F.B.I. Emphasizes Speed as ISIS Exhorts Individuals to Attack

F.B.I. Emphasizes Speed as ISIS Exhorts Individuals to Attack




Law enforcement officials in June after Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, a man who had been in contact with the Islamic State online, was shot in Boston as F.B.I. agents tried to apprehend him. Credit Brian Snyder/Reuters

WASHINGTON — In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Justice Department officials, concerned that another attack was imminent, swiftly arrested many people, some of whom were only remotely suspected of having ties to terrorism.

Many suspicions proved unfounded. Some cases collapsed. And the frenzied response soon gave way to a more patient approach that encouraged F.B.I. agents to watch suspects as long as possible before making arrests, so that they could gain valuable intelligence about Al Qaeda’s networks.
Now, confronted with efforts by the Islamic State to inspire Americans to commit violence, the authorities have changed their strategy again.

In recent months, the F.B.I. has apprehended people suspected of being Islamic State sympathizers soon after they came onto the government’s radar. The F.B.I. has arrested and charged at least 25 people in the past three months with having ties to the Islamic State or other terrorist groups, compared with 20 people arrested over the previous year, according to court records.

American counterterrorism officials are so concerned about the threat from the Islamic State that in June the F.B.I. had so many people under surveillance in terrorism-related investigations that supervisors reassigned criminal squads to monitor terrorism suspects, according to F.B.I. officials.
“It’s like in old cartoons where you would have a stick of dynamite and a long fuse, except now the fuse is much shorter — the flash to bang is much faster,” John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, said in an interview.
But critics say the return to a faster-moving approach raises the possibility that, in the rush to make arrests, the government is jeopardizing criminal cases and missing opportunities to gather intelligence. Thomas A. Durkin, a Chicago defense lawyer who has represented clients accused of supporting Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, said the new cases are hurried and not as strong.
“Everything is: ‘Not on my watch,’ ” Mr. Durkin said. “ ‘Do you want to be responsible letting that kid go home? Not me.’ ”
Officials from the Justice Department and the F.B.I. defend the practice, saying their chief mission is to prevent violence. They acknowledge that the Islamic State — a radical Sunni terrorist organization operating chiefly out of Syria and Iraq, and also known as ISIS or ISIL — has shown no ability to stage significant attacks inside the United States.
But they say sympathizers have repeatedly expressed a willingness to undertake small-scale attacks, such as stabbings and shootings that require little planning. Because their networks are far less complex than the ones used by Al Qaeda, officials do not believe they are missing out on important intelligence.

“Sometimes people say, ‘So why are you disrupting these people?’ ” said James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, in a briefing with reporters. “Well, first, we’re disrupting because we try to disrupt plots, but also we face people who are highly unpredictable.”
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One senior law enforcement official said that “if moving quickly stops an attack but hurts our prosecutions, then that’s the price you have to pay to prevent violence.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss national security matters.
Some F.B.I. investigators privately disagree with the intense focus, which draws resources away from other investigations and sometimes has led to frustration inside the bureau and the Justice Department.

After years of watching for large-scale plots, investigators are now trying to identify and prevent shootings and stabbings — violence on a scale that is common in major American cities but has never been a priority for the F.B.I. Preventing Islamic State-inspired violence is a priority, and current and former investigators say they feel tremendous pressure to succeed.

“We don’t expect to eradicate crime, but we’ve made a political promise that we’re going to stop every act of terrorism,” Mr. Durkin said. “It’s ridiculous.”

The recent shooting in Chattanooga, Tenn., in which a troubled Kuwaiti-born man killed five people at military sites, shows the difficulty in preventing small-scale attacks. Investigators have found no evidence that the gunman, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, was in contact with the Islamic State, but they say they believe that he watched terrorist videos on the Internet, most likely making him the kind of self-radicalized killer that the F.B.I. is trying to stop.

An event this spring in Boston illustrates how the authorities now react faster to potential violence, Mr. Comey said.

In May, counterterrorism investigators began surveillance of Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, a 26-year-old man who been in touch with the Islamic State online. The authorities said they believed that while he was planning to stage an attack, he was not an imminent threat. But, Mr. Comey said that Mr. Rahim “woke up on the morning of June the 2nd and said ,‘You know what, I think today is the day,’ and just went to kill people.”

Specifically, F.B.I. agents, who were tapping Mr. Rahim’s phone, heard him say on June 2 that he planned to behead a police officer. When they tried to apprehend him, he pulled out a knife and the agents fatally shot him.

“That’s an example of how this is so different: There could be a plan to do something in the future, but the kind of folks these are, they’re unpredictable, unreliable,” Mr. Comey said.

In response to calls on Twitter by the Islamic State for Americans to stage attacks on the Fourth of July, F.B.I. officials in Washington told agents across the country in the weeks leading up to the holiday to arrest suspects under surveillance if they believed they had enough evidence to bring charges. Whatever additional intelligence they could gain from watching these people was not worth the risk, officials said.

“Headquarters was saying, ‘You can’t take the chance that these guys will quickly do something crazy,’ ” said one senior law enforcement official.



The warnings about unpredictable, small-scale attacks, however, are not completely new.
Shortly after Sept. 11, the F.B.I. warned of attacks against churches, supermarkets and shopping malls. In 2003, Larry A. Mefford, the F.B.I.’s top counterterrorism official, testified before Congress about the ability of “individual terrorists, acting on their own in the name of jihad, to carry out random acts of terror wherever and whenever they can.”

Mr. Comey said the threat today was even worse. The Islamic State is far less choosy about its recruits than “your grandfather’s Al Qaeda” ever was, he said. The group is essentially trying to crowdsource terrorism. Every day, the group sends messages on Twitter and on other social media platforms to thousands of Americans with simple instructions: Commit some type of violence in our name.

“They say: ‘Do whatever you can. If you can’t get a gun, find a rock and throw it at someone,’ ” said one senior law enforcement official.

Justice Department and F.B.I. officials acknowledge that there is sometimes a price to pay for speedy arrests. One of the highest-profile examples came immediately after Sept. 11, when F.B.I. agents arrested Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. The authorities said he was a Qaeda sleeper agent who was researching poisonous gases and plotting a cyberattack while living in the United States. American intelligence officials said a Qaeda financier paid for his trip the United States.

He was quickly arrested but charged with the far less serious crime of credit card fraud. After a yearslong court fight over whether Mr. Marri could be held as an enemy combatant, he pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy and was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was released this year and returned to Qatar.

In response to cases like that, the F.B.I. changed its approach.

Arthur Cummings, who held several senior positions in counterterrorism and national security at the F.B.I., urged agents not to make arrests until they had gleaned every bit of intelligence. Mr. Cummings’s strategy helped identify Al Qaeda leaders worldwide and disrupted attacks, including a 2009 plot to bomb New York’s subways, but the approach always came with an important caveat: If agents believed a threat was imminent and uncontrollable, they should move quickly.



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/us/fbi-emphasizes-speed-as-isis-exhorts-individuals-to-attack.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0