that would be helpful to all of us.
What other things, if you think about the intelligence
front, that you think, the two of you think that we should be
focusing on?
Mr. Bergen. Well, one thing I would look at is if Amaq is
ISIS' new service--and there are a couple of other entities
that put out ISIS' message--why aren't we taking them down? I
mean, I am not saying----
Senator Ayotte. Right.
Mr. Bergen. I mean literally taking out their production
facilities. They must exist.
Senator Ayotte. Exactly. It makes logical sense that we
would do that, and that is something we should be asking our
officials. Why aren't we just taking them down? I know it is a
Whack-A-Mole situation.
Mr. Bergen. Well, you whack enough moles----
Senator Ayotte. Exactly, and you make it harder enough to
do something, then they are--it is not that it will not come
back, but why would you let it continue if you know it is
there.
Mr. Fernandez. And one thing we have seen, we have seen
with the--initially people were skeptical about, well, taking
stuff down on the Internet, right? They are just going to come
back. And, yes, there are individuals who have been taken down
500 times and are back for the 501st time. But what we have
seen is that many, many of the maybe less motivated people drop
off. So the Whack-A-Mole work on social media does pay
dividends over time.
Recently at MEMRI, we saw that, they have been driven
mostly off of Twitter, and they are on Telegram, which is this
German-Russian site, and we recently saw--just 2 days ago, we
saw an ISIS message calling for people to return to Twitter,
because even though Telegram is very useful and is a safe haven
for them, nothing is as good as mobilizing, getting your
message out very broadly as Twitter. So we need to continue to
be mowing the lawn on Twitter because they will come back if
they are given the space to do so.
Senator Ayotte. And the other issue is, as you heard
Director Steinbach testify--and it is replete in your testimony
as well--that they are consuming this extremist material. Now,
there is line of, obviously, what can you consume without
taking action in terms of where you can take legal action. But
it is a strong indicator, if somebody is consuming this
extremist material, that this is something that we have to be
focused on, obviously not just eliminating the ability to push
this out on the Internet, but we have seen it over a series of
attacks, that that is one of the components of an individual
who ends up being radicalized, or self-radicalized.
Mr. Fernandez. At the very least, you want to give the
potential consumer in the United States the same ability to
access material that is not going to radicalize them, that is
going to counter that as the radicalization material. To me, it
is unconscionable that you go on YouTube, which is an American
company, and you put in a term, an Islamic term, which is not
necessarily an ISIS term, and the No. 1 thing you get is the
algorithm gives you basically a well-known American terrorist
that we killed.
There has to be ways that, you do the algorithms or
whatever you do to make sure that the voices of tolerance, the
voices of reason, the voices of humanity are there, at least to
compete with the extremists if you cannot take them down.
Senator Ayotte. It seems to me that, of course, we can do
that, and we know that not only what the government activity
and responsibilities but the private sector responsibility in
terms of how these sites are being used. And we know that they
are taking some steps that are important, but I think further
engaging on that is critical.
Well, I appreciate both of you being here today, and thank
you, Chairman. I know you have more questions.
Senator Portman. I just have a couple more questions.
One, building on what you just said, Ambassador Fernandez--
and, Mr. Bergen, I would like to hear your view on this--you
mentioned the Twitter work. I said in my opening statement they
have closed down more than 100,000 ISIS-linked accounts, and
you have to assume a lot of that comes back. But you were
saying also, ``mowing the grass'' I think is the analogy you
used, it is important to keep that up. I hope Twitter,
Facebook, and others are continuing that effort. Do you think
what Facebook has done, which is apparently worked to remove
offending users but also to help promote counter-jihadist
propaganda, has also been effective?
Mr. Fernandez. I believe that there has been progress
across the board by the Big Three--by Twitter, YouTube, and
Facebook. So there has been tremendous progress if we are
looking at 2 years ago or even 1 year ago. That is a good
thing.
Facebook has been particularly effective or particularly
aggressive in taking material down and shutting things down. So
we want to encourage that. We want to encourage all of them to
do that.
And then we want to focus on these other safe havens where
they are jumping to, so Telegram, JustPaste.it, Archives.org,
what can be done with these companies, these entities that are
in the West, to at least make life a little more difficult for
the extremists? Realizing that in the end the message is going
to get out, and the message has to be countered, it has to be
answered. But we certainly do not want to give them a free ride
in our own space.
Senator Portman. I think that is very sensible, and, this
Subcommittee has worked hard on this issue in some other
contexts with human trafficking where there is a challenge, the
``dark side of the Internet,'' as I call it, and that same dark
side unfortunately is being utilized by some of these
radicalized elements.
