Lies, Damn Lies, and TEVUS
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Lies, Damn Lies, and TEVUS Evaluating the Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States Database By Christopher C. Hull, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, Americans for Intelligence Reform October 12th, 2020 I. Executive Summary This study is the result of a project to review carefully the federally funded Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) Database and Portal. The findings include that TEVUS characterizes Islamist high-fatality events as hijackings, hostage takings or armed assaults rather than homicides, including the 9/11 jihad attacks that led to 3,000 total deaths, leaving a towering 89% of events categorized explicitly as “Homicide” in TEVUS with Right-Wing ideologies listed for them, even though the Islamist 9/11 dominates the actual body count of terrorism. The study also found that TEVUS excluded or mischaracterized about 73% of those on a Congressional list of individuals implicated in terrorism from March 2014 to June 22, 2016; 96.4% of the individuals on the Department of Justice’s public list of individuals convicted of terrorism and terror-related charges between 9/11 and the end of 2014; and 98% of “Killings in the Name of Islam” since 9/11. Similarly, TEVUS simply omits a substantial number of non-white perpetrators of terrorism and extremist violence, and even misrepresents their races in some cases, including classifying every one of the exclusively Arab 9/11 hijackers not as “Arab,” but “White/Caucasian non-Hispanic,” falsely exploding the number of fatalities associated with White perpetrators. TEVUS also systematically obscures the role Black Nationalism plays in extremist violence by flatly excluding multiple groups of that sort, including Black Lives Matter (BLM), though BLM activists and supporters have allegedly killed at least 11 police officers alone. Likewise, TEVUS systematically excludes Left-Wing violence, containing not a single Antifa crime nor Antifa itself, even though the Obama Administration’s Department of Homeland Security formally classified Antifa’s activities as “domestic terrorist violence.” TEVUS also omits Left-Wing individuals and labels on extremist violence, including the name and ideology of the 2017 Congressional Baseball mass shooter who literally asked a leaving lawmaker if those practicing were Republicans or Democrats. Furthermore, TEVUS researchers have modified their database to eliminate Left-Wing ideologies where it once acknowledged it during the Trump Administration, including removing the “Left Wing” ideology for the gay confessed terrorist who carried out the 2012 attack against the politically conservative Family Research Council, even though his only known statement during the attack was, “I don’t like your politics.” By contrast, not one of TEVUS’ descriptions of the 39 court cases it characterizes as Right-Wing include a reference to a federal terrorism charge, and only one of TEVUS’ descriptions of all 244 first-degree related right-wing events includes a mention of “terror” in any context – and that was a case in which the attacker referred to his target as a 'terrorist' and a 'suicide bomber.' Overall, TEVUS appears to be a carefully-crafted, taxpayer-funded attempt to whitewash Islamic, Arab, Black Nationalist, and Left-Wing terrorism and extremist violence, while amplifying White and Right-Wing violence to the maximum extent possible. 2 II. Background This paper is the result of a project1 to review carefully the federally funded Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) Database and Portal,2 to evaluate the degree to which it reflects well-documented biases in its sources, and thereby leads not only to fraudulent conclusions, but to patently misleading representations of those conclusions as well. TEVUS was launched in March, 2009, soon after the beginning of the Obama Administration.3 The same month, President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano famously refused to use the word terrorism, preferring the term “man-caused disaster,” saying doing so showed “we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur."”4 In 2016, President Obama similarly justified avoided using terminology like “Islamic terrorist” by saying, “there's no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do.”5 This research project was officially launched on July 27, 2018. On August 15, 2018, soon after our circulation of the original drafts of this paper to allies within the Trump Administration, TEVUS’ parent organization announced that it lost its main grant from the State Department for the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), one of the four main components of TEVUS.6 Initial data gathering for this paper was completed on September 12, 2018. Since then, an update from October of 2019 made clear that the Trump Administration’s Department of Defense and the German government had stepped in to provide funding.7 Specifically, the Trump Pentagon awarded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) housed at the University of Maryland, which is responsible inter alia for the TEVUS project, $3 million at the beginning of this year.8 1 The study was originally launched with the Middle East Forum Educational Foundation (MEFEF) providing generous support for the project. The author would also like to acknowledge the help of Michael Bender, Ph.D., Tyler Sammann and Jack Hodge, who provided invaluable research support for the project. 