F.B.I. Director Warns of Russian Interference and
White Supremacist Violence
Testimony by Christopher A. Wray contradicted efforts
by President Trump and other officials to downplay the threats.
By Zolan
Kanno-Youngs
Published
Sept. 17, 2020
Updated
Sept. 18, 2020, 5:09 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON
— Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., warned a House committee on
Thursday that Russia was actively pursuing a disinformation campaign against
former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and expressed alarm about violent
extremist groups.
“Racially
motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up a
majority of domestic terrorism threats, Mr. Wray told the House Homeland
Security Committee. He also echoed an intelligence community assessment last
month that Russia was conducting a “very active” campaign to spread
disinformation and interfere in the presidential election, with Mr. Biden as
the primary target.
“We certainly
have seen very active — very active — efforts by the Russians to influence our
election in 2020,” Mr. Wray said, specifically “to both sow divisiveness and
discord, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, to
primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden in what the Russians see as a kind
of an anti-Russian establishment.”
Mr. Wray’s
blunt comments were the latest example of a top national security official
contradicting President Trump’s downplaying of Russian election interference.
A homeland security official has accused
the Trump administration of soft-pedaling both the Russian and white
supremacist threats because they would make “the president look bad.”
Mr. Wray’s
testimony also came a day after another top administration appointee, Dr.
Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, undercut the president’s dim view of wearing protective masks and
said that a coronavirus vaccine was most likely several months away. The
president later lashed out at Dr. Redfield, saying he “made a mistake” on the
vaccine timeline.
The hearing
was also notable for the absence of the acting secretary of homeland security,
Chad F. Wolf, who was ordered to testify but skipped the appearance, defying a
congressional subpoena.
He instead
met with the Senate Homeland Security Committee to prepare for his upcoming
confirmation hearing, a department official said. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the
acting deputy secretary, criticized the committee on Twitter for not welcoming
him in Mr. Wolf’s place.
Representative
Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chairman of the House committee, complained
that Mr. Wolf should have shown up to answer questions on foreign efforts to
interfere with the election, the coronavirus pandemic and the growing threat of
domestic terrorism.
“Mr. Wolf
should be here to testify as secretaries of homeland security have done
before,” Mr. Thompson said. “Instead we have an empty chair, an appropriate
metaphor for the Trump administration’s dereliction on so many of these
critical homeland security issues.”
Mr. Wray
was instead left to discuss the issues, along with Christopher Miller, the
director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who also testified.
Mr. Wray
condemned all acts of bloodshed but refrained from overemphasizing violence
caused by far-left groups like Antifa, the loose movement that purports to be
against fascism, which Mr. Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have
repeatedly blamed for unrest in American cities.
Mr. Barr
described Antifa this month as “the ramrod for the violence,” and the
president’s re-election campaign has portrayed the group as a major threat to
American cities. While some claiming affiliation to Antifa have committed
violent acts, racist extremists have been the more lethal threat in recent
years, Mr. Wray said.
Mr. Trump
said on Thursday that the F.B.I. should treat the group with a heavier hand. “I
look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected
because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find
their funding source, and allows them to get away with ‘murder,’” he said on
Twitter after the hearing.
A former
career prosecutor, Mr. Wray has attracted little attention as F.B.I. director,
giving speeches focused on following rules and procedures. He has said he wants
plowhorses, not showhorses, at the bureau.
Democrats
pressed him on whether the administration was focusing enough on armed militias
and white supremacists, while Republicans expressed similar concerns about
Antifa, which Mr. Wray described as an “ideology or movement” rather than an organization.
“That seems
to me to be downplaying it,” said Representative Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of
Texas, citing recent episodes in mass demonstrations where people targeted
officers with lasers.
Mr. Wray
defended his assessment.
“I by no
means mean to minimize the seriousness of the violence and criminality that is
going on across the country, some of which is attributable to people inspired
by or who self-identify with that ideology or movement,” Mr. Wray said. “We’re
focused on that violence, that criminality.”
He said the
F.B.I. averaged roughly 1,000 domestic terrorism investigations annually and
had recorded about 120 arrests on domestic terrorism suspicions this year. But
he made it clear that white supremacist and anti-government groups were the
primary threats.
In
particular, neo-Nazi groups such as Atomwaffen Division and the Base have drawn
the attention of the F.B.I., which has arrested violent members of those
organizations. White supremacists have carried out the most lethal attacks on
American soil in recent years.
Mr. Wray’s
descriptions of Russian interference and white supremacist efforts echoed a
draft of a homeland security threat assessment that a whistle-blower said
department leaders had blocked.
The
whistle-blower, Brian Murphy, the former head of the Homeland Security
Department’s intelligence branch, filed a complaint with the House Intelligence
Committee asserting that Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli blocked the release of the
annual assessment because of how portions on white supremacist extremism and
Russian interference would reflect on Mr. Trump.
A draft of
the report from August said white supremacist extremists “will remain the most
persistent and lethal threat in the homeland through 2021.”
It added
that Russia will be “the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of
disinformation.”
Mr. Murphy
accused Homeland Security Department leaders of directing analysts to highlight
threats posed by China and Iran. Those nations have targeted Mr. Trump but do
not pose as much of an immediate threat to the United States as Russia,
intelligence officials have said.
The
complaint prompted the House committee to expand its inquiry into the
department’s intelligence gathering, but department leaders are resisting. Beth
Spivey, an assistant secretary for homeland security, told the committee in a
letter this week that witnesses from the department should not be expected to
answer questions about Mr. Murphy’s complaint.
The
Homeland Security Department was also scrutinized last month after it emerged
that the agency declined to publish a July 9 intelligence document warning of
Russian attempts to denigrate Mr. Biden’s mental health and of China and Iran’s
efforts to target Mr. Trump. At the time, Mr. Wolf said he questioned the
quality of the report and sent it back for revision.
An updated
version of the bulletin dated Sept. 4 and obtained by The New York Times still
includes warnings of Russia’s efforts to target Mr. Biden with additional
details on how the nation’s tactics compare with China’s and Iran’s.
“These
efforts probably fall short of Russia’s more sustained, coordinated malign
influence operations across multiple overt and covert platforms to undermine
other U.S. politicians,” it said.
While
homeland security officials have seldom singled out the Russian threat without
grouping it with China and Iran, Mr. Wray said the intelligence community had
reached a consensus that Russia was interfering in the election and targeting
Mr. Biden.
Microsoft
also issued a warning last week detailing efforts by Russian military intelligence
units to hack campaign staff members and consultants of Democrats and
Republicans. That report also found that Chinese hackers had focused attacks on
the private emails of Mr. Biden’s campaign staff members.
Adam
Goldman, Julian E. Barnes and Robert Draper contributed reporting.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário