Biased TrainingACLU

FOIA litigation by the ACLU of Northern California, the Asian Law Caucus, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian and later media reports uncovered factually inaccurate FBI training materials that demonstrated strong anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias.226 The materials span from 2003 to 2011. They include both amateurish power point presentations that paint Muslims and Arabs as backward and inherently violent and a professionally-published counterterrorism textbook the FBI produced with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point for training law enforcement. The textbook, “Terrorism and Political Islam,” devotes one of five sections to “Understanding Islam,” and another to “Cultural and Regional Studies” of Muslim-majority countries, which tends to reinforce the false idea that modern terrorism is predominantly a Muslim phenomenon.227

Such heavy emphasis on Islam is misguided, as terrorism is a tactic used by many groups claiming allegiance to a multitude of different religions and political ideologies, and potentially distracts from other significant threats. A later report by the Combating Terrorism Center documented that 670 people have been killed and 3,053 injured in attacks by far right extremists in the U.S since 1990, yet far-right extremists are barely mentioned in the textbook except to dismiss them as significant threats.228 There are many different terrorism threats, and FBI training materials should address each in a factually objective manner based on evidence rather than bias.

The FBI textbook also improperly links Muslims’ political activities and opinions with their potential for violence. One essay tells agents they can determine whether Muslims are militant by asking their opinions about the Iraq war and the political situation in Israel and Egypt. Those Muslims answering with “a patriotic and pro-Western stance,” according to the article, “could potentially evolve into a street informant or concerned citizen.”229 Biased and erroneous FBI training can be expected to result in inappropriate targeting of American Muslim communities for investigation and intelligence collection.

To its credit, following media exposure of these biased training materials, the FBI initiated a review of its counterterrorism training materials referencing religion and culture, and issued a statement that “[s]trong religious beliefs should never be confused with violent extremism.”230 The FBI has reportedly removed 800 pages from its training materials, but there has been far too little transparency regarding the standards guiding this review. And unfortunately, the FBI did not review intelligence products that mirrored these biased training materials, despite requests by the ACLU and partner organizations to include them.

The public is well aware that similarly flawed, incorrect, and biased FBI intelligence products do exist. A 2006 FBI intelligence report called “Radicalization: From Conversion to Jihad” asserts that “indicators” that a person is progressing on a path to becoming a terrorist include:

• Wearing traditional Muslim attire
• Growing facial hair
• Frequent attendance at a mosque or prayer group
• Travel to a Muslim country
• Increased activity in a pro-Muslim social group or cause
• Proselytizing231These activities are commonplace and entirely innocuous, and millions of American Muslims who pose no threat to anyone engage in them regularly. More importantly for an agency charged with protecting civil rights, these activities are protected by the First Amendment. While the report notes that “[n]ot all Muslim converts are extremists,” it suggests that all are suspect because “they can be targeted for radicalization.” This assertion undoubtedly leads to additional law enforcement scrutiny of American Muslims for no reason other than the practice of their faith.232 The FBI refused a request to withdraw this report, and an FBI spokesman defended its analysis, stating that “[t]hese indicators do not conflict with our statement that strong religious beliefs should never be confused with violent extremism.”233

Such biased and erroneous information in FBI intelligence reports is likely to drive racial and religious profiling at every stage of the intelligence process. These false indicators can be expected to lead to excessive and unwarranted surveillance and intelligence collection targeting communities agents perceive to be Muslim, which fills FBI data bases with a disproportionate amount of information about Arabs, Middle-Easterners, South Asians, and African-Americans. Further analysis of this biased data pool using data mining tools based on these false indicators could lead to more people from these communities being selected for more intensive investigation and watch listing.234 It could even result in the application of an FBI “disruption strategy,” which might include scouring their records for minor violations that would not normally be investigated or charged, deportation, security clearance revocation,235 or employing informants to act as agents provocateur to instigate criminal activity. But biased training materials were not limited to erroneous information about Muslims. FBI domestic terrorism training presentations on “Black Separatist Extremists” juxtaposed decades old examples of violence by the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army with unorthodox beliefs expressed by a number of different modern groups to suggest, without evidence, that these latter-day groups pose a similar threat of violence.236 The FBI presentation claims organizations it calls “Black Separatists” have no unifying theme or mission, but “all share racial grievances against the U.S., most seek restitution, or governance base [sic] on religious identity or social principals [sic].”237 No recent acts of “Black Separatist” terrorism appear in the presentations or in FBI lists of terrorism incidents going back to 1980.238

FBI domestic terrorism training presentations on “Anarchist Extremists” claim they are “not dedicated to any cause” and merely “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities,” yet focus heavily on protest activity, including “‘passive’ civil disobedience.”239 FBI training presentations on “Animal Rights/Environmental Extremism” list “FOIA Requests” as examples of “Intelligence Gathering,” and another presentation suggests activists are waging a “public relations war.” Failing to distinguish properly between First Amendment activity, non-violent civil disobedience, and terrorism in FBI training materials leads to investigations and intelligence gathering that improperly target constitutionally-protected activity, endangers political activists by placing them on terrorism watch lists, and suppresses religious and political freedom.