start a new nation based on the very highest principles, and that's what they did. you are right, dick, it is a contradiction, but but i sure m glad they did it. >> to watch the rest of this program visit our website booktv.org, use search box to look for lynching or the title of a book the virginia dynasty. >> welcome everyone. i am karen greenberg, direct to sit on national security at fordham law and welcome to today's event on the book i'm going to show you, "homegrown: isis in america." before we get started today i want to mention some sad news. in the world at the center on national security, my world, frank meade who is a longtime friend, advocate and advise the senate passed away on november 1 of this year and were going to miss him and so 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. today's event is meant to celebrate this wonderful new book with amazing cover which is why i showed it. her so much going on the cover that we could is better to just talk about the cover, like what all these little posters? but we won't. the office of the book who is with us today is seamus hughes picky about this book with alexander and bennett clifford. seamus is one of the leading counterterrorism and terrorism experts in the country. he's been producing report after report for years, for congress and for others. before joining the program on extremism george washington university appointed deputy

director he worked at the nctc, national counterterrorism center. before that he was senior counterterrorism adviser on the senate homeland security and government affairs committee. there's an awful lot we should be talking about today in our one hour but i wanted to start with the book and then go on. for those he any ideas please feel free to send your questions into the q&a and i will get as many into the conversation as ii can prefer somewhat to have a conversation with you. first, want to talk about why now this book rocks let me posit something you tell me why i am right or wrong. which is the real hype up isis in the united states was 2014-2015. we kept seeing cases in 2015-2016 but with the dissection of the caliphate and mix of other things you want to mention it's been kind of a here and there set of investigations, indictments and prosecutions

from height that something and i think over 50 cases a year we are noticing something less than a dozen. is that why did the book? were you thinking may be the arc of isis in the united states at least in this incarnation in the way we know it is something we can tell the full story of? doesn't mean it's gone away, or why not? >> i think that's right. let me first say thank you very much for having me, can't be given a friend for a number of years in the center for national security is something i've relied on in the reports for years now and put on a great event. in honor to be here. thank you for the kind words about frank. it's also an honor to be part of this conversation. the reason why we decide to put out a book on isis and 2020 as opposed to 2015 was the story wasn't written yet. just yesterday we had two new indictments unsealed in eastern district of pennsylvania of a

husband and wife that were sending money to family members to go joint isis. if we wrote a story, the book and 2015 i don't think we would've told the whole picture. it takes a long time to get a sense of it in for about three years me and my co-authors traveled around the country imaging fbi agent and defense attorneys and family members and to get a sense what it means is that isis pen america. it's like a loaded term term. it's not, we shouldn't be alarmist about it. people do not hide under your bed and and try to chile for isis but it's also not insignificant so we wanted to rapper had radically way to do that was to take it a step back and look at it. we look at about 20,000 pages of legal documents, filed a whole bunch of foia. we found motions to a bunch of documents. after a bit of time people started talking. when times past your work is more willing to talk about it.

if you want to do it justice would want to give it distance. >> you did all this and i will see the detail on these cases is quite impressive, and not just the detail on the cases themselves but have different indictments made up to one another and different individuals new women of both virtual and otherwise. there were a number of things i had not quite realize in terms of relationship between those inspiring, those funding, those planning attacks, those indicted. it's a very intricate presentation and portrait that you have, but in the aggregate what do you learn? of i want to make it more speci. let's start with what you just learn that surprised you when she got the foia that you need to get in terms of just how to describe the isis terrorist?

>> the store is isis in america the story of ones and twos and not force in fives. he taught but originalism small phenomena of individuals usually rents, some level of in person network but not a large network you would see and say parts of europe. that's the first take away. the second take away is and you know this as well as i do that is not a typical isis recruiter the old, young, rich, poor, black, white. there's not a right or reason to join. they all share the same ideology and 30 but they come after it differently. in the ways they get to it is completely different. the other thing, the point you made about if you pull back the onion a bit you realize there's a a bit more connection that we give credit to. a young man in iowa is not connected to a guy that's part of a group of guys in raqqa. the connections are made over social media but sometimes there's that in person network

like we saw in minneapolis-st. paul where the brothers, sisters and roommates of kids adjoint al-shabaab ten years ago with a once again and joint isis. if you figure it all out you get the sense that it's a very diverse and diffuse picture. >> one of the things you focus on that i guess not surprising because we've been reading one of the ports after report so long is of youth, high jumping are. the reason i bring that up is i would like you to compare that to two things. one is isis in europe and elsewhere in the world, and two, white supremacist, , extremism d what we are seeing now. we are really talking 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,

