The veteran who led the Biden administration’s efforts to counter extremist activity in the U.S. military said further domestic attacks by individuals with current or former military ties could occur if the Pentagon doesn’t take the threat seriously. he warned.
All of the deaths that occurred on New Year’s Day were carried out by retired or active duty military personnel. The pickup truck driver who killed 14 revelers in New Orleans was a 13-year veteran of the U.S. military, and the man who killed himself by blowing up his Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas was an active-duty green soldier. Ta. beret.
Bishop Garrison, who spearheaded an internal Pentagon investigation into extremist activity within the military in 2021 and was the target of a vicious right-wing smear campaign to discredit him and his mission, said the New Year’s Day attack was a wake-up call. Ta. phone. “Both incidents demonstrate potential dangers that we as a nation are failing to address.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Garrison said the Pentagon needs to address the dual challenges of the radicalization of military veterans seen in New Orleans and the suffering of active-duty soldiers as demonstrated by the Las Vegas suicide bombing. said. “I’m worried that we’re going to see more of this kind of behavior, that it’s going to be more exaggerated and more powerful, and that more people are going to be injured and killed,” he said.
Garrison was appointed by current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to lead the Countering Extremism Task Force in 2021. The task force was simultaneously tasked with investigating the scale of the insider threat within the military and developing a plan to counter it. There is growing concern about the activities of extremists of various ideological hues.
He served two tours in Iraq and left the military as a captain. He then trained in law and joined President Barack Obama’s second administration as the White House’s Pentagon liaison. At the time, he was selected to lead the Extremism Task Force, which he was serving as senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense for human capital and diversity, equity and inclusion in the Biden administration. Mr. Garrison currently works as a senior fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason Law School.
With less than two weeks left until Donald Trump’s second term as president, Garrison’s warning is even more poignant. Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, the president-elect’s pick for secretary of defense, called efforts to root out extremism in the military under the Joe Biden administration a sham, and said he would have no choice if he won the job. He has indicated that he intends to eliminate combat programs once he takes office. that.
Hegseth will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday to begin the confirmation process. Garrison urged committee members to carefully consider candidates’ views on extremism.
“The committee should ask very direct questions about what Hegseth has said so far. This is not about political rhetoric, but about keeping people safe and ensuring that military forces are doing their job to protect the country. This is to enable it to be carried out.”
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts compiled a list of 70 specific questions that Hegseth should answer. They include several points that address his views on extremist activity within the military.
Senators want to know whether candidates believe military personnel should be allowed to affiliate with white supremacist or extremist groups. She also suggested asking whether the presence of extremists in the military who support violence against the U.S. government and fellow Americans “undermines readiness and cohesion.”
Warren is also directly addressing Hegseth’s opposition to Garrison’s extremism task force. She asked whether Hegseth would commit to implementing the group’s recommendations.
Mr. Garrison’s investigation began at a time when Pentagon leaders were becoming increasingly alarmed by incidents of violence by current and former military personnel. These include the 2009 mass shooting at the former Fort Hood Army base in Texas, the 2013 Washington Navy Yard attack, and the deadly white supremacist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. rally, and the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Immediately after Garrison convened the commission, right-wing commentators began attacking him. One of the harshest critics was Hegseth.
He used the prime-time Fox News platform to denounce efforts to root out extremist activity as a “patriot purge.” He privately derided Garrison as the Pentagon’s “MAGA purge man” and described him as a “strong, radical leftist.”
As part of the Republican Party’s “war on the woke,” other right-wing commentators flocked to accuse Garrison of being “anti-white.” Mr. Hegseth’s then-Fox News colleague, Tucker Carlson, called Mr. Garrison a “lunatic.”
Much of the criticism came after the then-president criticized majority-black Baltimore City as a “terrible city infested with disgusting rats and rodents,” and Garrison called Trump a “racist.” ”, he focused on a tweet from 2019 that called it “.
Garrison said he was surprised to be characterized as anti-white and a woke leftist bent on destroying the military. “My wife is white and we have a mixed-race child, and I’m a West Pointer who served two tours in Iraq and earned two Bronze Stars and a combat service badge.”
He also described Hegseth and others as a politically motivated attack on President Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement, given that the task force was conceived as a strictly agnostic project. I was also shocked by what happened. “Secretary Austin regularly reminded us to protect the First Amendment rights of all service members. This is not about the content, but the extremist activities we are trying to stop. It was about.”
The working group released its final report in December 2021. The report included a series of 20 recommendations, including comprehensive oversight of extremist activity, improved vetting of military recruits, military training, and upgrades to insider threat programs.
By then the damage had already been done. Following a barrage of right-wing criticism, the Pentagon effectively shelved the report.
“To my knowledge, our policy has never been implemented,” Garrison said. “We finished our recommendations, but we were attacked and our recommendations were not adopted.”
The Pentagon now faces the possibility that even its few provisions for combating internal extremist activity will be erased. If Hegseth’s approval is granted and he follows through on his promise to rein in what he deems a “woke” counter-extremism program, the military will face infiltration, radicalization and violence by embattled service members. likely to be further exposed to the act.
Garrison believes last week’s atrocities highlight the dangers of such an approach. “On New Year’s Day we suffered attacks and suicide bombings, which are directly related to preventing the radicalization of our veterans and providing assistance to our soldiers in distress.”
The New Orleans attacker, Shamsuddin Jabbar, 42, was born and raised in Texas and appeared to have been inspired by Islamic State ideology shortly before committing the car attack on Bourbon Street. For Garrison, Jabbar’s history highlights the need for greater understanding of how some veterans struggling to reintegrate into civilian life become susceptible to extremist ideologies of all kinds. are.
Cybertruck bomber Matthew Libersberger, 37, of Las Vegas, had been deployed twice to Afghanistan and suffered from PTSD. “He was clearly worried about getting the kind of help he needed because he was worried it would negatively impact his career,” Garrison said.
“It’s a cultural issue within the military, and it’s something that I know the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force are all working hard on.”
