S. Hrg. 114–453 

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HEARING 

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SECOND SESSION 

JULY 6, 2016 

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S. Hrg. 114–453 

ISIS ONLINE: COUNTERING 

TERRORIST RADICALIZATION AND RECRUITMENT 

ON THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JULY 6, 2016 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the 

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( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

CHRISTOPHER R. HIXON, Staff Director 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN, Minority Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Minority Deputy Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

BENJAMIN C. GRAZDA, Hearing Clerk 

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

BRIAN CALLANAN, Staff Director and General Counsel 

MARGARET DAUM, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Portman .............................................................................................. 1 

Senator McCaskill ............................................................................................ 4 

Senator Ayotte .................................................................................................. 15 

Senator Lankford .............................................................................................. 17 

Senator Heitkamp ............................................................................................ 19 

Senator Baldwin ............................................................................................... 20 

Prepared statements: 

Senator Portman .............................................................................................. 45 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 2016 

Michael Steinbach, Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch, 

Federal Bureau of Investigation ......................................................................... 6 

George Selim, Director, Office of Community Partnerships, U.S. Department 

of Homeland Security, and Director, Interagency Task Force on Countering 

Violent Extremism ............................................................................................... 8 

Meagan M. LaGraffe, Chief of Staff to the Coordinator and Special Envoy, 

Global Engagement Center, U.S. Department of State .................................... 10 

Peter Bergen, Vice President, New America Foundation ..................................... 33 

Alberto M. Fernandez, Vice President, Middle East Media Research Institute . 35 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Bergen, Peter: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 33 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 64 

Fernandez, Alberto M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 35 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 82 

LaGraffe, Meagan M.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59 

Selim, George: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 54 

Steinbach, Michael: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 51 

APPENDIX 

Images submitted by Senator Portman ................................................................. 49 

Statement submitted for the Record by American-Arab Anti-Discrimination 

Committee ............................................................................................................. 95 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record 

Mr. Selim ........................................................................................................... 100 

Ms. LaGraffe ..................................................................................................... 109 

(1) 

ISIS ONLINE: COUNTERING 

TERRORIST RADICALIZATION AND 

RECRUITMENT ON THE INTERNET AND 

SOCIAL MEDIA 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 2016 

U.S. SENATE,

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:07 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Rob Portman, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Portman, Lankford, Ayotte, Sasse, Johnson, 

McCaskill, Tester, Baldwin, Heitkamp, and Carper. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN 

Senator PORTMAN. This hearing will come to order. We are here 

to talk about an incredibly important issue, a critical issue that affects the security of our country and the security of our families. 

When the Subcommittee first began planning this hearing, of 

course, we did not know it would fall just 3 weeks after the most 

deadly terrorist attack on American soil since September 11th. The 

evil terrorist attack in Orlando last month that targeted the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community was yet 

another reminder of the urgent need to reexamine and redouble 

our government’s efforts to combat violent Islamic jihadism both at 

home and abroad—and particularly to disrupt and ultimately destroy the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). There is 

no room for complacency on this issue. It warrants continuous scrutiny and oversight from Congress as our government’s understanding of the enemy evolves. And we will hear some about that 

today. 

ISIS, of course, specializes in savagery—violence inspired by delusions of sectarian conquest from another age. Yet it has effectively deployed modern technology of the information age to spread 

its propaganda and recruit killers to its cause. ISIS has developed 

a sophisticated information warfare capability. It has pioneered a 

distinctive strategy of targeted online recruitment, while disseminating sleek viral videos and messages, primarily from two media 

centers—Al-Hayat and Al-Furqan—through a constantly evolving 

set of online platforms. As the Federal Bureau or Investigation 

(FBI) Director James Comey has noted, even if we were able to 
2 

1The images referenced by Senator Portman appears in the Appendix on page 49. 

keep foreign terrorists physically out of the United States, online 

communication and social media allow ISIS to, as he said, ‘‘enter 

as a photon and radicalize somebody in Wichita, Kansas.’’ ISIS has 

weaponized online propaganda in a new and very lethal way. 

The damage wrought by that weapon is considerable: Orlando, 49 

dead; San Bernardino, 14; Fort Hood, 13 dead; the Boston Marathon, 3 dead and hundreds wounded. Each of these killers was reportedly radicalized to some degree by online jihadist content. And 

so many other attacks inspired by means of social media have, 

thank God, been thwarted. Indeed, experts tell us that throughout 

last year, social media played some part in the radicalization of all 

of the 60 people arrested in the United States for criminal acts in 

support of ISIS. Again, we may hear more about that today. Most 

recently, of course, the FBI has publicly stated that it is ‘‘highly 

confident’’ that the Orlando killer, Omar Mateen, was ‘‘radicalized 

at least in part through the Internet.’’ 

One longstanding aim of the ISIS propaganda machine is to attract foreign fighters to ISIS-controlled territory. Often ISIS tells 

its recruits tales of high adventure, joined with false narratives of 

Islamic extremism as a utopia. The bizarre images behind me over 

here,1 for example, appear in a ISIS film exhorting Muslims 

around the world to join the Islamic State; rather than show ISIS 

fighters for what they are—murderers of innocent victims who are 

themselves overwhelmingly Muslim—they are shown playing with 

laughing children and shopping in local marketplaces. 

Appeals like these have helped draw an estimated 30,000 foreign 

fighters, including at least 6,000 Westerners, to take up arms with 

ISIS. The good news is that the Defense Department (DOD) reports 

a significant decrease in the flow of foreign fighters to ISIS territory. At the same time, however, ISIS has increasingly shifted its 

propaganda efforts to inciting sympathizers to commit acts of terror 

in the West—including right here in the United States. 

Online propaganda, amplified by social media and Peer-2-Peer 

(P2P) communication, is now a key weapon in ISIS’ arsenal. We 

should, of course, resist oversimplifying the problem. Not all 

radicalization in the United States occurs online, and in-person 

interaction often reinforces the process. But unlike the more common European pattern of jihadist radicalization in clusters, neighborhoods, or in prison, the U.S. threat so far is predominantly that 

of the lone-wolf terrorist—an individual radicalized on his own, 

often in front of his computer screen with access to online jihadist 

content and videos that create a sort of virtual training camp. 

In addition to a clear military strategy and vigilant law enforcement efforts here at home, the United States and our allies need 

a more robust, coordinated strategy to expose the enemy’s lies, 

counter its false narratives, and encourage credible voices to tell 

the truth to those most susceptible or receptive to the ISIS lies. 

And that is true both of foreign and U.S. audiences. Although the 

ISIS online radicalization threat is well recognized, there is a range 

of opinion on how best to combat it, and the U.S. Government’s efforts are still in their early stages, as we will hear about today. 

Today we are going to examine the countermessaging initiatives 
3 

that show promise—and where the government has fallen short 

and could accelerate those efforts. 

In January, the State Department began a revamp of its counterterrorism messaging and coordination efforts with the launch of 

what is called the ‘‘Global Engagement Center’’—a better funded 

and, at least on paper, more empowered version of its predecessor, 

the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. We 

have had testimony in this room before regarding the Global Engagement Center, and we look forward to getting deeper into that 

today. 