2 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), 2016, “Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States Database (TEVUS)” [Data file], available at https://tap.cast.uark.edu/, accessed on July 14, 2018. 3 See “The Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) Database,” available at https://www.start.umd.edu/research-projects/terrorism-and-extremist-violence-united-states-tevus-database, retrieved March 2, 2020. 4 Brett Baier, “Terrorism Is a 'Man-Caused' Disaster?” Fox News, published March 17, 2009, last update May 16, 2015, available at https://www.foxnews.com/story/terrorism-is-a-man-caused-disaster, retrieved March 2, 2020. 5 Daniella Diaz, “Obama: Why I won't say 'Islamic terrorism',” CNN, September 29, 2016, available at https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/politics/obama-radical-islamic-terrorism-cnn-town-hall/index.html, retrieved March 2, 2020. 6 See Erin Miller, “Message from the Global Terrorism Database Manager,” National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), August 15, 2018, available at https://www.start.umd.edu/news/message-global-terrorism-database-manager, accessed on December 6, 2019. 7 See Erin Miller, “Message from the Global Terrorism Database Manager,” National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), August 15, 2018, available at https://www.start.umd.edu/news/message-global-terrorism-database-manager, accessed on December 6, 2019. 8 See Jessica Rivinius, “DoD awards START nearly $3 million to enhance critical terrorism datasets,” National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), January 31, 2019, 3 This project’s primary and preliminary audience is the current Administration, specifically the White House and its National Security Council (NSC), as well as the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Justice (DOJ), and State, given those Departments’ funding of TEVUS itself, the US Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) on which TEVUS is partially based, and START. III. Data and Variables This study evaluated the data and variables included in TEVUS, which, according to its homepage: …compiles behavioral, geographic, and temporal characteristics of extremist violence in the United States dating back to 1970. Through the portal, users are able to build search queries based on four data types including specific events, perpetrators of an act of terrorism or an extremist crime, groups, and/or court cases related to terrorism and extremist crime in the United States.9 After the 2017 update, TEVUS contained data on 2,936 terrorist incidents, 2,445 pre‐incident activities, and 262 extremist crimes in the United States, for a total of 5,643 events, and identified relationships between these events and individuals (3393), groups (392), and court cases (414), according to its User Guide.10 In addition, between 1970 and 2016, START counted 2,794 terrorist attacks resulting in a total of 3,659 deaths in the United States.11 By 2020, the total number of events associated with any date between January 18, 1964 (the earliest incident in the database) and May 6, 2020 (the date of the search) had grown to 6,090, including 3,613 incidents and 2,477 antecedent events, which in turn broke down into 1,069 preparatory and 1,408 ancillary events.12 Yet the number of individuals that came up in that search totaled only 1,096, the number of groups totaled only 266, and the number of court cases totaled only 131.13 That said, it is theoretically possible that the database in fact contains large numbers of individuals, groups, and court cases not linked to a particular date. The database is said to be intended for use by members of media, academia, private sector security professionals, law enforcement and intelligence analysts.14 The research was supported by the Resilient https://www.start.umd.edu/news/dod-awards-start-nearly-3-million-enhance-critical-terrorism-datasets, accessed on December 6, 2019. 9 See Liberty Day, et al., “Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) Portal User Guide,” College Park, MD: START, 2017, p. 1, available at https://tap.cast.uark.edu/assets/help/TEVUS_User_Guide.pdf, accessed July 14, 2018. 10 See Liberty Day, et al., “Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) Portal User Guide,” College Park, MD: START, 2017, p. 1, available at https://tap.cast.uark.edu/assets/help/TEVUS_User_Guide.pdf, accessed July 14, 2018.