not only the people who are arrested for criminal charges. we had an individual who was arrested when you're 15 and charge with mature support but that was an outlier. most of the time you had a number of minor cases where fbi agents we determine they did want to bring a federal charge or perhaps they couldn't get the national security division of the department of justice. we knew anything these pages they will say i did want to charge a 16 euro for terrorism, i didn't want him to spend 20 years in jail. the lack of tools and ability to do anything else besides that was concerning on my hand. you saw an interesting trend now, particularly now, i step up of state and local officials charging at the state level. you are saying terroristic charges in arizona, new jersey and new york from minor cases, 17-year-olds. this case out of south carolina a 16-year-old got got charge with a gun charge at the state level spent two years in jail,, got out and then was charged again when he was 18 try to

joint isis. that's a failure of policy. you see these minors are going down this path and not having options other than law enforcement. it's a concern and something policymakers should think about. >> i want to talk about that before we go on. because you spent a lot of time thinking about how to violent extremism prevention, however you want to turn it. there was a time at the end of the obama administration where the was government funding for this and there was some robust efforts made. there's still a few things out there like -- but what happened? we don't hear about terrorism cve movement now and i'm curious, what is your take on it? we got diverted and the funds dried up or what have? >> a couple reasons. one, 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. i think back to an interview in new york, used to sit around a table with fbi agents and they get the weekly briefing of the cases, and after a couple weeks he says 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 spent a lot of time but if you really dug into it and i happen to be in government drink some that time come you are talking about for mac of my friends and me trying to estimate a national strategy. that is not going to be particularly successful, and to be fair there's a lot of concerns with those programs. my civil rights and civil libey colleagues would say it's government overreach. this is policing extreme edition of a national program to do so. there's some truth in that. i don't think we need to have a

billion-dollar program especially when the numbers are so small. at the end of the day if i'm sitting across the room from a parent who is concerned about the kid and the only option i have is arrest or do nothing, i think that's a failure at a policy level and it is a field of society. we should provide some level of off ramps but we can do that creative in a way that doesn't come across civil rights and civil liberties concerns. so narrowly parallel. where do we go from here? the obama administration largely tried it. the trump administration came in with his grand plan to revamp it and change names. they basically changed counter by extremism to something is. it was less funny unless people. there's no built-in advocates for this program. from the right dosage or too soft and tender, you're hugging a terrorist or on the left you say it's government overreach so that the advocates in the middle.

i will be surprised if he gets a shot in the arm in the biden administration. maybe perhaps on a white supremacist neo-nazi antigovernment side which i think there's some room to do some countering violent extremism programs. i don't see it in any substance when it comes to isis or jihadism. >> one of the things in the major tools and prosecuting terrorists has been the tears statute. one of the strengths of the terrorism statutes are the link to foreign organizations. in terms of isis and your description of his homegrown phenomenon, do you want to talk about how it's different than ever thought about, or not, the international outreach of al-qaeda? which is actually about travel and training as opposed to what was going on with al-qaeda and how much that's changed.

what's happening with the foreign fighter phenomenon today? >> that's one of the takeaways from the book is if you look at the cases in 2015, the 60 plus cases that cases that were public, the vast majority have all some level of attempt to travel overseas. isis had a message and a product, the announcement of the so-called 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 not only the message and the product but the people. isis had the ability and time and space to reach out systematically to americans and groomed them over the course of weeks and months to encourage them to commit an attack. 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 in a ia nightclub in upstate new york.

this individual who i think without sue donnie whispering in his ear public would've gone a different way, where as al-qaeda would just put the message out to a megaphone effect, so it out and hope it sticks these guys were much more of a one on one intervention try to push the message. >> kind of virtual entrepreneur entrepreneurs. >> right. i tried my best as an academic to make it stick but is not going to. i will call you when nobody else is virtual -- there was six or seven individuals in raqqa. yet the idea him allegiant of doom for dramatic fbi fashion. these individuals who in a computer lab changing message back for the reaching out to americans here to commit attacks. what would happen is they had a level of prominence, a british

