In Latest Intel Mutiny Against Trump, DHS Analysts Say White House Travel Ban Is Wrong
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Feb 25, 2017
Another day, another symbolic ‘mutiny’ has broken out against president Trump in the US intel community, this time involving the Department of Homeland Security.
Overnight, analysts at DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis found “insufficient evidence” that citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries included in President Donald Trump’s travel ban pose a terror threat to the United States. According to a draft document obtained by The Associated Press, citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria’s civil war started in 2011. The DHS report said its staff “assesses that country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.”
The White House on Friday dismissed it as politically motivated and poorly researched. Trump has previously cited terrorism concerns as the primary reason he signed the sweeping temporary travel ban in late January, which also halted the U.S. refugee program.
The DHS report was prepared in response to the White House request for intelligence assessments of terrorist threats posed by migration. Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the Homeland Security report said it was compiled on short notice, but that it relied on information that analysts routinely collect and examine in order to guide counterterrorism policies. The report was shared with agencies outside DHS.
The three-page report challenges Trump’s core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban. Of the other five nations, one person each from Iran, Sudan and Yemen was also involved in those terrorism cases, but none from Syria. It did not say if any were Libyan.
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