Something that struck me in your testimony, Mr. Bergen, was
about women and the fact that ISIS has had luck in attracting
more women to its ranks, and this is remarkable to me because
of how poorly they treat women. As one example, ISIS has women
marry fighters, and if a woman's husband dies, she is quickly
married off again, I am told, sometimes in violation of Islamic
law. You talked a little about that earlier. But what accounts
for this phenomenon? Why are women feeling compelled to sign up
given the reality?
Mr. Bergen. I do not have a good answer to that, but I
think in the 1970s they might have joined the Weather
Underground or the Black Panthers or some other utopian group
that promised utopia through revolutionary violence, and this
is one of the last revolutionary ideologies left standing. And
so, I mean, that is an attempt at answering the question, but,
given their ultra misogyny, it is really a mystery.
Senator Portman. And, again, the counternarrative needs to
be out there, defectors included, and there are women who have
defected who have come forward, and that seems to me to be, one
of our opportunities given the phenomenon.
On the Global Engagement Center and the work that we talked
about earlier with the previous panel, Ambassador Fernandez, of
course, you have lots of experience with the predecessor, the
head of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications. I know it is early--the Global Engagement
Center is really only a few months old--but what are you
encouraged by so far? What are you discouraged by? In your
written statement, you talk about the Global Engagement Center
not having a dedicated line item budget appropriation, the
funding issue that I mentioned earlier; emphasis on building
out a professional staff, they need to still do that; too much
emphasis on transitory events rather than building out
something that is focused on combating the threat long-term.
Can you elaborate on your concerns and any suggestions you have
for improvement?
Mr. Fernandez. Well, I am encouraged in the work that they
are doing with recanters, with defectors. That is good. I am
encouraged with the idea of building proxies, building a
network of proxies across the world that do stuff. So that is
the good stuff.
The areas where I am concerned is a lot of what the work of
proxies are doing is not very impressive. It is just churning
stuff out. It is not well aligned. It is material that--``Do
not do drugs,'' right? That kind of stuff. Of course, yes, do
not become a terrorist. But it does not go deep. It is not as
personal. It is not as powerful as one would want it to be.
Now, it is early days, but there is a lot of movement and
not necessarily progress yet. So I think they need to--they
need some more time. I see some good things, and I see some
things which are a little concerning.
Senator Portman. Part of what I am hearing you say is that
we need to target the message more precisely. This is the
analytics point that we were making earlier, and I talked about
this particular issue of the legal constraint of the Privacy
Act. You had to deal with that as well, I assume.
Do you have thoughts on that? To me it just does not make
sense that we would not be able to target those most
vulnerable, susceptible who are foreigners, not American
citizens, not permanent residents. Do you have thoughts on
that?
Mr. Fernandez. Well, we assumed, sir, when I headed CSCC,
that if we are messaging in Arabic, Urdu, and Somali in
platforms that we know are outside the United States, we are
going to assume that the overwhelming majority of the people
that we are messaging against or with or to are not Americans.
Yes, some guy in Minneapolis could see what we are doing, but
we are assuming that if we are messaging or looking at a Yemeni
tribal forum, which is one of the places that we looked at,
most of the people there are not Americans.
So that was actually not a concern of ours at all. I was
actually kind of very surprised by that testimony myself.
Senator Portman. Well, we are going to be digging into that
further, as you know from my questions there. We have an
opportunity here online, in addition to the other things we
talked about earlier that need to be done on the military side
or, protecting the homeland through law enforcement and so on.
But we have an opportunity here to step up our game, don't we?
And not that there is any one silver bullet, but to me this is
the most difficult and perhaps, therefore, the most important
part of the entire effort to better protect our homeland and
better protect the free world from this terrorist threat.
So we thank you for your expertise on it. You want us to
keep writing about it. What is the book that you have next to
your microphone there?
Mr. Fernandez. I mentioned the International Center for the
Study of Violent Extremism, Dr. Anne Speckhard of Georgetown
University, and this is actually the book that just came out as
part of their work, and it actually collates the testimony of
defectors.
Senator Portman. OK.
Mr. Fernandez. And it has a recommendation by Peter Bergen
and Alberto Fernandez on the back.
Senator Portman. Wow. You are on the book cover. So Bergen
has a book, too. He has a 1-800 number for his book.
[Laughter.]
What is your new book, Peter?
Mr. Bergen. ``United States of Jihad: Investigating
America's Homegrown Terrorists,'' and it is an attempt to look
at many of the issues we just discussed.
Senator Portman. Well, you get to talk about your book
because you were kind enough to come here and testify before
us, spend your day with us. Sorry about the interruptions, and
thank you for your expertise and your willingness to help us to
be more effective in our fight against terrorism, specifically
this countermessaging online.
The hearing record will remain open for 15 days for
additional comments or questions by any of the Subcommittee
members.
This hearing will now be adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:36 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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