hacker, 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 to do is commit an attack on homeland and let me make it easy for you. here's the address come the mill officer in your area, here's a link on amazon to the knife you want to use and here's how you upload a video in order to behead the individual and group claim credit for it. these guys were not necessarily saying make sure you attack the mall mall of america but they're saying would be great if you attack the mall and let's make it easy for you to do that. it's a bit of a handholding. when you look at the plotting come when looked at domestic plotting for the book without more than half of the cases involved at least six in the pledge of allegiance. once as individuals were systematically killed by department of defense and allied forces, that number of domestic

drop dramatically in 2016. >> just taken with the international conversation, you talk about the drawdown of troops in the region and contributing to the growth of isis would be chaos in syria, right? just skipping forward to today and to the 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 period of time? how would you wait in on the? >> i think were probably in a management time which is i don't see us having a clear victory but also notes is having clear defeat when it comes -- we are a lot smarter than we were before and we got a sense of the network for isis now and a lot of that has to with the interviews that law-enforcement did with returning foreign fighters. they get a sense of how these guys operate and how they are taken folks so you're able to do targeted attacks or strikes in ways you have not before.

is it always better to have folks on the ground who have intelligence and things like that? absolutely wedded just don't see an appetite in this country or even our political parties to do so. we're probably going to see a similar thing to what we had in somalia with the occasional strike when you have intelligence but not really anything of real substance. my concern really is you just don't 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 there were devoutly over the shoulder everyday that's a good thing for counterterrorism, right? and so it's going to be a matter of playing this a little smarter than we have in the past. >> there's also the question of the camps where individuals are living in series of refugee

camps. 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? are you worried about it? >> listen, i'm worried about it twofold. one is a general radicalization concern. you get enough people in the room who believe extreme thoughts, some sort of violence is going to happen probably more important than that i am worried about justice. in america we had a pretty good track record of bringing back, we brought back about two dozen folks, repatriate them back and face articles recourse. that's the problem but were able to do that one because we have terrorism clause which allows for collection of evidence and prosecution in the way you haven't. the other thing is a smaller numbers of citizens into those camps.

it's one thing to ask the u.s. to take back a dozen people. it's nothing to ask the french to take back 500. they just don't have a system in place to do so and they are dealing with a different set of folks. most of the individuals with some exceptions that are left either you have any to prosecute so you can't bring a case for their hard and believers. it's easy when somebody comes back from syria and says i had a bad experience. joining isis was a bad idea and i want to plead guilty. it's quite another thing when someone comes back and says no, i'm not talking to you. you can't build a case on that and so you are stuck with the theory of you just let them go. the ultimate point is, have a responsibility. our citizens from around the world went to syria and iraq and committed war crimes and genocide. it's incumbent on us to provide somewhat of justice for the victims and i think the best way to do that is through criminal

prosecutions. >> i want to go back to the issue of radicalization because that story is not over at the number of experts have made the comparison between radicalization to jihadist terrorism and radicalization of white nationalist, white supremacists. do you see these as crossover in terms of strategies and message? obviously their messaging is different, where you see the cross overs or would you just say no, these are separate entities but we need to look at them both from point of view of how to counter extremism? >> there's a couple things to think about when you look at white supremacists in general. one is come tech companies haven't caught up if you look at 2015-16 timeframe twitter google facebook finally the light bulb went off and decide to do some content moderation and push these hats off to the margins. they have not done the same thing in terms of what supremacists in antigovernment groups. the relative free range.

as a research and that's great, i can reach out to local member right now and question them and it -- [inaudible] but from a general question about position that's not a great thing to happen. the other thing that's different is that radicalization in the white supremacist movement, there is an online dynamic we can't discount but there's a large off-line message. it's easy, easy to load up a bunch of guys in a room to talk about how much you hate the michigan governor for covid lockdowns. you try to get a dozen people and room to talk how good isis is, nine of them would be fbi agents. that same dynamic does not happen with antigovernment extremist. so there's an ability to recruit and set up an organization easier when it comes to those ideologies. last thing i would mention is, we need to talk really about the mixing of ideologies.