Previous efforts to address this threat have struggled to overcome bureaucratic hurdles, unclear authorities, and a lack of interagency communication and a unity of effort. These structural deficiencies will continue to hinder future administrations—both Republican and Democrat—unless they are addressed. That is why I 

recently introduced legislation with Senator Murphy to help resolve 

some of these issues and the impact they have on our ability not 

only to counter propaganda and disinformation from extremist 

groups like ISIS but also the equally pressing challenges posed by 

some nation States and their sponsored propaganda. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also recently consolidated its countering-violent-extremism (CVE), efforts in a new 

office call the ‘‘Office of Community Partnerships (OCP).’’ Again, we 

have heard about this in this hearing room. We look forward to 

digging deeper today. We will be hearing more about these efforts, 

and I will be interested in exploring whether these initiatives are 

backed by sufficient authorities and sufficient resources. 

In addition, social media firms including Facebook and Twitter 

have stepped up their voluntary efforts to police their own terms 

of service, which prohibit incitements to terrorism. Twitter has 

closed more than 100,000 ISIS-linked accounts, for instance, and 

Facebook has actively worked to remove offending users while 

working in various ways to promote content to counter jihadist 

propaganda. These actions have helped to degrade ISIS’ social 

media megaphone, according to the Middle East Media Research 

Institute, but its online presence remains strong. 

So let us be very clear: To defeat ISIS, it is necessary to destroy 

the enemy where they live and prosper—in Iraq and in Syria and 

elsewhere—in their major cells around the world. Online countermessaging is no substitute for a clearly defined and vigorously executed military strategy. But a military strategy must be reinforced 

by a coordinated effort to undermine and disrupt the powerful 

disinformation spread by Islamic jihadists. Today we are going to 

hear from three Federal agencies involved in that effort, and I appreciate our three witnesses before us today. We are also going to 

hear from some distinguished experts who have been engaged on 

these issues for many years. 

With that, I will turn to my colleague Senator McCaskill for her 

opening statement. 
4 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL 

Senator MCCASKILL. Thank you, Chairman Portman. 

I think the topic of today’s hearing is extremely important. Figuring out how to stop the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 

(ISIL)-inspired attacks at home and abroad is vital to our national 

security, and it is a topic on which the Homeland Security and 

Governmental Affairs Committee has an important role. 

I would like to particularly note the efforts by Chairman Johnson 

and Ranking Member Carper who have held a number of oversight 

hearings in this Committee on this very topic and who have 

worked on relevant legislation during this Congress. 

This Subcommittee has a long and proud tradition of the finest 

investigative work Congress has ever done, from work on war profiteering and Mafia racketeering to the U.N. Oil for Food Program 

and the financial crisis. And contrary to Senator Rand Paul’s assertion at our cable hearing last month, during this Congress the 

Chairman and I have conducted many in-depth bipartisan investigations of government agencies as well as the private sector. 

But today’s hearing is not a typical PSI hearing. Because of the 

short timeframe of planning for this hearing, we were unable to 

speak with some of the people who I would like to see participate 

in our discussion: social media companies, local law enforcement 

groups, and those, importantly, directly involved on the ground 

with the pilot programs that we are currently funding through the 

Department of Homeland Security. Having the opportunity to hear 

from these other groups is especially important because, as today’s 

government witnesses will point out, we still have a lot to learn 

about how to best counter the messages of violent extremism in 

this country from ISIL and otherwise. 

The efforts being undertaken by the Department of Homeland 

Security’s Office of Community Partnerships and the Department 

of State’s Global Engagement Center are just getting off the 

ground. I hope to hear today what their plans are; how they are 

specifically working with the private sector, whether through 

grants, contracts, or other agreements; and how we can best support them going forward, while also keeping taxpayers and our 

oversight obligations in mind. This is a chance for Congress to do 

oversight on the front end rather than the back end after something has already gone wrong and massive amounts of taxpayer 

dollars maybe have been wasted. 

Further, as we will hear from our witnesses today, it is absolutely vital that any effort our government undertakes to counter 

violent extremism is done in partnership with and with the full engagement of the Muslim community. After all, this was one of the 

core rationales for establishing the DHS Office of Community Partnerships in the first place. In order to combat ISIL’s propaganda, 

we must have a healthy, inclusive dialogue with Muslim and other 

community leaders as well as ensure that resources are available 

to families and friends that may have concerns about loved ones 

who have become attracted to extremist rhetoric. 

Unfortunately, some of the rhetoric we hear from politicians, including the national leader of the Republican Party and their presumptive nominee for President, is completely and utterly at odds 

with this policy approach. Instead of inclusivity, the presumptive 
5 

Republican candidate for President is proposing that we bar all 

Muslims from immigrating to the United States, even those who 

are trying to escape the horrors of ISIL abroad. He also campaigns 

on the suggestion that the entire Muslim community is complicit 

in violent extremism, going so far as to suggest that Muslim neighborhoods must be ‘‘policed’’ and subjected to special surveillance for 

no other reason than their religious belief. 

Not only is this strategy in opposition to recommendations from 

every expert that our staffs have spoken with, it is also in complete 

conflict with American principles and values. And, most importantly, it would actually make the United States of America less 

safe. 

This extremist rhetoric plays right into ISIL’s hands and supports its propaganda’s key message that this country hates Muslims, making it more difficult for the government partners we have 

today in this country to work with the Muslim community to combat extremism. 

Finally, as the mass shootings we hear about on a far too regular 

basis remind us, we also need to make sure guns stay out of the 

hands of terrorists and mentally unstable individuals from all political and religious backgrounds. This is a simple, common-sense 

idea that nearly all Americans support. 

Regrettably, we are still not ready to pass small steps, reasonable and sensible, to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and 

making sure terrorists are not exploiting the online and gun show 

loopholes for background checks. So if we really want to counter 

violent extremism, we also need to spend less time stirring up antiMuslim rhetoric and more time working on these issues and working with the majority of the Muslims who are peaceful in this country and around the world. 

Although the work of the agencies represented at this hearing is 

important and is one part of the strategy to defeat extremism in 

this country, there are steps we can take immediately to make us 

safer starting today. 

I thank the witnesses for being here, and I look forward to their 

testimony. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Senator McCaskill. 

We will now call our first panel of witnesses for this afternoon’s 

hearing. 

Michael Steinbach is the Executive Assistant Director of the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Previously, Mr. Steinbach held multiple positions with the FBI, including serving in Afghanistan as the FBI’s deputy on-scene commander for operations and as the assistant section chief for international terrorism operations in the Counterterrorism Division. 

Thank you for being here. 

George Selim some of you know from his exposure to the Committee through his work at the Department of Homeland Security. 

He is Director of the Office of Community Partnerships at DHS. He 

also leads the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force. Prior to 

his time at DHS, Mr. Selim worked at the White House on the National Security Council staff as Director for Community Policing, 

where he was responsible for policies related to domestic and global 

security threats. Before the White House, Mr. Selim was a Senior 
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Steinbach appears in the Appendix on page 51. 

Policy Adviser at DHS’ Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. 

Thank you for being here. 

