10 Failures of the U.S. Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” At the heart of the Team B II project is the belief that the Team A approach of our government to the Islamist threat, i.e. the received wisdom of the political, law enforcement, military and intelligence establishment, has proved to  be  a  serial  failure.  In fact, we would  be  hard-pressed to find many instances in which the government Team A actually got it right. Rather than attempt to get it right, the establishment seems content to double-down on failure.

What follows are the most egregious and glaring failures of our national security agencies’ approach. This whitepaper compiles a representative sample of ten cases, but easily a hundred or more cases could be presented. These examples range chronologically from  incidents that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to events that have happened within the past few weeks prior to the publication of this paper. From the first Bush 41 Administration to the current Obama Administration, the degree of failure is non-partisan. These cases also cover the gamut of federal agencies and departments, along with a few examples on the state and local level, showing that no segment of our government holds a monopoly on failure on this issue. The problem is universal.

Each of these cases is rooted in a fundamental failure by those government officials responsible to identify the nature of the threat. At their root these examples demonstrate what Team B II author and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has called “willful blindness.” For government officials who have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, however, their “willful blindness” is a breach of their professional duty to know, to understand and to respond.

It should also be noted that each of these cases has been brought to the public and elected officials’ attention before.   In most cases, no action was taken despite public outcry.  We hope that the winners of last week’s election will finally take responsibility for the nation’s security and take action against this threat of Shariah and Islamic terrorism.

Sources are provided so anyone—media, public, and policymaker—can understand the extent of the problem and investigate how our political, civic and religious leadership have allowed this threat to advance so far.