An Abridged History of America’s Terrorism Prevention Programs: Fits and Starts

The following is a modified excerpt from a new book, “Homegrown: ISIS in America.”

In March 2014, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) had a problem. For months, both agencies had spent countless hours setting up a large community engagement program in North Carolina. There were repeated calls and meetings with Muslim American religious leaders to explain why the two counterterrorism organizations thought it was imperative to run something called a Community Resilience Exercise in Raleigh. The event was on the cusp of being canceled. 

The C-REX, as it was called within government, is a hypothetical scenario that unfolds in stages, appearing to show a person radicalizing to violence. Usually run with a crowd evenly split between law enforcement and community partners, it is meant to facilitate a discussion on what role each side can play in terrorism prevention. Each side takes the role of the other, so community partners are law enforcement and vice versa. This role reversal helps set the stage for a better understanding of the limitations and misconceptions each possesses when trying to disengage an individual from extremist action.

On the government side, the local U.S. attorneys were supportive but hesitant to allow D.C.-based bureaucrats to sweep into their area and run a delicate conversation between law enforcement and the public about terrorism recruitment in the United States. After some hand holding, both sides agreed that March 20 would be the kickoff event. Representatives from Homeland Security and the NCTC had just begun the more than 280-mile trek from the nation’s capital to Raleigh, North Carolina, when their phones started ringing. The FBI had arrested Avin Marsalis Brown, the first American charged with attempting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State. Brown was handcuffed and charged while at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, only a few minutes from the would-be community engagement venue. The case hinged on the use of an informant, a particularly sensitive touchpoint in community relations. Muslim American leaders wanted to cancel the event. Law enforcement was also reluctant to participate, citing concerns that they would have to answer questions about an ongoing investigation. After some careful negotiating and numerous conference calls, the C-REX went off without a hitch.

The three-hour event helped both sides understand where the other was coming from on addressing homegrown terrorism. An action plan was developed, with specific roles and responsibilities for both community partners and government officials. The near failure of the Raleigh C-REX was a microcosm of a larger issue with countering violent extremism (CVE) programs. (Disclosure: One of the authors, Seamus Hughes, worked for NCTC on CVE issues from 2011 to 2015.) The public-private partnership hinged on trust and an understanding of what the efforts sought to accomplish. After years of only hard counterterrorism approaches to extremism in America, and administrations that struggled to define the scope of the initiative, that trust and understanding was in short supply. There is an ongoing, and perhaps never-ending, debate within policy circles on when and where CVE programs began in the United States. Some members of George W. Bush’s administration argue that the “ideas and actions” section of their national security strategy was the first marker. Others say the story of the U.S. terrorism prevention program began in earnest in 2011 with the release of an Obama-era strategy entitled “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,” which focused exclusively on the issue. There is, however, little debate on whether the strategy has been implemented effectively.

By every objective measure, it has not. The story of terrorism prevention in America is one of fits and starts. CVE programs have had many bosses, quite a few iterations and little coherency. To true believers of prevention programs, it is the best of government—an attempt to save people from themselves. To those who saw the past two decades of counterterrorism approaches as government overreach, fraught with civil liberties abuses, countering violent extremism is another thinly veiled attempt to profile Muslim Americans and police their thoughts and religious beliefs. Like most extreme policy positions, both are wrong.

The focus of countering violent extremism was shaped by a small but persistent band of bureaucrats in three different presidential administrations who were given a small mandate and little funding, but also believed that most people drawn to jihadist ideology—if given options and a way out—would choose to come back into the fold of normal society. To understand the evolution of CVE policy in the United States, it is important to start with a series of mundane government meetings across the pond. 

A Transatlantic Idea

The concept of American counter-radicalization programs was born out of a series of conversations between British and American security officials in early 2004. A cross-pond collaboration structure called the Joint Contact Group included senior leadership from both countries’ counterterrorism apparatuses. The organization met every six months, alternating between Washington, D.C., and London. In the summer of 2004, at a meeting in the Reagan Building in Washington, American officials pushed their British counterparts to be more forceful on counter-radicalization programs. Senior American counterterrorism leadership spoke of overarching efforts to conduct community engagement across the country. The conversation helped spark action but only on one side of the table. The United Kingdom was about to put significant resources into CVE programs, while American officials would talk about forthcoming efforts but take years to catch up to their foreign colleagues. While the Americans were struggling to understand homegrown terrorism and create structures to address it, the United Kingdom was pushing ahead with an ambitious plan to implement counter-radicalization policies.

The United States was slow to implement its own thinking from the Reagan Building meeting, and it represented a shift in the way the U.S. government had previously discussed addressing homegrown terrorism. By March 2007, the first congressional hearings were starting to review the U.S. government’s approach to the threat. Michael Chertoff, then the secretary of homeland security, told senators that radicalization was an external problem for America, not an internal one: “The United States is fortunate that radicalization seems to have less appeal here than in other parts of the world.” He credited that lack of appeal to a number of issues: 

Though it is difficult at this stage to determine the exact cause of these differences, there appear to be a set of advantages the US enjoys. Among these are economic advantages associated with low barriers to employment markets and business creation, traditional cultural acceptance of religious expression and free speech, unfettered participation in the U.S. political process and a high degree of social integration.

From every outsider’s perspective, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) would be a strange place to provide the impetus for terrorism prevention programs in the United States. Largely tasked with ensuring that the department’s programs did not run afoul of constitutional protections, its staff also found themselves explaining Homeland Security policy to marginalized populations in America. In the mid-2000s, very few offices within the U.S. government were conducting routine and continuous engagement with Muslim American communities. Headed by Daniel Sutherland, an eternal optimist who was skilled at the interagency process, the CRCL punched above its weight and largely set the future direction of CVE programs. Sutherland hired six full-time staffers to engage with Muslim American communities through dedicated community roundtables in places such as Dearborn, Michigan, and Chicago, Illinois. The roundtables were not specifically focused on counter-radicalization. To the contrary, the agendas were primarily about watchlisting, border screening and other initiatives that were controversial within Muslim American communities because they were disproportionally affected by the Department of Homeland Security’s policy implementations. As the roundtables progressed throughout the country, a debate raged within both communities and government on what to call this new initiative. Terminology to describe counter-radicalization programs has vacillated between broad and specific terms in the past 15 years. Originally called “countering radical Islam” during the early days of the Bush administration, by the end of its second term, thinking had shifted on how to describe the programs. A series of engagements were initiated by the CRCL with prominent Muslim American scholars and leaders about what name to give to counter-radicalization programs.

Nearly one year to the day after the Bush administration landed on “countering violent extremism” as the proper terminology, Obama was sworn in as president. His new national security team was increasingly uncomfortable with the use of the word “Islamist” to describe the threat. They were concerned that the general public would not understand the nuances between Islam, describing a religion, and Islamist, a full-fledged political ideology based on the religion. 

There was no official memo about the shift, but as the new political appointees made their feelings known at National Security Council meetings, the rest of the bureaucracy fell in line. As such, the term “countering violent extremism,” which at the time was not seen as controversial, was adopte

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