Meagen LaGraffe is the Chief of Staff for the Global Engagement 

Center at the State Department, which was developed to disrupt 

and undermine extremism propaganda, as we talked about. Prior 

to joining the State Department, she was Chief of Staff for Special 

Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Ms. LaGraffe previously served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Homeland Security and as an aide to Senator Ted Kennedy. 

I appreciate all of you for being here this afternoon and look forward to your testimony. It is the custom of this Subcommittee to 

swear in all of our witnesses, so at this time I would like you to 

stand and raise your right hand. Please repeat after me. Do you 

swear that the testimony you are about to give before the Subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I do. 

Mr. SELIM. I do. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. I do. 

Senator PORTMAN. Great. Let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative. And to our witnesses, all of 

your written testimony will be printed in the record in its entirety. 

I would ask you to keep your comments to 5 minutes so that we 

will have a good opportunity for some questions and answers. Mr. 

Steinbach. 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL STEINBACH,1 EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT 

DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY BRANCH, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION 

Mr. STEINBACH. Good afternoon, Chairman Portman, Ranking 

Member McCaskill, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you 

for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the challenge of combating the widespread reach of terrorist propaganda. 

Preventing terrorist attacks remains the FBI’s top priority. In today’s hyperconnected world, this mission is tightly intertwined 

with technology and the ability it provides to reach out to anyone, 

anywhere, anytime. 

Just as we use technology throughout the course of our day, so 

do the bad guys. The widespread use of technology propagates the 

persistent terrorist message to attack U.S. interests, whether in 

the homeland or abroad. 

Many foreign terrorist organizations use various digital communication platforms in an effort to reach individuals they believe 

may be susceptible and sympathetic to the message. But no group 

has been as successful at drawing people into its message as ISIL. 

ISIL’s extensive reach through the Internet and social media is 

most concerning as the group continues to aggressively employ the 

latest technology as part of its nefarious strategy. 

ISIL’s messaging blends both officially endorsed sophisticated 

propaganda with that of informal peer-to-peer recruitment through 

digital communication platforms. No matter the format, the mes-
7 

sage of radicalization spreads faster than we imagined just a few 

years ago. Like never before, social media allows for overseas terrorists to reach into our local communities to target our citizens as 

well as to radicalize and recruit. 

From a threat perspective, we are concerned with three areas: 

those who are inspired by terrorist propaganda and feel empowered 

to act out and support; those who are directed by members of foreign terrorist organizations to commit a specific directed act in support of a group’s ideology or cause; and those who are enabled to 

act after gaining inspiration from extremist propaganda and communicating with members of foreign terrorist organizations who 

provide guidance on method or target. 

A bad actor can fall into any of the above categories or span the 

spectrum, but in the end the result is the same: innocent men, 

women, and children killed, and families, friends, and whole communities left to struggle in the aftermath. 

To identify and disrupt these bad actors, we must overcome two 

challenges: volume and encryption. 

The issue of volume is no surprise to those of you who have 

heard Director Comey’s remarks over the last year and a half. The 

digital world knows no bounds. We do not just look at a person’s 

physical associates, but now we must, too, look to their digital connections and from that assess who is a passive connection versus 

an active connection. 

The digital world has fostered a global neighborhood of new people to meet and new ideas to follow. It is up to us to sort through 

the noise and identify those signals that are most concerning. Sifting through the numerous online monikers and communication 

platforms is not a light lift. It requires both technical capabilities 

and eyes-on analysis. This takes time—time we do not always 

have. 

Not only do we face the overwhelming volume of information we 

have uncovered; the second challenge is the lack of accessible information when a person is using encrypted communications. 

Encryption takes many forms. Encryption hides stored digital communications, sometimes it masks the trail of communications, and 

at other times it erases the content. In many cases, we have seen 

concerning individuals connect via publicly available communication platforms and then switch to private encrypted applications. 

These apps make conversations more secret than ever before. We 

know that bad actors have used encrypted communication platforms prior to conducting attacks, as was the case in Garland, 

Texas, in May 2015, where to this day we still do not know the content of the pre-attack text messaging. 

To successfully combat today’s threats, we must adapt and confront these challenges. We are not in this alone. We rely heavily 

on the strength of our Federal, State, and local partners as well as 

our international partnerships. The key part of these partnerships 

includes an emphasis on streamlining information sharing. In today’s threat environment, it is not sufficient to say information 

sharing is important. It is the speed of information sharing which 

is critical to our success. Law enforcement and the U.S. intelligence 

community (IC) will continue to utilize the Joint Terrorism Task 

Forces (JTTF) and the fusion centers to do just that. There is not 
8 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Selim appears in the Appendix on page 54. 

a body of people more unified and more dedicated to the singular 

mission of protecting our communities. Having all member agencies 

collocated, working the same threats, and bringing their agency’s 

skills and resources collectively to work the investigations is powerful. We must now work to develop the same success internationally. 

Chairman Portman, Ranking Member McCaskill, and members 

of the Subcommittee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify concerning terrorists’ use of the Internet and social media. I am happy 

to answer questions you may have. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Steinbach. Mr. Selim. 

TESTIMONY OF GEORGE SELIM,1 DIRECTOR, OFFICE FOR 

COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, AND DIRECTOR, INTERAGENCY TASK 

FORCE ON COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM 

Mr. SELIM. Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairman Portman, 

Ranking Member McCaskill, and distinguished Members of the 

Subcommittee, for the opportunity to testify here today. I welcome 

the opportunity to appear before you to discuss priorities and key 

actions that the Department of Homeland Security is conducting to 

address ISIL and other terrorist’s attempts at online recruitment 

and radicalization to violence. 

I have considerable personal and professional equities in protecting our homeland. By way of background, I have spent over a 

decade as a civil servant at the Department of Homeland Security. 

I have also served as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and on the 

National Security Council staff at the White House. In addition, I 

am a commissioned officer in the United States Navy Reserve and 

view the call to public service as one of the greatest honors our 

country offers all people, regardless of race, religion, or nationality. 

As Secretary Johnson has stated, we are in a new phase of the 

global terrorist threat. The threat today is more decentralized, 

more complex, and difficult to detect. We have moved from a world 

of terrorist-directed attacks to a world of increasingly terrorist-inspired attacks. ISIL and other terrorist groups are turning to the 

Internet to inspire lone offenders. This is a pattern we saw last December in San Bernardino and most recently in Orlando. 

By their nature, attacks involving self-radicalized individuals are 

harder for intelligence and law enforcement officers to detect, and 

they could occur with almost little or no warning. So what are we 

doing about it? 

The threat from homegrown violent extremism requires going beyond traditional counterterrorism approaches and focusing not just 

on mitigation efforts but also on preventing and intervening in the 

process of radicalization. This prevention framework is known as 

‘‘countering violent extremism,’’ or the acronym CVE. 

In 2015, Secretary Johnson announced the creation of the Office 

for Community Partnerships at DHS. This is the office that I lead 

and is focused on the Department’s efforts in countering violent extremism and working to build effective partnerships with communities across the country for that explicit purpose. Our CVE efforts 

depend on working in a unified and cohesive manner across the 
9 

U.S. Government. That is why we have established the CVE Task 

Force, currently headquartered at DHS, to organize all CVE Efforts 

across the U.S. domestically. This new task force could not be possible without the strong partnership from the Department of Justice who have appointed my Deputy Director and several key staff 

on the task force. 

