For a year, White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka promoted the national strategy he was developing, saying he was dedicating “his life’s work” to a “massive” plan that would overhaul America’s approach to combating terrorist threats.
THE finished product, released May 6 after months of delay, is a 16 pages, typo document that classifies threats based on political assessments rather than intelligence, according to several current and former counterterrorism officials and threat analysts.
Islamist militant groups, historically the primary concern, are now second only to Latin American drug cartels. The violent extreme right, which The FBI called repeatedly the main domestic threat, is not worth mentioning. In the meantime, left-wing activistsa small subset of extremist violence in the United States, is presented as a threat comparable to that of global terrorist networks such as Al-Qaeda.
“A new type of domestic terrorism has emerged,” the document says, “led by violent extremists who have adopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and the American way of life.”
Gorka’s strategy — the subject of a recent ProPublica report — praises President Donald Trump’s national security agenda but offers few details on plans to tackle the administration’s top priorities: Latin American “narcoterrorists,” Islamist militant groups, and violent left-wing antifascists and anarchists.
Gorka, who coordinates counterterrorism policy from the White House to the National Security Council, called the document a “return to common sense” after a President Joe Biden’s 2021 Strategy focused on mainly far-right domestic threats. The new strategy mentions Biden seven times.
“What this tells me is that this administration is not paying attention to the data, to what our allies are seeing in the world, to where the biggest threats of violence are coming from and how to prevent them,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University.
Republican leaders have often framed Biden’s focus on the violent far right as Democrats’ crackdown on conservative organizing. This idea fueled Trump’s general pardon of more than 1,500 defendants, including those who attacked police, during the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Gorka did not respond to a request for comment. The White House, when asked about criticism of the plan, pointed to a number of public statements by Gorka touting it. Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, added in an email: “President Trump is crushing terrorist threats against the United States and will never let cartels, jihadists, or the governments that support them plot with impunity against our citizens. »
Here are five notable aspects of the plan, compiled from interviews with counterterrorism personnel and published critiques by researchers:
1. It’s about Trump, not terrorism.
The counterterrorism strategy begins with a foreword signed by Trump, who sets the tone by claiming credit for ending “four years of weakness, failure, capitulation and humiliation under the last administration.”
Analysts say the rest of the strategy often reads like a Valentine’s Day rather than a sober national security communiqué. Under Trump’s leadership, he said: “America is once again the most powerful nation in the world, with the greatest economy in history, the most advanced technologies, and the bravest and most skilled fighters the world has ever seen.” »
The strategy’s key threat categories align with the president’s favorite issues, including villainization of Democrats and left-wing dissent. The language also echoes debunked right-wing conspiracy theories the president has shared about a stolen election, a alleged genocide of Christians and the existential threats to Western civilization from what the strategy calls “alien cultures.” One section refers to Christians as “the most persecuted people on Earth.”
“This used to be a serious document written by serious people” under Democratic and Republican presidencies, said Juliette Kayyem, a veteran terrorism analyst and former Obama administration official. deplored on. “Now it looks like a partisan screed.”
2. Data thwarts priorities.
The most obvious gap, analysts say, is the omission of violent far-right movements. Federal authorities have said for years that neo-Nazi groups and anti-government militias pose the most active and deadly domestic threats, although officials have recently noted an increase in left-wing and mixed-motivation attacks.
For example, on September 10, the same day that conservative youth leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated at an outdoor event in Utah, a 16-year-old gunman who was infused with online forums for white supremacy and mass shooter fandom opened fire on a Colorado high school, seriously injuring two students before killing themselves.
The strategy only addresses the type of violent extremism that the White House attributes to Kirk’s alleged shooter, who is called a “violent left-wing radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.” Terrorism analysts say the motivations for the attack do not seem as clear; the suspect, who has not yet been tried, would come from a republican family but would have changed politically and would have expressed opposition to “hate” he said Kirk had spread.
Just last week, a trial related to a deadly shooting last year at Florida State University revealed that the gunman had used ChatGPT to explore “his interests in Hitler, the Nazis and fascism” and other far-right topics.
In a social media post, Jacob Ware, a terrorism researcher who has written extensively on the militant right, called the case “a friendly reminder that the Trump administration’s new U.S. counterterrorism strategy does not mention far-right violent extremism.”
3. Politicians undermine strategy.
Several of the White House’s stated counterterrorism goals are at odds with the actions of the president himself, analysts say.
For one thing, the pledge to step up efforts to thwart plots ignores the diminished capacity of federal agencies since Trump cut national security staffing last year and diverted resources from counterterrorism to his mass deportation campaign.
Terrorism analyst Colin Clarke, executive director of the security-focused Soufan Center and a critic of Gorka, summarized the document as “highly partisan and mostly incoherent.”
