>> a reminder that all booktv programs are available to watch online at booktv.org. >> like a new one. i am karen greenberg, , i direct this to our national security at fordham law and welcome to today's event on the book i'm going to show you, "homegrown: isis in america." the four get started today i want to mention some sad news. in the world at the center of national security, my world, frank meade who is a longtime friend, advocate for an adviser to the senate passed away november 1 of this year. we are going to miss him. i wanted to take today to dedicate this program to him and to honor his memory.

i think his spirit will be with us for a long time and i just wanted to mention him gratefully here as he attended all of our virtual events up to this point back. today's event as a set at the beginning is meant to celebrate this wonderful new book with an amazing cover which is why i showed it. there's so much going on the cover with that is just spent to talk about the cover, like what are all these post-its. post-its. but we won't. the author of the book who is with us today is shamus use. about this book with alexander hitchens and bennett clifford. he is one of the leading counterterrorism and terrorism experts in the country. he's been producing report after report for years but for congress and for others. you for joining the program on extremism at george washington university where he is a deputy director he worked at the nctc, national counterterrorism

center. before that he was senior counterterrorism adviser on a homeland security and government affairs committee. there's an awful lot, seamus, we should be talking about today in our one hour but i wanted to start with the book and then go on. for those of you any ideas please feel free to send your questions into the q&a and i would get as many into the conversation as i can. but first i want to have a conversation with you, seamus. i want to talk about why now this book. let me posit something you say why i'm right or why i'm wrong, which is that the real type of isis in the united states was 2014-2015. we kept 15. we kept the same cases in 2015 and 2016 with the destruction of the cow that maybe some of the things you want to mention it's been kind of a here and there said investigations, indictments of prosecutions from a height of something with i think over 50

cases a year. we are now seen something like less than a dozen. is that why he did the book now? were you thinking maybe the art of isis in the united states at least in this incarnation in the way we know it is something we can tell a full story of, mean it's gone away, or not? >> i think that's absolutely right. let me first say thank you very much for having me. you have been a friend for number of years and the center for national security something i relied on in that reports for years now and put on great griee was an honor to be here. thank you for the kind words about frank. it's an honor to be a part of this conversation. the reason why we decide to put out a book on isis in 2020 as opposed to 2015 was the story wasn't written yet just yesterday we had two new indictments unsealed and eastern district of pennsylvania of the husband-wife that were sending money to family members to go join isis. we wrote the story in 2015, i

don't think we would've told the full picture. it takes a long time to get a sense of it and for about three years me and my co-authors traveled around the country anything fbi agents, , defense attorneys and other members and came back to my sister get a sense of what it means when was isis and america. almost like a loaded term. we shouldn't be alarmist about it. people are not hiding under your bed tried to kill your prices but it's also not insignificant. we wanted to wrap her head around it and the only way to do that was to take a step back and look at it. we looked at about 20,000 pages of legal documents. we filed a whole bunch of documents which got rejected an appeal and field again i was on augustine. we found motions unseal documents. after bit of time people started talking. when time is passion willing to talk about the case in 2014 then you were at the height of it. if you want to do it justice want to give a look at a

distance. >> so you did and i will say the detail on these cases is quite impressive and that just the detail in the case themselves but have different diaper to lead up to one another and different individuals new one another both virtual and otherwise. through a number of things that i'd not quite realize in terms of relationship between those inspiring, those funding, those planning attacks, those indicted. it's a very intricate presentation portrait you have. in the aggregate what did you learn? i want to make that more specific. what did you learn, let's start with what did you learn that surprised you once you got the foias you need to get in terms of how to describe it the isis terrorist? >> the story is isis in america's a story of ones and

twos and not force and fives. he talk about a small phenomenon of individuals, usually friends, some level of in person network but not a large network like you would see in say parts of europe. that's the first take away. the second take away is, and you know this as well as i do there's not a typical profile of isis recruit. they are old, , young, rich, po, black, white, converts and neighbors. there's not a rhyme or reason. they all share the same ideology and narrative but they come after it differently. in the ways to get to it is completely different. the other thing, the point you made about if you pull back the onion you realize there's a bit more connection thing think we give credit to. a young man in iowa a semi-connected to a guy this as part of a group of guys in rocket. the connections use made over social media that sometimes there is that in person network like we saw in minneapolis-st. paul where the brothers, sister dominates the kids the joint