it's not as clear-cut as it use. the good old days, 15, 20 years ago i could tell you that guy was al-qaeda guy, and that would be easy, or isis stephan. stephen. now you're seeing a mixing of white nationalist is also at intel who occasionally goes to a proud voice meeting. the bucket is harder it is give it you would need the pockets because then you can put resources against buckets. i can have -- we think that's important but what happens when it mixes back and forth, it also comes full circle, how do you train up content moderation technology companies to understand that mixing of ideology anyway it easier when you know -- [inaudible] >> what of the things is causally talked about we think about deterring radicalization in other parts of the world is to talk about the causes of it

to that radicalization. whether it's violence, whether it's discrimination, whether it is deprivation of one sort or another. when you're looking at white supremacists in this country is there a similar narrative about what leads these individuals to identify with a militia or a terrorist group? and if so, what is that narrative? >> militias is much more importantly familial connection your dad was in the militia. for white nationalists that i think is where the online place a good role and allows -- ordination you had not seen prior. it's a little bit of a different dynamic on there. there's a general sense of, i think the same sense for isis which is a sense of belonging. these are usually individuals

who are not particularly grid of what they are in real life and want to be part of something bigger. whether that is white nationalism or isis, , it provis a sense of belonging they didn't have before. >> we are getting a ton of questions i think i'm going to go to the questions and i will just interject myself as they make sense. one asks, i would like to know as an altar of female suicide terrorism how to held accountable in in a more comprehensive way the women who inspired the men such as omar martín, et cetera? for listeners i'm going to consolidate the question and shorten them. talk about females. >> that's an interesting dynamic. when we looked through the cases and look at the trial records, the words brainwashed 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 thoughts and not having agency when, in fact, we interviewed a lot of individuals who joined isis that were women. they knew what they were doing. they came in their clear eyed. a good take away from that would be come a good example would be -- a woman from indiana who traveled with her husband and her kids to syria. she had a use as a slicker shell out her son to be an isis propaganda video. she was all in from outside perspective. our defense attorney would argue i'm way off. >> irish is going to speak in her defense attorney voice but go right ahead. >> they would argue there's a whole host of reasons why she did so including an abusive husband and we can't discount that i also would say if you had

to say the same dynamic for male counterpart the québec would get six years. it's a balancing and i struggle with that. as a father of young kids, when i see a kid that looks just like me and an isis propaganda video issa why would you allow that to happen? there's a level of victimhood of which i think is important but also can't be overplayed. >> on the other hand, if you do follow along the lines of sort of offramp, that's the kind of thing you could prevent, right? in theory if we did have some kind of robust, you don't have to call it counter violent extremism. you just call it public health, right, which is what 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 some of the cve work did try to flag some of

those issues. >> the other thing i was thinking about is you can't think about this and if i can. if the husband is killed, was killed in syria, you are putting these four kids in child corrective services? if so, what does it look like? are you training them on radicalization? there's a whole host of things we need to tackle. i would say of the returning or repatriated individuals, again, two dozen or so, the overwhelming number who were not charged with any crimes where women and overwhelming number that were not charged with crimes that were women, i i interviewed a number that and i don't see them having any form of recidivism. they saw it as a moment of disillusionment with isis and wanted to come back to america. >> in the way it dovetails with criminal justice system need for reform generally, right next how

we handle criminals and what chances they have for the future. >> one last thing on the role of women i think it's important look at is the outside role they play online. a number of american women that were isis supporters with a key connectors for men to travel. they were the notes online ticket and twitter to connect these individuals to recruiters and sympathizers online to get them over across the board in turkey. >> one of the questions is, what do we do to prevent this radicalization of american citizens, isis, white terrorists, 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 up to 100% success rate.

for cve are hoping for 10% success rate. if if we set the bar as we try to prevention program and failed and this individual got arrested, that's a failure, i'm not sure it's the 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 come when something bad would happen, they put me on a plane and they go to a community center and talk to 300 people about the bombing in boston and how to prevent the next two matt gaetz in doing that horrible thing. i felt good about what i was doing but that wasn't my targeted audience. the people showed up to talk to an intelligence officer is nothing to needs you might message. what it should be doing is one-on-one interventions. i have kid i'm worried about, he talks about how great isis is. who do i know in its orbit what they can getting back into society? who is a mentor i can throw in? or just generally what roadblocks i get through in his way to maybe it gets older and was on with his life.

