{ "id": "R42553", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "number": "R42553", "active": false, "source": "EveryCRSReport.com, University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department", "versions": [ { "source": "EveryCRSReport.com", "id": 428339, "date": "2014-02-19", "retrieved": "2016-04-06T23:06:36.302271", "title": "Countering Violent Extremism in the United States", "summary": "In August 2011, the Obama Administration announced its counter-radicalization strategy. It is devised to address the forces that influence some people living in the United States to acquire and hold radical or extremist beliefs that may eventually compel them to commit terrorism. This is the first such strategy for the federal government, which calls this effort \u201ccombating violent extremism\u201d (CVE). Since the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has prosecuted hundreds of individuals on terrorism charges. Unlike the necessarily secretive law enforcement and intelligence efforts driving these investigations, the CVE strategy includes sizeable government activity within the open marketplace of ideas, where private citizens are free to weigh competing ideologies and engage in constitutionally protected speech and expression. Some of the key challenges in the implementation of the CVE strategy likely spring from the interplay between the marketplace of ideas and the secretive realm encompassing law enforcement investigations and terrorist plotting.\nThe strategy addresses the radicalization of all types of potential terrorists in the United States but focuses on those inspired by Al Qaeda. To further elaborate this strategy, in December 2011 the Administration released its \u201cStrategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States\u201d (SIP). The SIP is a large-scale planning document with three major objectives and numerous future activities and efforts. The SIP\u2019s three objectives involve (1) enhancing federal community engagement efforts related to CVE, (2) developing greater government and law enforcement expertise for preventing violent extremism, and (3) countering violent extremist propaganda.\nThis report provides examples of Administration CVE activity and examines some of the risks and challenges evident in the SIP\u2019s three objectives. The report also diagrams and briefly discusses the \u201cfuture activities and efforts\u201d outlined in the SIP for each of these three objectives. A number of areas may call for oversight from Congress. These include the following:\nPicking Partners and Establishing \u201cRules of the Road\u201d\nMuch of the federal government\u2019s CVE effort centers on engagement with Muslim American community groups. This may not be as easy as simply reaching out to local organizations. Who speaks for diverse Muslim communities in America? What criteria will the Administration employ in its selection efforts, and how open will the process be? Once approved as partners, what \u201crules of the road\u201d will govern continued cooperation? Ad hoc and opaque decision making might render the whole CVE outreach process arbitrary to some community participants. Congress may opt to consider whether there is a need to require the Administration to release public guidelines in this area.\nIntervention with At-Risk Individuals\nThere appears to be little federally driven guidance to community groups on how to intervene with people vulnerable to radicalization. Congress may desire to require the Administration to examine the utility and feasibility of developing a CVE intervention model\u2014possibly akin to gang intervention models\u2014for the United States.\nIdentifying Programs to Assist Grassroots CVE Efforts\nWorking with communities entails informing them of possible resources they can use. A publicly available, comprehensive list of grant programs that can be harnessed for CVE activities does not exist. Congress may be interested in asking the Administration to formalize a roster or designate a clearinghouse available to local entities to identify such programs. By possibly pursuing this, Congress may help to ensure that local constituents have better information about and more direct access to federal CVE programs. On the other hand, such a list could be perceived as an additional layer of bureaucracy between constituents and grant programs.\nCountering Extremist Ideas: Choosing Good vs. Bad\nThe task of countering extremist ideas highlighted in the CVE strategy and SIP raises a number of questions. Do the strategy and the SIP place the federal government in the business of determining which ideologies are dangerous and which are safe\u2014essentially determining which beliefs are good and which are bad? In order to conduct effective oversight, Congress may choose to ask the Administration to define exactly what it means when referring to \u201cviolent extremist narratives.\u201d\nThe Lack of a Lead Agency\nThere is no single agency managing all of the individual activities and efforts of the plan. At the national level, some may argue that it would be of value to have a single federal agency in charge of the government\u2019s CVE efforts. From their perspective, without a lead agency it may be difficult to monitor the levels of federal funding devoted to CVE efforts and how many personnel are devoted to CVE in the federal government. For how many of these employees is counter-radicalization a full-time job? Are there mechanisms to track federal CVE expenditure? Which federal body is responsible for this? Congress may wish to pursue with the Administration the feasibility or value of designating a lead agency, or the possibility of naming a lead via legislation. However, it is unclear what types of authority\u2014especially in the budgetary realm\u2014such a lead may be able to wield over well-established agencies playing central roles in the CVE strategy.\nTransparency\nWithout a high degree of transparency, an engagement strategy driven by federal agencies charged with intelligence gathering and law enforcement responsibilities may run the risk of being perceived as an effort to co-opt communities into the security process\u2014providing tips, leads, sources, and informants. Some may maintain that this threatens to \u201csecuritize\u201d a relationship intended as outreach within the marketplace of ideas. As such, critics may argue that it might not be particularly effective to have the same federal agencies responsible for classified counterterrorism investigations grounded in secrecy also be the main players in the CVE strategy. However, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have responsibilities for much of the CVE program. Because of this reality, Congress may opt to consider whether there is a need for greater transparency from the Administration in its CVE efforts.", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "active": false, "formats": [ { "format": "HTML", "encoding": "utf-8", "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/R42553", "sha1": "8ce34ae471eb9cefdffd588f97d0dd3f8b6c3918", "filename": "files/20140219_R42553_8ce34ae471eb9cefdffd588f97d0dd3f8b6c3918.html", "images": null }, { "format": "PDF", "encoding": null, "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/pdf/R42553", "sha1": "7dad1520cc39c1284800b1b8e8312c7ff6ff3ec6", "filename": "files/20140219_R42553_7dad1520cc39c1284800b1b8e8312c7ff6ff3ec6.pdf", "images": null } ], "topics": [] }, { "source": "University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department", "sourceLink": "https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc87235/", "id": "R42553_2012May31", "date": "2012-05-31", "retrieved": "2012-07-03T07:51:21", "title": "Countering Violent Extremism in the United States", "summary": "In August 2011, the Obama Administration announced its counter-radicalization strategy. It is devised to address the forces that influence some people living in the United States to acquire and \r\nhold radical or extremist beliefs that may eventually compel them to commit terrorism. This is the first such strategy for the federal government, which calls this effort \u201ccombating violent extremism\u201d (CVE). This report provides examples of recent Administration CVE activity and examines some of the risks and challenges evident in the SIP's three objectives. The report also diagrams and briefly discusses the \u201cfuture activities and efforts\u201d outlined in the SIP for each of these three objectives. A number of areas may call for oversight from Congress. These include the following: picking partners and establishing \"rules of the road,\" intervention with at-risk individuals, identifying programs to assist grassroots CVE efforts, countering extremist ideas, the lack of a lead agency, and transparency.", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORT", "active": false, "formats": [ { "format": "PDF", "filename": "files/20120531_R42553_6dcb0b3aab2641b9fcaab0f0d21957910a4fdfe0.pdf" }, { "format": "HTML", "filename": "files/20120531_R42553_6dcb0b3aab2641b9fcaab0f0d21957910a4fdfe0.html" } ], "topics": [ { "source": "LIV", "id": "Defense policy", "name": "Defense policy" }, { "source": "LIV", "id": "Counterterrorism", "name": "Counterterrorism" }, { "source": "LIV", "id": "Terrorism", "name": "Terrorism" } ] } ], "topics": [ "Constitutional Questions", "Domestic Social Policy", "Intelligence and National Security" ] }