A former Department of Homeland security analyst who left the government after conservatives pummeled his report warning of right-wing extremism's growing threat said that the weekend attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin didn't surprise him because "politics and personalities" stymie investigators from targeting non-Islamic militants.
"There are certain people in charge who made a decision and they stuck by that decision," said Daryl Johnson, who left DHS two years ago to form his own consulting company. "It's come at a cost and that’s the bottom line. Lives have been lost. Attacks continue to happen."
The latest attack, which left six people dead Sunday, was allegedly carried out by a racist skinhead named Wade Michael Page, who was killed by police. Tracked for more than a decade by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Army veteran was reportedly "looked at" by federal investigators, who apparently didn't follow through.
"Hindsight is always 20-20, but if DHS had a domestic terrorism unit today, we would definitely have sent out a warning, a threat assessment (to) Muslim-Americans being attacked. I know this was a Sikh temple, but he mistook them for Muslims," Johnson told The Huffington Post in an interview. Despite repeated reports of arson and other violence against mosques, "not a single intelligence report has warned these communities. ... Someone's not connecting the dots," Johnson said.
The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with...
