Joint Terrorism Task Force

thumb|The FBI–NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force moving evidence

A Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) is an American locally-based multi-agency partnership between various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism and terrorism-related crimes, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Justice. The first JTTFs were established in the 1980s and 1990s, with their numbers increasing dramatically after the September 11 attacks. In 1999, the United States had 26 JTTFs; shortly after the attacks, FBI director Robert Mueller instructed all FBI field offices to establish formal terrorism task forces. and approximately 200 JTTFs as of 2022.

JTTFs are led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice. and fell under the Operational Support Branch of the FBI Counterterrorism Division.

A 2013 report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law noted that "JTTFs tend to focus on investigative work while fusion centers are geared towards information collection and analysis, but their missions are intimately related and often overlapping"; JTTFs and fusion centers are sometimes "co-located" in the same physical working space. 2007 John F. Kennedy International Airport attack plot, 2009 plot by Najibullah Zazi targeting the New York City subway, Tarek Mehanna case, 2012 Jose Pimentel case, 2015 Usaama Rahim plot, Ahmad Khan Rahami's 2016 New York and New Jersey bombings, Mark Steven Domingo's failed 2019 plot to bomb a rally in Long Beach, California, and January 6 United States Capitol attack.

Before U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan murdered 14 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, the JTTF in San Diego had acquired two messages from Hasen to radical Islamic ideologue Anwar al-Aulaqi. Concerned by the content of the messages, the San Diego JTTF contacted FBI Headquarters and the JTTF based in the FBI's Washington Field Office. The Washington Field Office did a limited assessment and concluded that Hasan was not "involved in terrorist activities." In the meantime, agents in San Diego acquired 14 additional emails and messages (12 from Hasan to al-Aulaqi and two from al-Aulaqi to Hasen), but San Diego did not forward these communications to the D.C. JTTF, and neither JTTF took any action. Hasan committed the terrorist attack at Fort Hood several months later. A commission led by William H. Webster investigated the FBI's counterterrorism intelligence in the lead-up to the Fort Hood shooting, and released its final report in 2012. The Webster Commission found that the assessment of Hasan conducted by the FBI and JTTFs was "belated, incomplete, and rushed, primarily because of their workload" and an "exponential growth in the amount of electronically stored information." The report did, however, conclude that all the FBI and task force personnel "acted with good intent" and that their mistakes did not result "from intentional misconduct." The city rejoined the task force in 2015, with the City Council voting 3–2 to approve the assignment of two of its city's police officers to join the JTTF staff. In 2019, Portland again voted to leave the JTTF by a 3–2 vote.

Criticism

After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI began to establish or intensify working relationships with campus police departments; by January 2003, JTTFs included campus police officers from at least a dozen universities. This prompted some criticism from faculty and student organizations.

Documents obtained by various American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliates in 2004, 2005, and 2006 in response to Freedom of Information Act requests showed that JTTF investigations have focused on "peaceful advocacy organizations such as the School of the Americas Watch, Greenpeace, Catholic Workers Group, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Colorado, and the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice in Pennsylvania, among others." The ACLU has criticized these investigations, calling them "inappropriate" targeting of "peaceful political activity having nothing to do with terrorism."

In June 2008, according to City Pages, the Minneapolis-based JTTF approached a source to infiltrate vegan potlucks and eventually report back to authorities on organized protesting activities in preparation for the 2008 Republican National Convention in nearby Saint Paul.

In 2010, the Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report that criticized the FBI for investigating various domestic activist groups from 2001 to 2006, including PETA, the Thomas Merton Center, and the Catholic Worker. The OIG faulted the FBI for providing the OIG "with speculative, after-the-fact rationalizations for their prior decisions to open investigations that [OIG] did not find persuasive."

A 2013 report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law argued that, "The most significant oversight problem with assigning police officers to JTTFs is that there is no mechanism geared towards ensuring compliance with state and local laws. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that rules relating to how police officers should act in the event of a conflict between their federal and state/local obligations are sometimes unknown and almost always unclear."

Joint Terrorism Task Force

Criticism

See also

References