>> this is somewhat of a a defe attorney, we have a few, so we get in contact with an isis recruiter, we might get caught in a different direction not in a legal direction? what is the value of informant or undercover induced plot? isn't that creating defendants, or worse, potentially violent individuals? but perhaps move in that direction independently. in other words, what should the role of law enforcement be and what has it become? .. so it was a tool of the fbi leaned on heavily when it

comes to terrorism. the fbi would argue listen, we use undercover agents in all forms of crime so it's a law enforcement tool but i would say it did play a significant role in terms of arrests. particularly in the later cases where you don't have that easy over access so if you drive to look for you and you get on a plane the fact that you want to getthat in over . you can't go there because the borders are closed and now you have individuals communicating online in bristol concerned about that. i think any defense attorney worth their salt has made an argument about entrapment. very few have one but it's a valid argument to have conversation but where is the line between push and all and whether the offerings are really offering us. it's one thing to say are you

sure brother you want to join isis but it's another thing to say you shouldn't join isis, you should do something else >> and the defense and the prosecutor would say in court why would you say it? okay. >> there are some levels of restrictions. look at the investigations oversight guy, it does provide the right and left latitude. i think my satellite rights and civil liberties colleagues would say should add more third rails to that and i think that's the other take away from the. a little sunlight wouldn't kill us on this issue. the fact that i had to pull teeth to get people to talk to me about terrorism and counterterrorism, i had to

call in a lot of favors, pigeonhole people at a coffee shop or bar and talk. i still olson isis and america looks like and i think that not only as a threat but also how we do operations and some of the secrecy is understandable, dealing with national security but it's incumbent on a democracy to have a bit of a show about how we do it. >> the chances of that happening are? >> slim to none. >> i hope it's maternal. >> we have a question, why are we not debunking religious ideology that underpins isis. it's easy to see that given it's impossible for anyone to know more about islam and mohammed and the role of mohammed. what are we going down this road. >> one is the governments not well-suited to do so and to i don't think they should . you have the establishment clause issue that would hit you in across the face as you try to do that but just in general i think the more poignant part is the government just is not well-suited to do so. you're not going to debate

the finer points with a recruit. it's just not going to happen so instead becomes the responsibility for a civil society, what are the ngo groups that can do that kind of stuff. that, one is sunday and there's not a dedicated funding for this too if there is dedicated funding its government funding and if you pay the government funding does that make it less effective and i think probably the most important one now is why, like why would you jump in the space right now and i interview and mom from virginia who was doing counter messaging online and the guy had well been well steeped in the faith and could debate the finer points but you would like i'm not going to do that because as soon as i talk to an on on suspected terrorist i'm going to be watch listed for the rest of my life so there's isn't an easy solution which is to provide a system or a basic alert. nobody's going to jam me up at laguardia because i

interviewed an isis recruiter and rock. i've got a business card, i have my own general watchlist but the same is not true for a random ngo in indiana is trying to do this work so if we can figure out some level of alert system or at the very least a guidepost of what is illegal and not illegal to do . the terrorism clauses brought and i think back to two years ago i got a twitter dm from a woman in the midwest to want me to send her every criminal complaint i had of women traveling because she didn't want to get arrested. she wanted to read the playbook and figure out the ways around it. that is i know well enough to know not to do that. you ask somebody else who has been around and been interviewing forms that's not a great idea. i think that's asking a bit of much then we currently do. >> another question, have you

seen any cooperation director indirect between jihadist groups and domestic extremist groups of the right or left . >> not really of any real substance. here's theinteresting caveat . the u sometimes see on the government side so that would be a good example of that would be the bungalow guys in minnesota got arrested for gun charges but they got charged with material support to terrorism and the material support was they were selling guns to us operatives. the hamas operative was an fbi agent so the fbi introduced the informant as a hamas agent because then they could charge him with material support but i think the take away is one, is that you have been up to the nature of the threat but also to, these guys are generally agnostic on ideology or at least if somebody wants to watchthem burn their okay with joining up on the fire . >> one person asked you commented if you getenough people in a room for extremists, violence will

happen . what are the chances when the room is online ? >> that's a real question especially when you look at white nationalist movements. a lot of talk and not necessarily a whole lot of action just yet . ask meagain in a few weeks . but yes. i think some of this is bluster. isit a releasing of the bowels of extremism extremism so you can move on and say i treated the best i could, i'm done . that is also the dynamics the fbi has to deal with on a daily basis. when is somebody just shouting their mouth off and when is it a full-fledged investigation. 80 when that individual has connections to terrorist overseas or letting it over whether it be buying a gun or building a bomb. that's when you start turning on the spigot. >> do you get the sense the fbi has deployed its agents away from the terrorism and

towards white supremacist terrorism ? >> yes. >> so a number of the fbi agents i interviewed for the book on isis don't work for isis anymore, they work antigovernment. >> and do they talk about similarities or differences in safety ? >> yes. they find it to be almost easier because these guys are so over it in ways that the jihadists were alittle bit better in hiding their tracks a little bit . the white supremacists don't necessarily see a need to do that quite yet. i would also say that the tempo for isis cases has dropped within the bureaus. in 2015 you had fbi agents i was interviewing say they work 18 hour days and would see their families for weeks and would cancel family picnics to go work cases.