al-shabaab ten years ago with the winds who came and joined isis. if you figure it all out to get a sense it's a very diverse and diffuse picture. >> one of the things you focus on not surprising because we've been reading reports so long is the youth. how young they are. the reason i bring that up is that i would like you to compare that to two things. one is isis in europe and elsewhere in the world, and two, to white supremacists, extremism and what we are seeing now. we are really talky and number of these isis cases of individuals who are barely in their teens and often in their early 20s. >> i think that's right. i was surprised by the number of minors we had in our case study. that only people arrested for criminal charges, we had an individual who was arrested when you were 15 and charge with

material support that that was an outlier. most of the time get a number of minor cases where fbi agents would determine they did want to bring a federal charge of perhaps the couldn't get it to the national security division department of justice. but when you interview these agents they will set did want to charge a 16 euro for terrorism and a did want him to 20 is in jail. and the lack of tools to do anything besides that was mildly concerning on my end. you saw an interesting trend now, particularly now, a step up of state and local officials charging at the state level. you are saying terroristic charges in arizona, new jersey and new york for minor cases, 17-year-olds. there's a case in south carolina is c16 got charged with the gun charge at the state level, spent two years in jail, got out and was charged again and charge with terry and when he was 18 trying to join isis. that's a failure of policy.

he cds minors are going down this path and not having options other than law enforcement -- you see these -- it something policymakers should think about in any real substance. >> let's talk about that before we go on. you spent a lot of time thinking about countering violent extremism, , prevention, or however you want to turn it. the was a time at the end of the obama administration where there was government funding for this and some robust effort made. they're still a few things out there, but what happened? we don't hear about the terrorism cd movement now and i'm sort of curious. what is your take on it? we got diverted and it -- the funds dried up or what happened? >> a couple reasons. the sheer scope of the number of arrests in 2014-15 force the administration to be created. they couldn't arrest the way out of the problem.

back to an attorney i ended in your use to sit around the table with a bunch of fbi agents and they would get the weekly briefing of cases, and after a couple weeks he said i don't have enough lawyers to charge all these individuals. we have to figure out a different way. that was a forcing function in many ways. the obama administration did spend a lot of time on counterterrorism but if you dug into it, and i happen to be in government during some of that time, you really are just talking about friends trying to implement a national strategy. that is not going to be particularly successful. aim to be fair there's a lot of concerns. my civil rights and civil liberties college would say it's government overreach. this is leasing extreme. you should have a national program to do so. there's some truth in that. we don't need to have a billion-dollar program on this especially when the number of the small.

but at the end of the day if i'm sitting across a room from a parent is concerned about the kid and the only option they have is an arrest for do nothing until they grew out of the face, i just think that is a failure at a policy level. it's a failure of society. we should provide some level of off ramps but we can get rid of in way that doesn't come across civil rights and civil liberties concerns. narrowly parol concerns. where do we go from here? the obama administration largely tried it. the trump initiation came in with this grant plaintiff recap it and change the names. they basically change counter to terror prevention traipsing program with less funding and less people. there's no built-in advocate for the program. from the right people say you're too soft, you're hugging a tester on the left will say it's government so the advocates in the middle. i will be surprised if he gets a shot in the arm in the biden

administration. maybe perhaps on white supremacists antigovernment side which i think there's some room to do some counterbalance proconsumer i don't see that happening any new substance when it comes to isis or jihadist them. >> wonder the things that's a major tools in prosecuting terrorists has been the terrorism statute. one of the strengths of the terrorism statutes are the link to form organizations. in terms of isis come in your description of this homegrown phenomenon, you want to talk about how it is different than how we thought about, or not, the international outreach of al-qaeda? action about travel and training as opposed to what was going on with al-qaeda and how much that is changed. what's happening with the foreign fighter phenomenon

today? >> that's one of the takeaways of the book is if you look at the case in 2015, 60 plus cases that were public, the vast majority had some attempt to travel or travel overseas. isis had a message and a product. the caliphate. flip the switch for american homegrown violent extremists and they were drawn to that idea. you did see a push on that aspect of it. the difference between al-qaeda and isis is that only the product but the people. isis had the ability and time and space to reach out systematically to americans and groom them over the course of weeks and months to encourage them to commit a tactic think of a case in upstate new york where a man in raqqa was reaching out to another man with a mental health issue about the need to commit an attack at a nightclub in upstate new york. this is an individual who i think without whispering in his

