The Terror Within

For decades, U.S. Officials ignored the growing threat of domestic extremism. That may finally be changing

- Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan

WHAT DOES A TERRORIST LOOK LIKE?

For more than a generation, the image lurking in Americans’ nightmares has resembled the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks: an Islamic jihadist. Not a 21-year-old white supremacist from a prosperous Dallas suburb.

But long before that young man drove to El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3 and allegedly murdered at least 22 people at a Walmart crammed with back-to-school shoppers, it was clear that white nationalists have become the face of terrorism in America. Since 9/11, white supremacists and other far-right extremists have been responsible for almost three times as many attacks on U.S. soil as Islamic terrorists, the government reported. From 2009 through 2018, the far right has been responsible for 73% of domestic extremistrelated fatalities, according to a 2019 study by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). And the toll is growing. More people—49—were murdered by far-right extremists in the U.S. last year than in any other year since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in July that a majority of the bureau’s domestic-terrorism investigations since October were linked to white supremacy.

Yet the nation’s leaders have failed to meet this menace. In more than a dozen interviews with TIME, current and former federal law- enforcement and national- security officials described a sense of bewilderment and frustration as they watched warnings go ignored and the white- supremacist terror threat grow. Over the past decade, multiple attempts to refocus federal resources on the issue have been thwarted. Entire offices meant to coordinate an inter agency response to right-wing extremism were funded, staffed and then defunded in the face of legal, constitutional and political concerns.