now i would say there rested a little bit more but they're out there, they're dealing with the issues but it's a different dynamic. one of the things to look at for that different dynamic is the charges. so some in the fbi organization would argue that the tempo hasn't dropped too much what has changed is where taking cases earlier on so we're arresting individuals for false statements to the fbi, gun charges or drug charges and before that we would let it build up for material support for terrorism so they will say there's only been a dozen cases you know about that there's two dozen more you don't because we arrested a guy for gun charges and that's what i'm talking about when i say we don't have a full picture of isis in america and it's going to take quite a bit to do so. i will say to my colleagues in law enforcement i'm still looking so i'm going to find the cases because we're just diggers by our nature and

investigators so i think it would again, be incumbent on us as a democracy to share as much information as we can. if only so we can get a sense of the nature of the threat and they can put our resources against so we have $100 million for isis and 200 million for white supremacists or is that number even and i don't know that we know that in the public realm. >> do you know about europe? >> europe whole as said that they're looking at about 50, 60 cases when it comes to jihadist him and white supremacists. so that dynamic has shifted from 9010 to 50-50 now area and i think that's true of most law enforcement in western countries is it's just coming out at all angles now.it's almost a little easier when someone makes the overt act to travel versus what they're looking at now which is ideology is all over the place. >> somebody asked following up on that given the recent attacks in france you see

them as part of a broader resurgence or as a unique fallout of france's approach to its larger muslim population . >> i think the dynamics in france you can't discount but look at austria two. there is a different dynamic in europe than it is in america. for the most part in america you didn't have people handing out leaflets in times square. you didn't see that dynamic happen in birmingham with the uk and so the over nature of recruitment i think is different. to be fair to in the us, with some notable exceptions there's been quite a few. there's not extreme mosques where people are talking about how great isis is and things like that . if you walk into a mosque and talk about how great isis is you would be kicked out and have to go down the street and go by yourself. there's just not a level of acceptance there. as not to say there's a large-scale acceptance in europe but it's just a little

bit different. then here. >> people have asked about the foreign fighters, which you mentioned before but i think in it, in a different sense. this is something that europe confronts more than the united states confronts and i don't necessarily mean those who come back incustody but those who come back . how do you see this, do you see this is something that can be managed, thing that can be turned around, thing that really needs to be vigilant about but no more than that. and i'm talking about europe more than here, >> i think europe is a managing problem. much more, the way the folks that travel interact and have connections to conflicts in the 90s is something that bothers us. so in many ways the guys that go to fund life are on to the nextconflict .

now, in america we're a lot better off in terms of most of our folks who came back came back disillusioned and disenchanted with their time. only one of the cases we know about where an individual came back with express plan to commit an attack. a man from ohio who was going to drive to texas with a lot of his buddies and try to free up the terrorists but most come back disillusioned. >> a couple of the questions are about the digital space, digital space as one of our audience rights. what 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, what do you see that can be done that isn't a violation of institutional principles, first amendment, etc. >> i think we've largely done all we can in the mainstream when it comes to isis, al

qaeda and jihad is. facebook, twitter got more analysts than the fbi has agents working on content moderation so largely been moved. at least the english language has largely been moved to telegram which provides a level of encryption and even use but is not particularly great in termsof encryption . so the radicalization pool as truck. by that i can't stumble upon a recruiter on twitter like you could in 2014. if you were just searching for a was going on with us on . so that makes it a little bit easier to make sure that fence sitters don't jump on it but the mobilization pool got deeper in telegram. the folks left on telegram are true believers through and through and there only hearing the voices they want to hear and there'sno dissenting voices in that conversation . i think we're probably in the

best space we could be for theonline kind jihadist sphere .i would have a completely different assessment when it comes to antigovernment movements. i think we're still in the 2014 timeframe for that. >> which means what? >> which means it's the wild wild west. you can do what you want and nobody's going to stop you and if they do, it's not proactive scanning against it . there's a debate to be had about, and i share this view strongly, i don't like the private multibillion dollar companies taking an inherently governmental role in counterterrorism with wheaties seated the space to private companies and that concerns me because then they set the standards of so we should, we may want to consider looking at that like a public utility. it would allow go ahead and say. i don't like seeing that space and i think we have. think back to jim clapper getting on a plane to silicon

