Hatred and extremism on the home front need more attention

After a bomb blast outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 20 years ago killed 168 persons, a number of experts and media outlets quickly speculated the U.S. had been attacked by foreign terrorists.

That of course was wrong. Timothy McVeigh, an American-born citizen with a deep hatred of his own government, had detonated a rental truck filled with explosives.

Home-grown extremism persists and appears to be intensifying, The Kansas City Star has reported in a package of stories. But law enforcement has largely shifted its focus to the possibility that international terrorism will again find its way to the United States.

That prospect is real and demands government’s attention. But law enforcement must also devote sufficient resources in a smart way to tracking domestic extremism.

Monitors have detected hundreds of groups and individuals in the United States with a professed hatred for government, people of other races and ethnicities, or both.

Most of those people won’t commit acts of violence. But more than 50 Americans have died at the hands of domestic extremists since 2001. That number includes Terri LaManno, Reat Griffin Underwood and William Corporon, the victims slain at or near the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park last year. An avowed white supremacist, F. Glenn Miller Jr., is charged with their murders.

A system of “fusion centers” created to share intelligence after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks has been criticized as ineffective and wasteful. Success stories are difficult to come by, and it appears much of the intelligence gathered has little to do with either domestic or international terrorist threats.

Regrettably, the fusion centers appear to have supplanted a much more effective effort among police agencies that monitored domestic extremist groups prior to the 9-11 attacks.

Also, Congress has eliminated funding for a well-regarded U.S. Justice Department program that provides anti-terrorist training for law enforcement.

It is time for a reassessment in Washington to make sure potential threats from domestic extremists are properly monitored.

Law enforcement can’t stop Americans from harboring dangerous and reprehensible opinions. It can’t prevent those opinions from evolving into hatred. But it must do all it can to stop people from acting on that hatred.

This story was originally published April 27, 2015 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Hatred and extremism on the home front need more attention."