http://www.cq.com/public/20050325_homeland.html
 
      CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - INTELLIGENCE
      March 25, 2005 - 9:43 p.m.

Animal Rights Groups and Ecology Militants Make DHS Terrorist 
List, Right-Wing Vigilantes Omitted

      By Justin Rood, CQ Staff

      The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing 
domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to 
be an internal list of threats to the nation's security.

      According to the list - part of a draft planning document obtained 
by CQ Homeland Security - between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend 
primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities 
affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical 
Islamist groups.

      It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal 
Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as 
terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white 
supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged 
numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent 
attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and 
California have been attributed to ELF.

      DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment or 
confirmation of the document's authenticity.

      The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah 
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded 
more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric 
Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing 
in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a 
member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, 
Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection 
with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police 
officer and seriously maimed a nurse.

      Another Army of God member, James Kopp, was convicted in the 1998 
shooting of a doctor who performed abortions.

      Individuals affiliated with such groups have also been involved in 
many smaller terrorist acts, including mailing hundreds of bogus anthrax 
letters to abortion clinics, and in plots to obtain and use 
conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons against civilians. In 2003, 
for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and 
anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon 
of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide 
bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred 
thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control 
explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. 
The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

      'Still a Threat'
      Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not 
include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries.

      "They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat," 
said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most 
of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. "If for some 
reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they 
will regret that," said German, who left the FBI last year. "Hopefully 
it's an oversight."

      James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National 
Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a 
telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have 
been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of 
property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record 
and should be on the list. "The nature of the history of terrorism is 
that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the 
future."

      Focusing on Left-Wing Movements
      Last year, following arson and vandalism sprees on both coasts 
attributed to radical left-wing groups such as ALF and ELF, the FBI made 
those movements its top domestic terror priority. But right-wing groups 
remained a concern, according to one FBI official.

      "That doesn't de-emphasize our interest in other domestic terror 
groups," stressed the official, who would not be named discussing the 
bureau's counterterror strategy, during a phone interview Friday. "For 
us, the right-wing patriot movement remains a continuing threat." (The 
FBI considers militias, tax protesters, and anti-government groups part 
of the right-wing movement, the official said; the bureau considers 
violent anti-abortion extremists a separate movement.)

      The DHS document, entitled "Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal 
Years 2005-2011," is dated January 2005. Its pages are marked "Sensitive 
- Do Not Distribute Outside the Department of Homeland Security - 
Draft." Each paragraph in the document is marked "(U/FOUO)," which 
typically indicates it has been reviewed by a government censor and 
determined to be unclassified, but "for official use only."

      Under a section marked "Threat and Vulnerability Assessment," the 
document asks and answers the question "Who are the adversaries?"

      First and foremost, the draft document says, are al Qaeda and its 
affiliates.

      Second are new radical Islamist groups that arise overseas amid 
the rubble of the old al Qaeda organization. These organizations "could 
try to supplant" al Qaeda and "would see a Homeland attack as a way to 
attain that goal," the document states.

      Domestic radical Islamic groups concern the department, because of 
their potential to support al Qaeda operations within the country, or to 
serve as a "recruiting pool" for the movement.

      "However," the document reads, "we are not convinced that any of 
these organizations acting alone would pursue a major attack against the 
Homeland."

      As a final item, the list notes the threat of eco-terrorists, who 
"will continue to focus their attacks on property damage in an effort to 
change policy." The document notes that although "publicly ALF and ELF 
promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate 
their attacks."

      Priorities Questioned
      The document lists several groups or sources of radical violence 
that DHS does not consider threats to the homeland.

      Lebanese Hizballah and various Palestinian groups, including Hamas 
and Palestine Islamic Jihad, are unlikely to attack the United States, 
the report's authors conclude.

      Several high-profile terror prosecutions, including cases against 
the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and Florida professor Sami 
al-Arian, rest on their connection to such groups.

      "Why are we expending so many resources targeting people who have 
allegedly provided support to groups that don't threaten us?" asked 
David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a frequent 
critic of the U.S. government's war on terror. "How does that make us 
safer?"

      State-sponsored terrorism also is not an immediate concern to the 
department, according to the document. "In the post 9/11 environment, 
countries do not appear to be facilitating or supporting terrorist 
groups intent on striking the U.S. homeland," it reads. In fact, of all 
the countries designated state sponsors of terrorism, only Iran "appears 
to have the possible future motivation" to use terrorist groups to plot 
against the United States.

      In the past few years, according to MIPT researcher Ellis, 
left-wing violence has overtaken right-wing violence as the primary form 
of domestic terror. "When a conservative government comes to power, you 
see more activity from the opposite side of the spectrum," he explained. 
At the same time, the membership and activity of right-wing groups has 
suffered since the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma 
City, and the broadcasting of images of the children who died in the 
building's second-floor day care center.

      "A lot of people said, 'I'm fighting against the Zionist Occupied 
Government, I'm not here to kill children," Ellis explained.

      Still, Ellis warned, the movements remain worthy of the 
government's concern. Last October, the FBI arrested a man in Tennessee 
who tried to buy sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosive to attack a 
government building. The man, Demetrius "Van" Crocker, had also inquired 
about obtaining nuclear waste or other nuclear material, according to 
the FBI.

      And in 2003, a Pennsylvania man was convicted of mailing hundreds 
of letters containing fake anthrax to abortion clinics around the United 
States.

      Although their activities appear to be decreasing, such groups are 
still dangerous, said Ellis. "We don't have the luxury of ignoring 
threats from either side of the political spectrum."

      Justin Rood can be reached at jrood@cq.com.

      Source: CQ Homeland Security
      (C) 2005 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved
      
http://www.cq.com/