Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Homeland Security Meets Office Politics

Idealist goes to the naton's capital, idealist produces notoriously shoddy document that his higher-ups refuse to defend, idealist gets snagged in bureaucratic politics, idealist leaves his job and becomes a government contractor. It isn't the usual narrative arc for a Washington book, but it might be a more typical Washington story. And while the author certainly wouldn't put it in the terms I used, it's the story underlying Daryl Johnson's Right-Wing Resurgence, the meandering memoir of the man who wrote the Department of Homeland Security's infamous report on right-wing extremism.
Johnson's paper set off a firestorm when it was exposed in 2009. The document seemed at least as interested in right-wing groups' ideologies as it was in their capacity for violence, a fact that set off civil liberties alarm bells. And a footnote gave the impression that the paper was casting its net pretty wide. "Rightwing extremism in the United States," it said, "can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration." This was widely construed to mean that anyone opposed to immigration, abortion, or federal authority was perceived as a potential threat.

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/30/homeland-security-meets-office-politics

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