Can U.S. Spy Agencies Stop White Power Violence?
The threat of widespread pro-Trump violence is raising questions of whether the U.S. needs an American-style MI5. But creating a domestic counter-terror agency comes with great risks.
 |
UPDATED
January 6: What we had here was a failure to communicate—again, years after numerous investigations and study commissions picked apart the intelligence failures leading up to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Last week America’s security agencies were again caught flat footed when another kind of militant wave, this time pro-Trump fanatics, stormed and trashed the citadel of American democracy, nearly executing what Al Qaeda had failed to do, destroy the U.S. Capitol.
Democrats in Congress are teeing up another round of investigations and commissions to get to the bottom of the insurrection, which will almost certainly revisit the thorny question of whether the U.S. needs an independent counter-subversion agency to infiltrate and neutralize armed domestic extremists, who are now threatening more attacks on or around the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Already, a bill has introduced to empower federal law enforcement to better monitor and stop domestic extremist…