He touts the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during a U.S. military operation as a significant capture of a “narcoterrorist outlaw.” But a few weeks before Maduro’s raid, Trump had obtained a pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine to the United States.
Another U.S. goal is to aggressively counter anti-American propaganda from Islamist extremist groups, which the administration says have been driven from their strongholds in the Middle East and are “exploiting ungoverned spaces” across Africa. Places where “a resurgent terrorist threat is the reality,” according to the strategy, include West Africa, the Sahel region, Sudan and Somalia.
Yet efforts to counter anti-US messages are being undermined by increasing US airstrikes that are causing civilian casualties, notably in Somalia and Yemen, and by the disruption of humanitarian programs across the continent, conflict observers say. U.S. aid provides a lifeline to communities whose desperation can be exploited by militant recruiters.
The strategy calls for a “light military footprint” in Africa, in the hope that African leaders will take on more of the work of fighting terrorism. But Trump’s cessation of foreign aid hindered regional counterterrorism programs. Conflict observers now watch Islamist militants with concern capture territory and staging attacks in Mali, are urging the administration to pay greater attention to the restive Sahel region and other hot spots.
“Terrorists are poised to recreate a new sanctuary caliphate that could serve as an incubator for attacks against the United States’ homeland and interests abroad,” said Alex Plitsas, a security analyst and former Obama-era Pentagon official. wrote this month after visiting the U.S. Africa Command.
“The result is a warning to Washington: When the United States and its partners back down, jihadist groups and adversarial powers fill the space,” Plitsas wrote.
The strategy also denigrates “the failure of ‘forever war’ policies” at a time when Trump’s base is struggling. struggling with his decision to launch the US-Israeli war in Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism.
In a call with journalists After his plan was published, Gorka became defensive when asked why the Iranian operation was not a “forever war” that could put Americans in danger. He called the criticism “testicularly contested.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly made a distinction: “Unlike the ‘forever wars’ of the past with vague goals and ever-expanding timelines, President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history, and he has kept Americans informed of the scope and goals outlined for Operation Epic Fury.
4. Successes are exaggerated.
Trump’s preface opens by celebrating counterterrorism achievements that analysts describe as exaggerated or lacking nuance.
An example is the assertion that within 43 d Bear following Trump’s return to power, the United States had apprehended “the terrorist mastermind” of the country. Deadly attack on Abbey Gate in Kabul. In 2021, a suicide bomber detonated a crowd of civilians outside an airport gate during the US military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, killing more than 150 Afghans and 13 US service members.
In March, the Department of Justice welcomed the arrest of Afghan national Mohammad Sharifullah, an Islamist militant who allegedly “orchestrated” the attack. Gorka publicly recounted the dramatic scene of waiting on the tarmac, in the cold, at 3 a.m., alongside several Cabinet members, to greet the plane carrying “the man responsible for the murder, the massacre”, in handcuffs.
Last month, just before Gorka’s strategy was released, a federal jury dealt a major blow to the “mastermind” narrative by giving a mixed verdict. Sharifullah was convicted of aiding the terrorist group known as Islamic State Khorasan, but the jury did not consider whether there was enough evidence to hold him responsible for Abbey Gate’s death. The difference determines how much time Sharifullah could spend behind bars: the more serious charge carried a life sentence.
A Press release from the Ministry of Justice The condemnation (but not the impasse) was stripped of references to Sharifullah as an orchestrator and did not use the “mastermind” language that appeared days later in the White House strategy.
Analysts also expressed skepticism over the plan’s claim that “hundreds of jihadi terrorists in multiple countries” have been killed in recent U.S. counterterrorism operations. The administration releases virtually no details about the identities of those targeted or the circumstances of their deaths. Humanitarian groups fear these operations will cause countless civilian casualties.
5. Opponents are targeted.
Rights watchdogs say the strategy alludes to how Trump administration officials will attempt to build terrorism cases against American left-wing and Muslim activists through nebulous or nonexistent ties to transnational activist movements.
A connection to a foreign entity officially designated as a terrorist group opens the door to government surveillance and potential charges related to providing aid – “material support” in legalese – to a foreign terrorist organization.
Analysts say that’s why the Trump administration pursued designations targeting left-wing activist groups in Europe under the antifa label, as well as some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a century-old Islamist group that renounced violence in the 1970s, although its derivatives, such as Hamas, remain active and are on the US blacklist. Republicans have long tried to represent Muslim advocacy groups based in the United States as a point of support for the Brotherhood.
The document also calls for the “rapid neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist.” Researchers called the terms poorly defined and said they are not used in international counterterrorism work.
Miller-Idriss’ biggest concern about Trump’s anti-terrorism doctrine: “How damaging could it be? Both in the things it ignores and the things it emphasizes.”