A unified efforts is necessary given the threat environment we 

face today. Terrorist groups such as ISIL have undertaken a deliberate strategy of using social media to reach individuals susceptible 

to their message and recruit and inspire them to violence. The Office of Community Partnerships and the CVE Task Force depend 

on our stakeholder partners to reach these individuals before they 

become radicalized. 

Our partners in Federal, State, and local governments and law 

enforcement, civic and faith-based organizations, educators, social 

service organizations, mental health providers, and the private sector are essential to this mission. Our efforts are federally driven, 

but they are locally focused. Our goal is to empower credible voices 

within communities that are targeted by violent extremists. 

Research has proven that young people, Millennials, victims of 

terrorists, and community-based organizations are the most credible voices to discourage those in danger of being radicalized to violence, and our role in the Federal Government should be to give 

those community partners the tools and support to raise their 

voices. Some of those tools can be provided by key technology companies. We are engaging with the private sector to encourage efforts to counter ISIL online as well as other groups. 

The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of 

Justice, including Secretary Johnson and Attorney General Lynch, 

have also engaged with social media industry representatives in 

the past year-plus. One of our efforts, the Peer-2-Peer Challenging 

Extremism competition, empowers university students around the 

world to develop their own authentic narratives to counter violent 

extremist recruitment through social media. 

Facebook became the first technology partner to join the Peer-2- 

Peer project in the summer of 2015. Facebook’s participation has 

allowed the initiative to expand to many more international 

schools. In addition to the Peer-2-Peer program, the CVE Task 

Force will include a dedicated communications and digital strategy 

team. We hope to continue to work with the private sector to ensure our country’s most transformative technologies and innovations can be harnessed to promote and enable civil society messages of tolerance, inclusion, and pluralism as a means of degrading the appeal of the ISIL brand. 

Our efforts to develop locally driven, prevention-based CVE 

frameworks incorporate both online and in-person efforts. Thank 

you for the $10 million of CVE grant funding that Congress has appropriated and the fiscal year (FY) 2016 Omnibus Appropriations 

Act. We can now take our CVE efforts across the country to the 

next level. 

Just this morning, Secretary Johnson announced that just today 

the fiscal year 2016 CVE grant program has been officially 

launched and the Notice of Funding has been issued this morning. 

This is the first Federal assistance program devoted exclusively to 
10 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Lagraffe appears in the Appendix on page 59. 

providing local communities with resources to counter violent extremism in our homeland. This grant program was developed by 

the DHS Office of Community Partnerships in conjunction with our 

partners at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

This grant opportunity is an important part of our ongoing work 

to build a comprehensive CVE model that incorporates both cyberspace and community spaces. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today 

and for your continued support at DHS. I look forward to any questions you and the Committee may have. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Selim. Ms. LaGraffe. 

TESTIMONY OF MEAGEN M. LAGRAFFE,1 CHIEF OF STAFF TO 

THE COORDINATOR AND SPECIAL ENVOY, GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member McCaskill, 

Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify and answer your questions today. 

I am here to discuss our government’s international efforts to 

counter violent extremist propaganda, online, in social media, as 

well as in traditional media. This is a critical effort, especially 

when it comes to our whole-of-government efforts to degrade and 

destroy ISIL because it is clear that, to our enemy, the information 

battlespace is as important as the physical battlespace. 

Prior to March of this year, I served as the Chief of Staff in the 

Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at the Pentagon. I feel confident that our U.S. military and coalition has significant capabilities to eliminate militants from the battlefield and 

is doing so each and every day. Daesh has already lost nearly half 

of its territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria. 

At the same time, we must also confront the messages that these 

groups push out daily to recruit people and inspire them to violence. Addressing radicalization to violence and recruitment in the 

information battlespace is a key piece of any serious, meaningful, 

and enduring approach to countering violent extremism long-term. 

To meet that challenge, President Obama signed an Executive 

Order in March which created the Global Engagement Center, revamping our countermessaging strategy. 

Prioritizing countermessaging is nothing new in the national security arena, and, in fact, it is not even new in this administration. 

The Center’s predecessor organization, the Center for Strategic 

Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), focused on al-Qaeda 

propaganda. But while al-Qaeda was producing videos that took 

months to get out, our adversary today is using social media in 

ways not seen before. 

The quality and volume of violent extremist messaging has advanced dramatically since our predecessor organization was established 5 years ago, or even from the time when Daesh began metastasizing into its current form 3 years ago. 

The Global Engagement Center is charged with coordinating integrating, and synchronizing all government communications di-
11 

rected at foreign audiences abroad used to diminish the influence 

of violent extremists. 

The Center is designed to be as agile and as adaptive as our adversary. We are armed with new authorities, new personnel, and 

cutting-edge technology. 

The Center is using state-of-the-art digital analytics tools from 

the intelligence community, from the Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency (DARPA), and from the private sector. These tools 

and technologies help us tailor our messages to our audience as 

well as measure those messages’ effectiveness. 

Importantly, the President’s Executive Order grants the Center 

expanded hiring authorities as well, allowing us to hire leaders and 

experts from the private sector to join us in this effort. 

When fully operational, the Center will comprise staff from the 

private sector as well as the Departments of Defense, Treasury, 

Justice, State, Homeland Security, and the intelligence community. 

Working across these agencies, the Center is already identifying efficiencies and opportunities in the messaging space. 

Even more substantial than changes to personnel or to budgets, 

the Center is taking a fundamentally new approach in the information battlespace. We have pivoted toward partner-driven messaging 

and partner-driven content. While the U.S. Government has a good 

message to tell, we are not always the most credible voice to tell 

it. 

Instead, there is an abundance of credible and diverse voices 

across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, their governments, nongovernmental organization (NGO’s), and civil society groups, all of 

whom we are now leveraging in this fight. We are not publicizing 

who many of our partners are, of course, so that we do not undermine their credibility, but I would like to give you one example. 

In Kosovo, we recently completed a training program with local 

NGO’s, designed to amplify credible voices there. We ran workshops to train local influencers about designing and executing their 

own messaging campaigns. Kosovo is a compelling location for this 

kind of work because it has not only the highest number of foreign 

terrorist fighters in Europe, it also has an active NGO community 

focused on this very issue. 

Using a partners-first, data-driven approach, the Center is particularly focused on changing audience behavior rather than changing attitudes and beliefs. While we may have less success altering 

what an individual thinks, we can certainly be more effective at 

preventing individuals from turning those beliefs into violence. 

I appreciate this Committee’s oversight and continued support as 

we revamped our fight against violent extremism in the information battlespace. As you all know, any long-term success in this 

space cannot focus exclusively on killing terrorists. We also have to 

stem the recruitment of new ones. 

Thank you very much for your time, and I am happy to answer 

any questions. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Ms. LaGraffe, and good point. And 

I appreciate the testimony from all three witnesses and look forward to the opportunity to get into a more in-depth discussion in 

questions and answers. 
12 

We have one business item we need to dispose of here, so I apologize for this interruption. We are going to take a quick break and 

report a nomination to the floor. I want to thank the Chairman of 

the full Committee, Senator Johnson, who is with us here today, 

for his courtesy in providing us this hearing room today for our important hearing. This will just take a minute, so everybody please 

keep their seats. 

