ACLU last year on the NYPD report on terrorism: radicalization debunked

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Like a villain in a horror movie, the widely debunked concept of terrorist "radicalization" is once again raised from the grave by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in its 2013 report, "American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat." CRS is an influential legislative branch agency charged with providing objective policy analysis for members of Congress, which makes its continued reliance on the "radicalization" model promoted in a now-discredited 2007 New York Police Department report, "Radicalization in the West," particularly troublesome.

The NYPD report purported to describe the process that drives previously "unremarkable" people to become terrorists. According to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly's preface, the document was intended to "to assist policymakers and law enforcement officials, both in Washington and throughout the country by providing a thorough understanding of the kind of threat we face domestically." It theorized a simple four-step process starting with the adoption of a particular set of beliefs to becoming a terrorist, though it strangely conceded that not all terrorists need to go through all, or any of these steps, and that people who did go through the steps would not necessarily become terrorists – though that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. Confused? It gets worse.

The report only examined terrorist acts committed by Muslims, and essentially suggested that all Muslims were potential terrorists that needed to be watched, stating that "[e]nclaves of ethnic populations that are largely Muslim often serve as 'ideological sanctuaries' for the seeds of radical thought." It posited a profile of potential terrorist "candidates" so broad that it's no profile at all: within these "Muslim enclaves," potential terrorists could range from members of middle class families to "successful college students, the unemployed, the second and third generation, new immigrants, petty criminals, and prison parolees." In other words: anyone and everyone. It identified "radicalization incubators," including mosques, as well as "cafes, cab driver hangouts, flophouses, prisons, student associations, nongovernmental organizations, hookah (water pipe) bars, butcher shops and book stores." In other words: any place and every place. Commonplace activities for Muslim-Americans, like wearing Islamic clothing, growing a beard, abstaining from alcohol and joining advocacy organizations or community groups were all listed as potential indicators of radicalization. In other words: any kind of behavior and all kinds of behavior.

If it sounds like the report's description of potential terrorists is so overbroad it could include entire Muslim-American communities, this does not appear to be accidental. Indeed, the report provided the ideological foundation for the NYPD Intelligence Division's program of mass surveillance of Muslim communities throughout the Northeast. Not surprisingly, this poorly focused program "never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation," according to the Associated Press, which received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the NYPD's program.

The NYPD radicalization report was quickly denounced by advocacy and academic organizations for its overstated and flawed facts and serious methodological errors...

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But if counterterrorism officials believe that adopting radical beliefs are a necessary first stage to terrorism, they will obviously target belief communities and activists with their enforcement measures, as they often do.

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