ear probably would have gone a different way. whereas al-qaeda which is put the message out, and megaphone effect. to what out and hope it sticks. these guys were much more of a one on one intervention trying to push the message and action. >> sort of a virtual entrepreneurs. >> right. i tried my best to make virtual optimistic but it's not going to. just call it whatever else does which is virtual attack planners. there was six or seven individuals in raqqa. the fbi deemed them the legion of doom, very dramatic fbi fashion. these are individuals who in a computer lab changing phones back and forth and since medical reaching out to americans to commit attacks. what would happen is they had a level of prominence. a well-known british hacker became an isis propagandist, and

americans would reach out to them and these guys in the legion would reach back and say you don't want to travel, it's too hard. what you want to do is commit an attack on the homeland. let me make it easy for you is addressed military officer in your area. here's a link to amazon to the nice you want to use and here's how you upload the video in order to be had the individual and we will claim credit for it. these guys were not necessarily saying make sure your attack them all-america but let's make it easy for you to do that. it's a bit of a handholding. in fact, when you look at the metric plotting when looked at the book, we found more than half of the cases involve at least six of the individuals and allegiance. once as individuals were systematically killed by department of defense and allied forces, that number of domestic fight dramatic dropped in 2016. >> jurisdiction within national conversation a bit, you talk

about the drawdown of troops in the region and contribute to the growth of isis would be chaos in syria, right? suggests skipping for two today and you can announcement this week about the drawdown of troops in the region, does it worry you in terms of a predicate for more terrorism, or are in a different time? how would you weigh in on this? >> i think were probably any management time, which is i'd see us having up clear victory but it don't see us having a clear defeat when it comes to -- were a lot smarter than we were before and we got a sense of the network for isis and a lot has to do with the interviews the law enforcement did with returning foreign fighters. they get a sense of how these guys operate and how the have taken folks. you are able to do targeted strikes in a way he was not before. isn't always better to folks on the ground of intelligence and

things like that? absolutely. i just don't see an appetite in this country that are political parties to do so. i think we will probably see a similar thing what happened in somalia with the occasional strike when you have intelligence benevolent anything of real substance. my concern is only come really is you just want to let these guys grow back up again. the fact they had this territory, they were able to intake thousands of foreign fighters in a way no other terrorist organization had in history. if you don't give them space, if you were developed over their shoulder everyday that's a good thing for counterterrorism. >> also the question of the camps, where individuals are living in syria, refugee camps and in some cases detention camps.

this sense of a breeding ground for maybe new forms of terrorism for isis itself. do you think there's a way to handle this problem and address this problem, be worried about it? >> i'm worried about a general radicalization concern. you get enough people in the room who believe same thoughts, some sort of violence will happen but probably more important than that i'm worried about justice. in america we had a pretty good track record of being that we brought back about two dozen folks back from repatriated back and faced article iii course. we have a system to do that and that's a problem but were able to do that because we have terrorists and clause which most countries don't and allows for the collection of evidence and prosecution if the other thing was with smaller numbers of citizens in those camps. it's one thing to ask the use to take back a dozen people. nothing to ask the french to take back 500.

they just don't have a system in place to do so. they're dealing with a different set of folks. most of the individuals with some exceptions that are left either you don't have any to prosecute secant bring a case or they are hardened believers it's easy when somebody comes back from syria and says i had a bad experience, joining isis was a really bad idea and i want to plead guilty. it's a a nothing with some coms back and says i'm not talking to you. you can't build a case on that and so you're stuck with this, you just let them go. i think of the ultimate point is we have a responsibility. our citizens from around the world went to syria and iraq and committed war crimes and genocide. it's incumbent upon us to provide some level of justice for the victims. the best way is through criminal prosecutions. >> i want to go back to the issue of radicalization because that story is not over a number

of experts have made the comparison between radicalization to jihad, and radicalization of white nationals come white supremacist. do they cds as crossover in terms of strategy to message? their messaging is different but where do you see the crossovers or would you just say no, these are separate entities but we need to look at them both from the point of you how to counter extremism? >> a couple think to think about when you look at antigovernment movements in general. one is tech companies have caught up it is look at 201516 timeframe, twitter, google facebook finally the lightbulb went off and decide to do some content moderation and push these guys off to the margins. they there's nothing the same tg with white supremacist and antigovernment groups. the relative free range. as a researcher that's great. i can reach out to local member with questions.