valley and having a meeting with eric schmidt saying wouldn't it be great if you down morecontent . that seems like a gift or abdication of your responsibilities. there's got to be something stronger that we can do but we haven't figuredout yet . >> either way there are issues at stake. both in terms of giving development too much power and giving the private sector too much power so maybe we need a third voice which would be what i call citizens getting to weigh in with how they should play on that for another conversation. we're about to get into government, we think and we're going to get a lot of new people in positions that you interacting with past a new head of mc pc, a newdni, etc. . if you were at mcpc going to make a list of recommendations in a way that is responsible and that is to

your opening earlier remarks more transparent, and that is aware of a civil liberties issue, what would your assessment be? would it be less understand this is just another brand of criminal justice and treated that way and maybe pull back on some of the uses of informants, etc.. you think it's important to show that as a even as a year were going to move them metric the way we want to symbolically show that so go out of your way to show that this is a change of approach. how would you prioritize what needs to be done andwhat do you think needs to be done . >> i wouldn't mess with it much. other than post-9/11 reports . i spent five years there but i also spent five years at vietnam and performed the hell out of that so i

wouldn't touch to much in terms of this but a few things i would do. i think a little transparency on the terrorism watchlist would be useful for not only the public but civil liberties organizations, i've been harping on that for quite a while. the other thing i would significantly look at would be an expansion of the role of domestic terrorism. right now, the statute look at international terrorism the lawyers and you can kind of domestic terrorism but not too much might you can get in the shallow end but don't go anywhere near the and i think we should be to go in the as long as we sell structures to practice from ground. and so i think the tools are available processes are available to share information between fbi, dhs and other organizations with mcpc being honest broker. so i would look at significantly. for dni this is going to be an interesting time for the

biden administration. do they look at dni need to have a strong player with a strong voice to kind of coordinate the intelligence community where do we look at them more as a friendly gatekeeper who occasionally opens the door? i'm not really sure where they fall on it and i'm not sure anyone knows where they fall quite yet but i think it will be a great interpretation of intelligence reform post 2004 we got a bunch more questions so let me just first follow up with that and say i do think there's going to be some rethinking about some of these agencies including dhs, including dni. it puts us in a very weird position because too much change may be more than we can give.on the other hand, there does need to be some restructuring along the lines of what you were saying maybe

more . your question. what are the implications in these cases? there are a number of individuals that are getting out aside from 2005, 2006 conventions and some others . how do you feel about , i'm sure you've seen the headlines in the articles, you've seen the cases where they said this person, in custody and then an ice custody and hopefully deport them. why should these be any different when it absent in a more pointed way and why should it be any different than anybody else in the criminal justice is not out of prison after serving the term they've beengiven . or should we just think of them in light of the brothers process of criminal justice. >> the question reminds me of a couple probation officers for this book and a lot of them said why am i getting

special treatment to someone who wants to kill me versus someone who has a drug problem in jail. why should i let a terrorist get special treatment and i think that we should talk about that at some point but i'm not sure i label. i would say listen, terrorism is a formal crime...so i'm at a level ofrecidivism built into it . we have seen in limited studies that terrorism is much smaller than general crime populations so we haven't seen that much recidivism on it. we've seen a few. a good example would be john george of texas arrested for defacing the aipac website with a number of pro-hamas comments and then when he got out, six months later he got on the plane became a high-level commander in isis. that's a level of recidivism. >> or maybe radicalization because of how he is viewed and treated, who knows. >> it's entirely plausible.

of the individuals that have gotten outpost isis, individuals charged with false statements so that five or 10 year, a good number of them most of them i think our happy to go on with their lives. so it reminds me of somebody i interviewed from new york who was in al qaeda. i wouldn't say he's the radicalized i see him as disengaged. i asked him what he ever joined up and he said my back hurts, i'm too old. that's not disengaged radicalization, that's disengagement and that's perfectly legal in this country . one last thing i would look at is here's my overarching concern. if someone gets out of jail and commits an attack there's going to be a congressional hearing and that drives out the fbi director and says

this guy was a convicted terrorist, leading to stop him when he got out of jail and the short answer is there wasn't a predicate. you can't open awful field investigation for a terrorist who gets out of jail if they haven't made from public perception using lighting to watch this guy forever? i don't think we have the resources for men and women and of on everybody who gets out of jail. the i also think we haven't coordinated so the us attorney, probation officer, they're not singing from the same sheet right now. you don't train up a probation officer on what they should look at when they're doing a no knock check-in. are they looking for a religious. about every train them not to, i do you know when isis light looks like, these are thethings, baseline things we haven't done in a real substance . >> in terms of release, what happened to the programs of the late 20th century that work reintegration programs and rehabilitation programs.

