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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (301487)	4/17/2009 4:42:01 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793744

Obtained: Federal Agency’s Memo Warning Of “Left Wing Extremists” The Plum LineGreg Sargent's blog theplumline.whorunsgov.com Hmm. Obama’s Department of Homeland Security is keeping an eye on the threat from “left wing extremists,” in addition to “right wing” ones, according to an internal DHS threat assessment I’ve just obtained. Yesterday the Washington Times caused a massive outrcry by reporting that the DHS had prepared a threat assessment warning law enforcement officials around the country of increased activity by “right wing extremists.” The story was grabbed on to by conservatives and Republican elected officials who alleged it proved anti-conservative bias by the Obama administration, with some claiming that the sweeping term “left wing extremists” would never be used by Obama administration officials about the left. I’ve now obtained, however, an internal DHS assessment for law enforcement officials that sounds equally dire warnings about “left wing extremists.” And it broadly defines these extremists as including people who embrace some components of “anticapitalist” or “antiglobalization” ideas. You can read the whole thing right here. theplumline.whorunsgov.com While this new memo was mentioned tangentially by The Washington Times, reading the whole memo in full shows clearly that a similar approach was employed towards the left and deflates any claims of DHS “bias.” Critics are upset with the right wing memo in part because it defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as not just hate groups but also ones that challenge the authority of the Federal government. The outcry has been so vehement that DHS chief Janet Napolitano is expected to address it today. But the memo I’ve obtained describes “left wing extremism” as including people who “embrace a number of radical philosophical components of anticapitalist, antiglobalization, communist, socialist, and other movements.” That seems equally sweeping. Critics of the right wing memo also decry the description of “right wing extremists” as violence-prone. But the left wing memo — which is dated January 26th — also explicitly warns of violence from left wing extremists. “Many leftwing extremists use the tactic of direct action to inflict economic damage on businesses and other targets to force the targeted organization to abandon what the extremists deem objectionable,” it says. “Direct actions range from animal releases, property theft, vandalism, and cyber attacks — all of which extremists regard as nonviolent — to bombings and arson.” To be fair, it’s true that the right wing memo was clumsily done and created a political problem where there needn’t have been one. But this new memo, which is equally ham-fisted in parts, shows pretty clearly that the right wing one isn’t the result of “bias” among DHS employees or anyone else. Developing… Update Both Glenn Greenwald and Media Matters raised the point about the lefty memo before I did. The homepage of this blog is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here. ShareThis Posted by Greg Sargent \| 04/15/2009, 11:56 AM EST \| Categories: President Obama, White House, blogosphere, political media

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (301487)	4/17/2009 5:38:14 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793744

Nadine - Yes, the report is similar in its generality to most of the output from the DHS. It's much like previous reports I've seen about how "Internet chatter" indicates and increased threat level from Al Qaeda, or whatever. If there were specific threats, they wouldn't be covered with a general report. By the way, my source for the fact that there was a previous report about right-wing extremists wasn't Benen. I could have been clearer about that. I believe similar reports have been written about left-wing extremists, too. As Janet Napolitano said, and I'm paraphrasing here, people who desire to use violence to advance their political agendas are a threat, no matter what their ideology may be. I do wonder why so many people think this report was a general slam against veterans. I don't read it that way at all, and neither does the commanding officer of the VFW. Was there an intention to somehow discredit Tea Party demonstrators? You may infer that if you wish, but personally, I don't see why the so-called Liberal Elite would be overly concerned with a movement that was able to turn out only 250,000 people nationwide on its big day. Of course, the demonstrators have deserve to be heard, and I haven't seen any evidence of any effort to suppress them. - Allen