from a general question, the static rate thing to happen. the other thing that's different is that radicalization for the whites from this moment there is an online dynamic, there's a large off-line. it's easy, easier to load up a a bunch of guys in the room to talk about how much you hate the michigan governor for covid lockdowns. he tried to get a dozen people around to talk but how good isis is, nine of them would be fbi agents. that same dynamic does not happen for the antigovernment extremists. there is an ability to recruit and set up an organization easier when it comes to those ideologies. the last thing i would mention is we need to talk really about the mixing of ideology. it's not as clear-cut as he used to be.

the good old days, 15, 20 years ago i could tell you that guy was an al-qaeda guy. that would be -- now using this mixing of white nationalists also at intel, a member who goes to proud boys meeting. the bucket is hard. as as a cover you will need the buckets because you can set resources against buckets. you can have a squad that this intel because we think that's important but what happens when it makes his back and forth, and also comes full circle, how do you train up content moderation protect all delta company to understand that ideology in a way that's easier when you know -- [inaudible] >> one of the things is costly talked about when you think about deterring radicalization and other parts of the world is to talk about the causes that led to that radicalization. whether it's violence,

discrimination, one sort or another. when you look of white supremacists in this country is there a similar narrative about what leads individuals to identify with the militia or a terrorist group? and if so, what is that narrative? >> militias is much more a familial connection. for white nationalists that i think is what online space does have a role. it allows coordination you hadn't seen prior, spatially -- [inaudible] so it's a little bit of a different dynamic. there's a general sense of, i think the same for isis which is a sense of belonging. these are usually individuals who are not particularly great of what they are in real life

and want to be part of something bigger. whether that's white nationalism or isis, it provides a sense of belonging they didn't have before. >> we're getting a ton of questions i think i will just go to the questions and i will interject myself as they make sense. one asks, i would like to know as an author on the nociceptors how to build accountable anymore conference with the women who inspired the men such as omar martín, et cetera? for our listeners i will consolidate the question and short them. talk about female -- >> that's a really interesting dynamic. we must look to the cases and look at a trial book record, the words brainwash come up a lot for judges when they sentence. in fact, men were sentenced at a much higher, longer sentence than their female counterparts. the criminal justice system look

at that issue differently and saw that as women as almost secondhand thought and not having agency in this era when fact we interviewed a lot of individuals who joint isis that were women. they knew what they were doing. they came in their clear eyed. i could take away from that would be a good example would be -- a a woman from indiana who traveled with her husband and her kids to syria. she had use as a sleeper chillout her son be and it isis propaganda video. she was all in from an outside perspective or her defense attorney would argue i'm fully off. >> i was going to speak in her defense attorneys voice. go right ahead. >> they would argue there's a whole host of regions why she did so, including an abusive husband. we can't discount that but it also would say if you had to say the same dynamic for a male counterpart the came back they

wouldn't six years the female cop. it's a balancing and i struggle with that, too. as a father again kids, when i see a kid that looks just like me and i think u.s. of ojl frappuccino and situation that allowed that to happen? there's a level of victimhood of which i think it's important but also can't be overplayed. >> on the other it if you do follow along the lines lines oe offramp, that's the kind of thing you could prevent, right? in theory if we did have some kind of robust, even enough to counter counter file is extremism to use call it public health, right? which is why i think the emergence of terrorism in all different forms and violence in all different forms is sort of a, signifier that there are other things going on that we're not paying attention to. some of the work to try to flag some of those issues. >> the other thing i was thinking about is you can think

about this in the backing. let's say the husband is killed, killed in surrey. so you're putting these kids in child protective service, if so what does it look like? are you train them up on radicalization? as as a whole host of things tht we need to tackle. i would say of the returning or repatriate individuals we have again 2000 or so, the overwhelming number who were not charged with any crimes were women. the overwhelming number that were not charged with crimes who were women, i i interviewed a number of them at a don't see them having any form of recidivism. they saw it as the moment of disillusionment with isis and wanted to come back to america. >> in a way it dovetails with criminal justice system for reform generally. how we think about criminals and what chances they have for the