can be used across the criminal justice board and not just in terms of terrorists which began are within this category of criminals. so you see any hope for more of those programs along those lines mark. >> i've don't. i think largely because the numbers are relatively small. we will have about 85 individuals the next two years were terrorism -related activities really spread across 94 different us attorneys offices that number gets small so you don't have these large-scale programs can use against one guy. i talked to a man who was in a possible for a while and got he wants to go create his mosque but his mosque doesn't want anythingto do with him because he's been a terrorist . so he's got no social fabric or safety to kind of help him

out along the way. i don't know how tosolve that but i know it's a problem . >> a couple of people have asked the question which is not exactly in your expertise i have to ask it anyway because it's in my is country chose not to bring the individuals charged with do you see any hope in the future, a ban on bringing those people here in terms of the appetite of the criminal justice system to make that happen and you think there were enough people in government when you were there who were thinking that way that are still thinking that way, that this is a possibility going forward. >> i find most practitioners would tend towards article 3 courts readjust because it works. there's a history of being human to do so. there is a classification and the classification system is not great also not.

so we have a track record of being dubious, , yes and i'll explain why. i don't think we scare as easily as we used to just because the nature of the new cycle now, we can move on with whatever happened that day so we brought back again place for people from overseas who are working isis and it wasn't even a three paragraph story in the associated press. you're not having these giant press conferences aboutthis . in fact we've gotten some other citizen, we talked to british citizens to prosecute them for crimes against america and nobody said themselves why we do that. it just made sense. so i'm hopeful for that. the problem is the remaining 40 or so in gitmo. you've got a decade of information and torture and everything wrapped in together and that just gets very dirty very quickly in the federal courts. >> i'm hearing from you that

it could happen. >> your telling me there's a chance. >> iq, and i was going to ask for another question from a hopeful which is howwe and our events but do you have any others to have ? >> the real take away from the book is we're not talking about large-scale phenomena. it's interesting and that's the reason why my colleagues book is we find humans by their very nature complex the reason why they joined terrorist organizations are equally complex so we want to answer that question. what we took away was a relatively small phenomenon isis has had perfect hand to be able to recruit an unprecedented number of americans so we're probably going to go back to the agents of the 21st century cases for the short term, the occasional attack here and there were probably in a better place than we were 10 yearsago on this . >> i suggest that everybody

read this book. before we go, i just want to say a few things about what's coming up at the center. we have a fewnew interesting podcast coming out , also we have a couple of reports coming out. one is a report on terrorism on the terror of crime in nexus in america by our nypd opera velazquez like what you're saying. take away is there's nothing there it's not what we might have imagined it to be this report focuses to some extent on comparison with your where actually is more about crime nexus and its a direct report and we had more, books coming out comparing countries around the world are next to reports you'll be seeing taiwan, italy, brazil,iran, india and vietnam . so we've been doing a lot of research here . i think everybody should read this book. thank you all for your questions and ask me safe and

skinning. we will see you on the other side. thank you shamus. >> your watching book tv on c-span2 every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors . graffiti on c-span2 created by america's cable television companies. today brought you like these television companieswho provide book tv to viewers as a public service .>> a look now at some of the most notable books of 20/20 according to the new york public library. in hidden valley road robert voelker profiles the galvin family which consisted of 12 children half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. nikki kendall argues that feminism is too focused on already privileged women rather than on the basic needs of all women in hood feminism. in the undocumented american, carla vi vicente of reflect

on her life as an undocumented immigrant. also on the new york public library's list of 2020 notable books, poet amy elizabeth material provides a collection of essays on major in world of wonders. and claudia rankin argues that america must confront white privilege in just us. >> were not in germany. where germans can say ididn't know what was going on . these things are happening in the streets. they were on the news. it happened again and again so the choice to not know is really a deliberate act of forgetting. or act of lack of engagement. a refusal to understand that they have voted in the mechanisms that have allowed these things to happen. >> some of these authors have ap