With that, the Subcommittee will be in recess subject to the call 

of the Chair. 

[Recess.] 

This hearing is now back in session, and, again, I thank the witnesses very much for their testimony, and we look forward to having a good back-and-forth. 

We have a number of Members here, so I am going to be very 

short, knowing that I am going to be around until the end of this 

hearing and have a chance to ask you questions. But let me just 

start, if I could, with you, Mr. Steinbach, just very briefly. 

Your boss, the Director of the FBI, said last October that he believes the main threat facing the United States comes from lonewolf terrorists who are radicalized online. Is that still the FBI’s assessment? 

Mr. STEINBACH. Yes, sir, it is. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you. I think that is important to lay 

that as a predicate for our questions. Senator McCaskill. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I just also have some questions for Ms. 

LaGraffe. Part of the problem we face from a messaging standpoint 

is the efforts of our government to message and realizing that our 

government is probably not the right messenger if we are going to 

combat an ideology that sees our country as part of the problem, 

not part of the solution. They see that wrongly, I might add, but 

nonetheless that is what they see. 

There is a built-in bias against truthfulness about anything that 

comes from the U.S. Government. So to get around that, I understand that you and your predecessor are developing partnerships 

with voices perceived as more credible to disseminate the counter 

violent extremism message. What I am trying to understand is how 

this works from an oversight perspective. Are we pushing money 

out to groups? Are we sending them checks? Are we in a contractual relationship with them as contractors? How is this actually 

working in terms of how money is being passed along to messengers that we think would be more effective? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Thank you, Senator, for your question. You are 

absolutely correct. The Global Engagement Center is focused on 

building a network of partners around the world, and as I mentioned, those partnerships take many forms. We partner with foreign governments; we partner with NGO’s; we partner with local 

civil society groups as well. 

With that in mind, the partnerships we currently have, we use 

a variety of different funding streams in order to make sure that 

these groups are empowered and armed with the right tools and resources to get these messages out. For example, if I may, we have 

a foreign government partnership called the ‘‘Sawab Center.’’ It is 

a joint message—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. UAE. 
13 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Exactly, and that is a partnership where we have 

provided technical assistance and staff so that the government can 

then provide their own content and their own messaging across 

nearly two dozen countries in the region. That is one example. 

Senator MCCASKILL. That is a government. But aren’t we also 

partnering with private groups and NGO’s? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. We absolutely do. 

Senator MCCASKILL. How do we get them money? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. I think one of the benefits of having the Global 

Engagement Center as an interagency group, we work very closely 

with not only our colleagues within the State Department but more 

broadly within the broader interagency to identify funding streams 

for potential projects and shared priorities. So the Global Engagement Center is not a grantmaking organization. We work very 

closely with the interagency to identify appropriate funding 

streams. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So the money you are getting is not going 

to partners? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Not exclusively. I would like to get you the numbers of how exactly our budget breaks down in terms of what 

money we give out via contracts. But, again, the Global Engagement Center itself does not offer grants. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I understand, but I am trying to figure out 

how we are funding this, and we cannot get a straight answer. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. OK. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Our staff has tried. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. OK. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I have watched money go for good causes, 

and it disappeared. And I am trying to get a handle on how we are 

actually doing this. I mean, it all sounds great, and I want it to 

be great. But I also know that if we are not paying attention as 

to who we are paying and how, that is how money walks away. 

Now, the second part of my question is performance metrics. You 

said you were data driven. Do you have data you can share with 

us? Have you set up performance metrics for these various groups 

that we are partnering with on messaging? How are we ever going 

to figure out if what they are doing is effective? Because it is very 

hard to quantify what you prevent. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. We are currently building our data analytics 

shop so that we cannot only do measuring on the front end of any 

messaging campaign to identify what particular messages might 

resonate with a particular audience, but also on the back end of 

any campaign measure our effectiveness. So thus far, what that 

looks like is making sure we know the potential reach for a particular message and how that message plays out over time. 

For each campaign, we sort of build in, we bake in an expectation for analysis on the back end so we can continue to refine our 

messages each and every time we—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well, I would love to see the data. I would 

love to see how that data is actually being set up and how it is 

being collected. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. OK. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So there are two assignments: one, how are 

we funding these efforts, where is the money coming from, who is 
14 

getting it, and what form is it taking; and, second, the data that 

will help us figure out if this money is doing any good. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Absolutely. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Thank you. 

Senator PORTMAN. Senator Johnson. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. LaGraffe, you talked about the progress we have been making on the ground in Iraq and Syria, 50 percent territory reclaimed 

in Iraq, 20 percent in Syria. And yet the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Brennan testified before the Senate Intelligence 

Committee a couple of weeks ago and said that ISIS remains a formidable, resilient, and largely cohesive enemy and that we have 

not reduce their terrorist capability and global reach. Do you agree 

with that assessment? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Senator, I can only speak from the messaging 

perspective, and if we are using the number of foreign terrorist 

fighters as a measure of efficacy of policy, I would say that we see 

promising signs of having an effect in the messaging space against 

the enemy in Iraq and Syria. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Steinbach, do you agree with CIA Director Brennan’s assessment that we have not reduced their terrorism 

capability and global reach? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I agree with that assessment completely. While 

we have reduced the space in Syria in Iraq, their reach globally 

with their affiliates is just as devastating, if not more so. 

Chairman JOHNSON. We talk about lone wolves. Now we are 

starting to see wolf packs, correct? We have witnessed not only the 

inspiration, these attacks being inspired by ISIS, but now we have 

evidence of them actually directing, for example, the attack in 

Brussels and probably in Istanbul. Is that correct? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I think ISIL has for some time now focused on 

an external piece, which includes directed attacks in Europe and 

in other places, so yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Do you believe that increased activity in the 

22 months since President Obama declared our goal toward ISIS 

was to degrade and defeat them? That was 22 months ago. Have 

they increased their ability using social media? 

Mr. STEINBACH. So I think from my perspective—and I stated 

this before—that as we squeeze ISIL in space in Syria and Iraq, 

they will seek to reach out and lash out where they can. So my perspective is that as we have success on the ground in Syria and 

Iraq, we may see a more dangerous world in the short term because they will try to message that to their advantage by conducting attacks worldwide. 

Chairman JOHNSON. The analogy I have been using is that of a 

beehive. Let us say you have a beehive of killer bees in your back 

yard. I think the solution is obvious. You take out the hive, you kill 

the bees. But what we have been doing is we have been poking it 

with a stick. We have maybe been damaging the hives, but the 

problem is we have stirred up the bees, and they are leaving the 

hive, and they are setting up new hives in Libya, Afghanistan, and 

other places. Correct? Is that a relatively accurate analogy and assessment? 
15 

Mr. STEINBACH. I would say that they are definitely pushing out 

a campaign to develop more affiliates, like you mentioned, all those 

places you mentioned—Afghanistan, Indonesia, and other places. 

They continue to expand globally. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So we have not reduced their capability. 