future. >> one last thing on the role of women that support a look at is the outside role that they play online. a number of american women that were isis supporters with the key connectors for men to travel. they were online particularly on twitter to connect these individuals to recruiters and sympathizers online to get them over and across the border in turkey. >> one of the questions is what can we do to prevent the radicalization american citizens of isis, white terrorists, the writer calls then, american white nationalists? you have given some thought to this. what are the means of not getting to the point where we have to indict, arrest? >> i think first off we need to assume or not doing 100% success rate. you're hoping for a 10% success rate, that is a win. if we we set the bar as we try a

prevention program and failed and this individual had arrested as a failure, i'm not sure that's right way to think about the framing of this. in terms of what do we do, i would get away from broad-based engagement. when i was in government when something bad would happen, , pt me on a plane and go to a committee senate talk to 300 people about the bombing in boston and how to prevent the next discussion session doing e thing. i feel good about what i think but that wasn't my targeted audience. people showed up to talk but intelligence officer is not the need to my message. what it should be doing is one-on-one interventions. i have a kid i'm worried about, about how great isis is, who do i know it is or what who can getting back into society? who was a mentor i can throw in? just generally what is the roadblock i could throw in his way so maybe he gets older and was on with his life? >> this is somewhat of a a defe attorney, we have a few.

if someone gets in contact with an isis recruiter, with my kid going in a different direction i'm not in a legal direction? what is about of an informant or undercover in this plot, isn't that simply creating defendant or worse, potentially violent individuals expect the undercover informant? ..

particularly in lace cases. if you drive to laguardia and you plan to buy a ticket, now you still have an individual communicating online, you're still concerned about him. any defense attorney has made argument about entrapment, very few but one but it's a valid argument to have the conversation. where's the line between push and pull and whether the offer are off ramps, are you sure you should join isis, or you really shouldn't join isis.

>> the defense in the prosecutor would say in court, well, if i came to you to buy the ticket what would you say to the jury. okay. >> there are levels of restrictions. look at the fbi investigation oversight. my civil rights and civil colleagues would say we should at more rails from that. a little sunlight wouldn't kill us on the issue. i had to call and get on a plane and talk about this. i still don't have a fullceps of what isis in america looks like and i think that's true not only of the threat but how we do operation.

it's incumbent on democracy to have a bit of a shell on how we do that. and the chances of that happening? are one to none. >> you never know. i hope spring is i ternal for -- eternal for me. >> okay, the questions are mount ing. >> one is the government is well suited to do so and two, i don't think they should. we have a clause but in general the more poignant part the government is not well suited to do so. it's just not going to happen. then it becomes responsibility

for civil society where the ngo groups can do that type of stuff. there are road blocks. where is funding? there's not dedicated funding for this. if you take the government funding, does that make you less effective? dresses, most important, why would you jump in this space right now. >> a guy could debate the final points of this, but he was like, i'm not going to do that but as soon as i talk to terrorist i will get watch listed. there's an easy solution to that which is to provide a system for alert. nobody is going to jam me up at laguardia because i interviewed an isis recruiter in raqqah. i hope i don't get in the watch list. the same is not true for a

random ngo in indiana who is trying to do this work. if we can figure out a level of alert system or what is a illegal and not illegal to do. i think back to 2 years ago, i got a twitter dm from a woman in the midwest who wanted me to send her every criminal complaint i had of woman traveling because she didn't want to get arrested traveling. now, that is -- i know well enough to know not to do that, but, you know, you ask somebody else who hasn't been around that that's not a great idea. i think that's asking a bit much than we currently do. >> another question, have you seen any cooperation direct or indirect between jihadist groups or domestic extreme groups from the right or left, et cetera?