There was an interesting article in the New York Times last week, 

a pretty good analysis that said since September 2014, again, the 

month that President Obama declared our goal to defeat ISIS, 

there have been 97 ISIS-inspired or—directed attacks outside of 

Syria and Libya—or Syria and Iraq, over 1,200 innocents killed in 

those attacks. That is a pretty frightening assessment, is it not? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I would agree. Yes, sir. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I really have no further questions. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Chairman Johnson. 

Senator Carper has left us. Senator Ayotte. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AYOTTE 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you, Chairman. 

Mr. Steinbach, to the point that Senator Johnson was making, as 

we look at the metastasizing essentially of ISIS, you see them in 

Libya, Philippines, Sinai, Somalia, and branching out in other 

areas. And then you see the pattern of attacks. You see Istanbul, 

Brussels, Paris, Saudi Arabia, obviously our own country, San 

Bernardino, Orlando. Aren’t they just expanding the battlefield? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I think they are expanding the battlefield, but 

I think they are doing it because of the lack of success they felt in 

Syria and Iraq. And I think they will continue—if we squeeze them 

in Syria and Iraq, they will continue to seek other places where 

ungoverned space or places where they can thrive and conduct attacks. 

Senator AYOTTE. And what I wanted to ask you, in terms of 

the tools that the FBI needs, as we look at the use of 

social media—and you talked about this a little bit in your testimony—as we look at the use of the Internet, some of the basic 

tools, I would imagine that in every terrorism investigation now 

not only in the preventative context of knowing what is happening 

online, but also, unfortunately, when we have had an event, it is 

critical that the FBI also has those tools in advance to prevent terrorism attacks and if we have one, God forbid, that you can investigate them. And, recently, on the Senate floor, we had a vote on 

an amendment offered by Senator McCain which would have given 

the FBI National Security Letter authority with respect to electronic communications, transactional records, and terrorism investigations. And, unfortunately, that vote failed, as I understand, 58– 

38. 

How important is it that you have that ability to do that? Because having been a prosecutor myself, and was surprised to learn 

of what I understand was an oversight in leaving this language out 

of the statute, that we could not even get that passed on the Senate floor, because in your basic online investigation of a child predator, I could get that information as a prosecutor in a criminal 

case. And right now regarding the FBI, we are making it difficult 

for you to get it in a terrorism investigation. So how important is 

it that we give you tools like that? 
16 

Mr. STEINBACH. So as you stated, ma’am, I think that the world 

that we live in today, the threat starts online in many cases. So 

we need a robust set of tools to focus on the online space. We need 

open-source tools as well as high-side data sets. We need to lay 

those over each other to fully identify what we have. Tools like the 

National Security Letter (NSLs) and the ECTR fix allow us to very 

agilely identify not only the bad guy but the bad guy’s network. 

Twenty years ago, we had telephones, and you looked at the telephone, you looked at the to-from to see who the bad guy was communicating with. Now, in today’s world, with the spread of social 

media, with the spread of the online threat, we need those tools in 

the online space to identify who the bad guys are contacting. 

Senator AYOTTE. And right now essentially where you are is you 

can get the telephone records, you can get the financial records, but 

you cannot get the basic Internet records—which do not involve 

content, by the way, but that I could get if I were prosecuting a 

basic criminal case. So I hope we take this back up because I know 

that this is Director Comey’s No. 1 priority, and, this is one where 

it is kind of hard to believe in the context that we live in that the 

Senate did not pass this. So I hope we do this again and take it 

back up and pass it in light of what we are hearing today. 

I wanted to also follow-up, as you think about the tools that you 

need, and looking at what happened recently in Orlando, can you 

share with us at all in terms of how the Internet played in the terrorism attack that occurred in Orlando and what lessons we have 

learned in terms of investigative tools that would be helpful in the 

context of that? And also in San Bernardino? I think one of the 

challenges we are facing here is we obviously want to engage people online to prevent this, but also have good intelligence up front 

if an attack is coming to be able to stop it before it happens. 

Mr. STEINBACH. So I think the challenge we face today is that 

we start in a place where people are passively consuming content, 

which, of course, is not against the law. So our challenges, as I 

mentioned in my opening comments, is to look through the volume 

of individuals who are online consuming, passively consuming this 

material, and look for those individuals who are doing more than 

just passively consuming that online content who have expressed 

an intent to do harm. 

So when we go through this volume, we have to have tools that 

help us identify trends, patterns, so that we can then lay over our 

deeper-dive analytics to reach into those particular cases, to figure 

out what the noise is and what the signals are, to identify the subjects away from just people exercising their constitutional right to 

consume and repost material. That is the challenge we are in, and 

the tools we have are a set of tools that will need to be continually 

expanding as technology changes. We need to, on a regular basis, 

reassess exactly what tools we have, both in open source and on 

the high side, and make sure they are robust enough to address the 

threat. 

Senator AYOTTE. My time is up, but just to be clear, the individual in Orlando was consuming this type of information, as I understand it. 

Mr. STEINBACH. The individual in Orlando was consuming material, yes. 
17 

Senator PORTMAN. Senator Lankford. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. LaGraffe, can I pick up where Senator McCaskill left off on 

this? It is extremely important to us to get some kind of data analytics, the metrics for how the different outside sites are evaluated, 

and we are all for trying to get multiple hooks in the water to be 

able to help other people, help us with our messaging and to make 

it clear. Trying to determine where those dollars go and how they 

are being well spent by the taxpayer is extremely important. 

With that, you had mentioned a lot about outside sources and 

mentioned a lot about—I am sorry, a little bit about some of the 

things the State Department is doing specifically. I want to ask you 

about how you are evaluating the ‘‘Think Again Turn Away’’ Twitter page and some of those internal sites that the State Department is running, compare that to some of the outside—because my 

understanding that ‘‘Think Again Turn Away’’ site is about a $5 

million investment to be able to do that Twitter page. So help me 

understand value in metrics and evaluation. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. ‘‘Think Again Turn Away’’ was a product that 

was produced by our predecessor organization. We no longer use 

‘‘Think Again Turn Away.’’ As I mentioned in my opening statement—— 

Senator LANKFORD. Why? Because that had to be a metric-driven 

piece, too, that helps us understand how things were evaluated. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. As I mentioned in my opening statement, when 

the CSCC, our predecessor organization, was stood up, it was designed to fight a different enemy in a different time. We as the 

Global Engagement Center (GEC) are now fighting a more agile 

enemy, Daesh, in a social media space. So we have moved away 

from some of the direct online engagement of our predecessor organization. 

I think that that is a reflection of the kind of analysis we are trying to build into our organization. Inevitably, there will be things 

that we do not do well and we want to adjust, be agile, move on, 

and get better. 

Senator LANKFORD. So tell me the process of how you evaluated, 

for instance, that site, other sites, things that were internal, to 

make the decision we are going to turn this off and not do this, we 

are going to turn in a different direction? Tell me about the process 

of how that decision is made. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. For the Global Engagement Center, when we are 

preparing our proposed messaging, as I mentioned, we do analytics 

on the front end to assess the target audience susceptibility as well 

as doing analytics on the back end of every campaign to see the 

reach and resonance of what we are doing. 

Senator LANKFORD. That will help us. We want to get a look at 

some of those analytics and see how things are evaluated so we can 

also participate just in that conversation, just as good stewards 

with it. 

Mr. Steinbach, good to see you again. Thank you for all your 

work. Thank you for all of your work in this area, by the way. 
18 

Mr. Steinbach, I want to just run back through the past 5 days 

and some of the things that are happening internationally and here 

in the United States, because social media played a part in all of 

these, or at least had some connection with an ISIS threat. 

In Indonesia, in the last 24 hours, in Saudi Arabia, 48 hours ago, 

three different, separate attacks there. In Iraq, 250 people dead in 

one attack in Baghdad. In Bangladesh, 20 people at least that we 

know of that are dead. And then, on Friday, something that I know 

you did not miss but a lot of Americans missed, the FBI picked up 

a gentleman names Mohamed Jalloh, and he was a person plotting 

an attack similar to a Fort Hood attack here in the United States 

that seems to be self-radicalized online by watching videos of 

Anwar al-Awlaki. That could have been a very different day for 

America, Friday, but the FBI was engaged. 

What can we learn just about the engagement of that particular 

or things like what happened with Mohamed Jalloh and ways that 

social media or outside sources help influence him? 

Mr. STEINBACH. Thank you, sir. So as I mentioned in my opening 

remarks, in general, we have three types of attacks—or three types 

of plots: directed, enabled, and inspired. And, of course, the largest 

threat to the United States is that HVE subset, the group that is 

inspired or enabled to conduct an attack and that are, quite frankly, the hardest because they are not communicating. So as Director 

Comey has spoken in the past, we have roughly 1,000 of these HVE 

cases across the country. They are difficult at times, and we need 

to use social media to the extent possible. As was mentioned, the 

majority of our cases last year, the arrest, all had significant aspects in social media. Many of the cases began with an anonymous 

online moniker, and so we need to understand that that is the dynamic of the world we live in. 

So as we focus on the HVE threat, we need to focus on the online 

space so that we can properly identify and predicate investigations 

and then use all the tools that we are afforded, all the tools in our 

tool chest to quickly act on individuals who have the intent and 

stop them before they obtain that capability to conduct an attack. 

Senator LANKFORD. So a way to be able to guess at this point for 

the FBI, cases like Mohamed Jalloh, that have happened in the 

past year where the FBI learns about this individual, selfradicalized online, preparing to actually carry out an attack, and 

then there is an engagement by the FBI. 

Mr. STEINBACH. So I think the most concerning trend that we 

have seen in the past year when we identify these individuals online is the speed with which they mobilize. So that flash-to-bang effect you have heard us talk about is going now in days, even weeks, 

as opposed to months and years. That for us is a very concerning 

fact. We have to quickly identify and work to mitigate the threat 

faster than we had to do even 2 years ago. 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Senator Lankford. 

We have a vote that has been called, and so we have a short 

amount of time. We are going to try to get three people in here 

quickly. We have Senator Carper and then Senator Heitkamp and 

then Senator Baldwin. And if any member wants to run over and 
19 

vote and come back, we will keep this going. Otherwise, we will recess briefly, have the votes, and come back. Senator Carper. 

Senator CARPER. Let me yield to the other Senators. Thanks. 

Senator PORTMAN. Senator Heitkamp. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HEITKAMP 

Senator HEITKAMP. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Two issues, and I want to thank you for coming over to my office, 

Mr. Selim, and briefing us on the kinds of efforts that we can engage in locally, with local law enforcement, with local communities, 

the need to have—what I would call it—a ‘‘force multiplier.’’ There 

are not enough of you to actually be out there when we are talking 

about volume. Obviously, encryption is a unique issue, but certainly we can do more to multiply the force. And I think the other 

piece of this is best practices, what I would call a ‘‘best practice 

kind of model.’’ When we did training on school shootings when I 

was Attorney General (AG), we did trainings and did major initiatives on fighting methamphetamines. We are in the process now on 

opioids. We need to have the ability to, No. 1, say these are tactics 

and strategies that work, this is what we are going to request of 

and engage with local law enforcement and local communities, 

faith-based communities. We talked a little bit about the information that we know of in Canada and how Canada engages in antiradicalization kinds of efforts. 

And so, No. 1, what are we doing, George, in terms of multiplying the force by working with local law enforcement, working 

with local communities? And what message should we all take back 

to our hometowns, to our law enforcement communities, in terms 

of what role DHS is going to play? 

Mr. SELIM. Senator, thank you for those questions, and I appreciate you and your staff making time to really get engaged on these 

issues and understand the message that we are trying to communicate and taking that back to your constituents as well. 

Your first question in terms of multiplying the efforts, two immediate thoughts. The business model of the Office for Community 

Partnerships at DHS is to supply products and services to a range 

of stakeholders across the country. Our three major sets of stakeholders are: State and local law enforcement, first responders, 

homeland security professionals across the country. Our second 

major set of stakeholders is municipal officials—mayors, county 

council members, people in elected or appointed local positions, 

whether they be security or not security related. And the third real 

set of constituents we have is civic leaders, civil organizations, notfor-profit organizations and so on. 

So in terms of getting out the message for the products and services DHS is offering and further taking advantage of the grant opportunity that we announced today to multiply and expand efforts 

across the country at this, our ultimate goal here is to create a 

much broader prevention framework in cities and municipalities—— 

Senator HEITKAMP. My concern is that you can give people tools, 

but if they do not see how they fit into a broader strategy of antiradicalization, it may be difficult for them to utilize those tools. But 
20 

I think the more that we get out there with grants, the more we 

work with communities, the more we will establish a pattern of 

best practices, which I think is the kind of critical development 

that we need here, and it really is incumbent, I think, on a community policing model where you really look at the entire community. 

Obviously, tensions in communities can lead to stress and can lead 

to bad outcomes. And so how do we avoid polarization which could 

lead to isolation which could lead to radicalization? How do we 

avoid that? And what are you looking for—in 2 years, what do you 

hope you have learned from all of the grants and all of the resources that you have provided? 

Mr. SELIM. Senator, fundamental to the work of countering or 

preventing violent extremism in the homeland is community inclusiveness and those types of interpersonal relationships that you are 

referring to. That is foundational in this business. The ability for 

individuals who sense someone’s behavior may be changing, there 

might be something they are concerned about, having the ability to 

say something to someone if they do not trust law enforcement to 

do so, having the right mental health, social service, and education 

providers to do so. 

At the end of the next 2 years, for example, the impact that we 

are trying to develop is creating a more integrated approach in cities and municipalities across the country where not just a community policing model exists but a more integrated approach of mental health, social service, and education providers are part of this 

prevention framework. 

Senator HEITKAMP. Thank you so much. I look forward to hearing more about the grant applications and understanding more 

what the overall strategy is. 

Senator PORTMAN. Senator Baldwin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BALDWIN 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We often do not hear about the good news or the encouraging 

news, but earlier this year, Mr. Steinbach, the FBI prevented a terrorist attack in my home State of Wisconsin. It reached the newspapers that a 23-year-old man had a vicious plan to kill at least 

30 people at a Masonic temple in downtown Milwaukee. 

In my conversations with the FBI, officials indicated that fusion 

centers and FBI databases, such as eGuardian, which allow law enforcement to share intelligence were particularly useful. I know 

that FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces can be critical in sharing 

time-sensitive information, gathering evidence, and making arrests. 