>> no, not really. here is the interesting caveat. that would be the good example. that would be the guys in minnesota who got arrested and the material support was they were selling for hamas operative and the fbi introduced the informant as hamas agent, but i think the takeaway is one, i think the statute hasn't caught up to the nature of the threat but also, 2, these guys are generally agnostic in ideology or at least if somebody wants to watch the world burn, they are okay with joining up on the fire. >> one question asked, you commented if you get enough people in a room who are extremist, violence will happen. >> yeah. >> what happens when your room is online or social media? >> that's a real question

especially when you look at white nationalist movement. a lot of talk but not a whole lot of action yet. but, yeah, i think some of this is like a bluster. releasing a valve of extremism so you can move on and say i tweeted the best i could, brothers, i'm done. that is also the dynamic that the fbi has to deal with on a daily basis. they would say when the individuals make connections overseas or buying a gun or looking up a place to build a bomb, that's when you start turning the spicket. >> do you feel like the fbi detoured attention to white

supremacy terrorism? >> yeah. >> why do you know this? >> a lot of the fbis don't work isis anymore. they do work antigovernment stuff. >> how do they -- >> yeah. they find it to be almost easier because these guys are so overt in ways that the jihads were better in tracking a little bit. the white supremacists don't necessarily have a need quite yet. the tempo for isis cases has significant dropped. in 2015, you had fbi agents i was interviewing, they work 18 hours day and wouldn't see family for weeks and cancel family picnics to deal with

cases. it's a different dynamic. one other thing to look at for the different dynamic is the charges. some in the fbi argue that the tempo hasn't dropped too much but what has changed we are kicking cases earlier on. we are arresting individuals for false statements of the fbi or gun charges and before we would let it build up to terrorism case. they'll say, there's only been a dozen cases you know about but there's two dozen you don't because we don't put the word isis when we arrest a guy for gun charges. that's what we are talking about when we don't have a full picture of isis in america and will take quite a bit to do so. i will say to my colleagues in law enforcement, i'm still looking. i will find the cases because we are just diggers by the nature and investigators and i think it would, again, incumbent on us as democracy to share as much

information as we possibly can if only so we can get a sense of the nature of the threat and put our resources against it. do we have a $100 million for isis and 200 million for white supremacists or is that number even? i don't know that we know that in the public realm. >> what about europe? >> they are looking at 50-50 cases when it comes to jihadists and white supremacists and the dynamic shifted from 90-10 to 50-50 now. it's just coming at all angles now. it's almost a little bit easier when someone makes the overt act to travel versus what they are looking at now ideologies all over the space. >> somebody asked following up on that, how do you see recent attacks in france, do you see them as broader resurgence or muslim population?

>> there's a dynamics of france we can't discount. look at austria too. there's a different -- different dynamic in europe than in america. for the most part in america you didn't have, you don't have people handing out leaflets in times square, you get the dynamic happening in birmingham. the overt nature of recruitment i think is different to be fair too in the u.s. with notable exceptions and there's been quite few. there's not extreme mosques where people are talking about how great isis is and things like that. if you walked and talked about how great isis is, you would be kicked out of the mosque and have to go down the street and go pray by yourself. there's not a level of acceptance there. it's not to say there's a large-scale aseptemberrance in europe but it's just -- acceptance, but it's just little different than here.

>> a couple of people asked about the foreign fighters returning but you mentioned before but i think in a difference sense. how do you see this? do you see as something that can be managed or something that can be turned around and do you see something that we need to be vigilant about? i'm talking about europe now more than here. how do you see here? >> i think europe is a managing problem. the way the folks travel in connections with conflicts in the 90's, sons and fathers of that conflict, right? in many ways the guys that go to syria become the spotlight for the next conflict. they have the -- only one of the

cases we know about where an individual came back where he expressed plan to commit an attack, a man from ohio who was going to drive to texas with a bunch of his buddies and try to free up the terrorists. but most of our folks come back with resolutions. >> one of the couple of questions is about the digital space, battle space as one of our audience writes. what do you think? are we playing catch-up in the digital space when it comes to isis and other terrorist groups and i want to further add, is there really -- what do you see that can be done that isn't a violation of constitutional principles, first amendment, et cetera? >> yeah, i think we've done all we can in the mainstream sites. twitter has more analysts than

agents working on content moderation. at least the english language has largely be moved to telegram which allows a level of encryption but not particularly great in terms of encryption. the radicalization pool has shrunk. you can't stumble upon an isis recruiter on twitter. that makes it easier to make sure that you don't just stumble upon it but the mobilization pool got deeper in telegram. the folks are left on telegram are true believers through and through and no voices in that conversation. so i think we are probably in the space -- best space and i would have a different

assessment on antigovernment, i think we are still in 2014 time frame for that. >> which means what? >> it's wild west and you can do anything that you want and nobody will stop you. if you do, enough people -- it's not proactive scanning against it. look, there's a debate to be had and i share this view very strongly. i don't really like the private multibillion dollar companies taking inherently governmental role of counterterrorism which space to private companies to do so and that concerns me because then they set the standards of it and so we should look at -- we may want to consider looking at that like a public utility. they would hate me for that but i will go ahead and say it. i don't like seating that space to that and i think we have. think back to like jim clapper and having a meeting with eric schmitt and take down good

content. there's got to be something stronger but we haven't figured out yet. >> there's issues at stake both in terms of giving the government too much power and giving the private sector too much power. maybe we need a third voice which would be what i call the citizens and weighing on what that would play out. that's for another conversation. >> i want to talk about, we are about to get new government and we will get new people in positions that you've interacted with in the past. we will get a new head of nptc, a new dni, et cetera. if you were at nctc and you were going to make a list of recommendations for how to go about this in a way that is -- is responsible and to your opening earlier remarks, more

transparent, and that is aware of a civil liberties issues, what was your -- what was -- would your assessment be. this is another brand of criminal justice and pull back on usage of performance, et cetera. do you think it's important to show that even as a here we are going to move in that direction and we want to symbolically show that and go out of your way to show that there's been a change of approach. how would you prioritize what needs to be done and what do you think needs to be done? >> i spent 5 years there. i wouldn't touch too much of it.

the other thing i would significantly look at at expansion of the role to look at domestic terrorism. right now in the statute, they can look at international terrorism and the lawyers you can kind of look at domestic terrorism but not really too much, you can go to shallow end but not the deep end. i think the tools are available and the process are available to share information between, say, fbi, dhs and other organizations with nctc being the honest broker in between. i would like at that significant. for dni, this is going to be an interesting time for the biden administration, right? do they look at dni as need to have strong player in there with

the strong voice who kind of coordinate intelligent community or do we look at them more as like friendly gatekeeper who occasionally will be in the door. i'm not sure based on the team where they fall on it but i think it'll be a great debate in terms of intelligence reform post 2004. >> one -- we've gotten a bunch more questions so let me just first follow up with that and just say, you know, i do think there's going to be rethinking about some of these agencies including dhs and including dni, you might be wright about dnctc and puts us in weird position because too much -- too much change maybe more than we can handle. on the other hand, there does need to be some restructuring, i think, a long the lines of what you were saying. here is a question, what are the implications of those arrested in this case that are released

from prison, a number of individuals that are getting out, look at al-qaeda convictions and some others and how do you feel about? i'm sure you have seen headlines in the articles and cases where they said we will keep this person, they're not an american citizen in custody and in ice custody and, you know, hopefully maybe support them. why should these be any different when we ask this in a more pointed way, why should they be any different than anybody else in the criminal justice system who has gotten out of prison after serving the term that they have been given or should we just, you know, speak of them in lighter swath justice? >> why am i giving special treatment of someone who wants to kill me and why somebody who

is a terrorist gets special treatment. i think that we should talk about that at some point. i'm not sure that i believe that. crime has a level of recidivism build into it. we have seen limited studies that terrorist recidivism is much smaller than general crime populations, we haven't seen a a lot of recidivism. we have seen a few. when he got out 6 months later he got on a plane and became pretty high-level of commander in isis. that's a level of recidivism. >> radicalization -- who knows? >> entirely possible. i would say that the individual that is have gotten out postisis, a lot of the individuals that are charged

with false statements, 5 to 8 year depending on terrorism enhancement. i interviewed a good number of them. most are happy to move on with their lives and so it reminds me of somebody i interviewed from new york who was in al-qaeda and i wouldn't say deradicalized but i would say disengage, he said my back hurts, it wouldn't work. the one last thing that i would look at is the overarching concern. the hearings will drag up the fbi director whoever that may be and say this guy was a convicted terrorist, why didn't you stop him when he got out of jail? the short answer is there wasn't a predicate. you can't open a full field investigation that gets out of

jail if they haven't committed an overt act but from a public perception, why the hell didn't you watch the guy forever. i think we have resources to put four men and women in a van running 24 hour shifts on everybody that gets out of jail and i also think we haven't coordinated it. u.s. attorney, probation officers, bureaus of prisons, they are not singing from the same sheet right now. you don't train a probation officer on what they should look at when they do a no-knock check-in, are they looking for a religious book, they shouldn't be, we train them not to. isis flag or they know what an isis flag looks like. these are things, baseline things that we haven't done in any real substance. >> what happened to the programs of late 20th century that were reintegration services,

rehabilitation programs and not just in terms of terrorists but are within the category of criminals. do you see a hope for more robust -- >> i don't. the numbers are largely small. we have 85 individuals to get out in the next 2 years. you spend that across 94 different u.s. attorneys' offices, you don't have the large-scale programs that you can use against one guy in chicago. i talked to a man who was in alshabab and got out. he wanted to pray in his mosques but the mosques didn't want anything to do with them, they don't want the heat that involves with that and he's got no social fabric or safety to kind of pull them out along the way. i don't know how to solve that but i just know it's a problem. >> a couple of people asked the

question which is not exactly -- i have to ask it anyway because it's in mind which is guantanamo. >> yeah. >> so, you know, we chose not to -- we -- the country chose not to bring the individuals charged with crime to the united states for a variety of reasons we don't have to go into. do you see congress' ban of bringing people here in terms of appetite of criminal justice system to make that happen and do you think there were enough people in government from when they were there who are still thinking that way that this was a possibility going forward? >> i find that most practitioners would tend to article 3 courts just because it works. there's a history of being able to do so. there's a classification and declassification, we have a track record of being able to do this. am i hopeful, yes. i will explain why.

the nature of the news cycle and we move on with what happened that day. we brought back, again, 24 people from overseas who were in isis. it wasn't even a 3 paragraph story in the associated press anymore. you are not having the giant press conferences over this. we've gotten so good at it we are taking other citizens. we took two british citizens for crimes against americans in district of virginia and nobody said to themselves why did we do that, it just made sense, right? so i'm hopeful for that. the problem is remaining 40 or so and getting -- you have a decade of information and torture and everything wrapped in together and that's just -- it gets very dirty quickly to try to move them into federal courts. >> but it could happen. >> there's telling me there's a chance. >> thank you.

i was going to ask you for a hopeful question for hopeful thought but do you have any others to add besides that, i will take that? >> i think the real takeaway from the book is that we are now talking about large-scale phenomena. we find humans by the very nature complex. and so we wanted to answer that question. what we took away from it was relatively small phenomena and isis had a perfect hand to recruit unprecedented number of americans and we will go back to 20, 30 cases for the short-term with occasional attack. i think we are probably in a better place than we were 10 years ago in this. >> well, i suggest everybody read this book and before we go i want to say a few things about what's coming up at the center.

we have a few new interesting podcasts coming out and we have a couple of reports coming out. one is a report on terrorism on terror crime in america by nypd fellow rafael marcus and kind of like what you're saying, the takeaway is there's something there but it's not what we might imagine it to be and this report focuses to some extent on the comparison with europe where there actually is more of a crime terror nexus. we have 2 more covid reports that are comparing countries around the world. in the next reports you will seeing taiwan, sweden, italy, iran and vietnam. we have been doing a a a lot of research here. everybody should read this book home-grown, thank you all for the questions and have a safe thanksgiving, we will see you on the other side of it.

thank you, seamus. >> thank you. >> tonight a look at congress' ability to legislate with authors of congress overwhelmed followed by interview program after words with historian who exams how authoritarian leaders rule. visit booktv.org for more schedule information or consult your program guide. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, created by television company as public service and brought to you today by your television provider.

>> and now on book tv's after words, west virginia university professor and author discusses how she was denied reproductive choice and health care for her children. she's interviewed by kaiser founder alina, after words a weekly interview with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors and all after words programs are also available as podcasts. >> hello, it's so great to be here today. i have to say that it's nice to meet you, christa but it feels like i already know you and when i got the invitation to do this interview i really felt that i couldn't turn it down. i spent the better time of my career focusing on health policy issue that are important to women, everything from abortion