So I want to hear from you about how we can expand and support these sort of law enforcement-coordinated efforts while also 

ensuring privacy protections and how we can better utilize coordination tools such as fusion centers and FBI databases to continue 

to prevent attacks like the one that was thwarted in my home 

State? 

Mr. STEINBACH. Yes, ma’am, thank you. So I think it begins with 

all of those tools. The threat is changing. It is dynamic, and it is 

much faster. So it is not just—as I mentioned in my opening remarks, it is not just sharing information. It is how quickly—the 

speed of information sharing. So having fusion centers and Joint 
21 

Terrorism Task Forces with multiple agency participation in them, 

active participation, as the information or the intelligence comes in, 

whether it is through eGuardian, through a tip, through foreign 

partners, when we get that information, we very quickly assess it 

using databases to identify the totality of what we know and then 

quickly act and use all of the tools that we are allowed to use, understanding that the individual’s right to privacy is paramount to 

how we do things. 

So we quickly assess the information with our partners, State 

and local. As you know, State and local are force multipliers for us, 

and we quickly act within the limits of our authority to mitigate 

that. And the case that you refer to was an example of that that 

we try to replicate over and over again. 

Senator BALDWIN. And then, quickly—I know our time is running out—thank you, Mr. Selim, for being here. And if you covered 

this before I arrived, I apologize for the repetition, but, obviously, 

as a part of this effort that you lead, it is critical that no group is 

targeted or discriminated against on the basis of religion or national origin. And it is also important that CVE grants are not used 

to perpetuate the alienation of any group or population. 

And so what I want to hear from you is, if you could speak to 

any specific training that your staff receives, civil liberty training 

that your office receives, and also oversight mechanisms that will 

be in place after the grants are awarded. 

Mr. SELIM. Thank you, Senator, for that question. It is really important to underscore the civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy 

protections that are in place on all CVE initiatives across government domestically. 

The first point I would add is of my 10 years at DHS, 6 of those 

years were spent worked in the Office for Civil Rights and Civil 

Liberties, so I appreciate the spirit of your question. 

On the CVE grants question, we have built into the Notice of 

Funding which was released this morning a comprehensive scoring 

and evaluation that we have for any potential applicant who applies for those grants that has to demonstrate, the intent of what 

the money will go towards, partnerships that have been developed, 

and a whole range of options. If we see any applications submitted 

that are in any way, infringing on an individual’s or group’s civil 

rights, civil liberties, or privacy, we are not even going to score 

those applications. 

Within the Department, part of the evaluation of those applications, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties provides outstanding oversight to my office on all our programs, and they are 

partners with us on the oversight of this grant initiative as well. 

So that is built in and baked into everything we do. 

And the last point I would mention, Senator, is that the programs that we are administering, whether they are grants or initiatives we take in other places in the country, are completely voluntary. We are being responsive to community requests for CVErelated programming. And it may not be termed ‘‘CVE.’’ It might 

be ‘‘building or enhancing community resilience’’ or ‘‘preventing extremism’’ or some other title. And so our job is to supply the product services or technical assistance irrespective of what a locality 

might call it, but be responsive to their needs, and we are not im-
22 

posing a DHS model per se. We are responding and helping customize localized approaches. 

Senator PORTMAN. Mr. Selim, thank you for that answer. 

We are going to now recess subject to the call of the Chair. I 

apologize. Again, I ask the indulgence of the panel if you would not 

mind hanging around for a little while longer. I am going to be 

playing tag team with Senator McCaskill as we run back and forth 

and vote. But we do have some additional questions for you that 

I was not able to ask earlier in order to allow some of my colleagues to ask questions. 

So we will now recess subject to the call of the Chair, and we 

will be right back. 

[Recess.] 

The hearing will come to order. Again, I appreciate the indulgence of our two—now three distinguished witnesses who have 

come back to the table. I do not know if I am going to be joined 

by any of my colleagues because we have another at least two votes 

coming up. I am going to run back and forth. I will let you all go 

after my questions, of course, and then we will take another recess 

and ask the second panel if they would be willing to stick around, 

because I know Senator McCaskill is coming back, and I assume 

some of my colleagues are as well. But I thought we got into a lot 

of good back-and-forth with the previous questions that were 

asked, and, again, going back to how we started, Mr. Steinbach 

talked about the fact that he agrees with the assessment from last 

year, which is that the lone-wolf terrorist radicalized online is the 

main threat facing the United States. And we talked a lot about 

the two programs that are represented here today: one is the new 

program at the Department of Homeland Security called the ‘‘Global Engagement Center’’—I am sorry, the ‘‘Office of Community 

Partnership,’’ and then, of course, the State Department’s Global 

Engagement Center. So what I would like to focus on a little bit 

is whether you feel you have the authorities you need to be able 

to do your job right. 

On the domestic side, Mr. Selim, you are not as aggressive as 

they are on the global side, in part because of some legal challenges 

that you face. They can do and say some things that you cannot. 

You also have not had the amount of time they have had to put 

together your digital effort. I think that is fair to say. By the same 

token, I think it is clear, including from some of the back-and-forth 

you had with some of my colleagues, that there is an enormous opportunity here domestically to be able to develop a message that 

is more compelling than the ones we currently have out there. We 

talked earlier about some of the messages coming from the 

jihadists, and, in fact, we had some photographs here earlier of sort 

of a romanticized version of jihad. 

And so I guess my first question to you would be: Are you happy 

with the progress that the Department has made, particularly on 

the digital counterterrorism communications front? And, specifically, how many online campaigns has DHS, particularly your office, devised or funded or launched, even through third parties, 

over the past year? What is the scale and composition of the audiences you have reached? How do you measure your results? Do you 

feel as though on the domestic side we are beginning to catch up? 
23 

Mr. SELIM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your question. In 

terms of the first point you made regarding the authorities that we 

have, we have looked at this issue. Our current posture in the programs that we are implementing, we do not see any immediate impediments in terms of regulations or authorities for promoting and 

really taking to scale the programs that we have just started. The 

program—— 

Senator PORTMAN. Let me interrupt you there just for a second. 

I was going to get into this further with regard to the Global Engagement Center, but one of the things that, of course, this Committee is interested in is to ensure that you have the authority to 

be able to be an effective interagency leader, and that requires you 

to be able to direct and task people. We talked earlier about the 

FBI’s role in this, which is a law enforcement role, but obviously, 

there is some interaction between your role as the communications 

person in the law enforcement side. 

Do you feel specifically that you have the tasking authority you 

need to be able to be an effective interagency leader? 

Mr. SELIM. As of today, I can say that I do. I have been fully empowered by the Secretary and in my role as the Director of the 

CVE Task Force. Deputies across departments and agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Justice, the National Counterterrorism Center, and a range of other agencies came together to 

affirm this body come together and help coordinate and synchronize our domestic CVE efforts. So I feel like I do have those 

authorities, sir. 

Senator PORTMAN. Good. Well, that is something that certainly 

was the intent of this Committee to support you in that, to be able 

to have that tasking authority, which, frankly, your predecessor organization I am not sure felt like they had in terms of that interagency cooperation. So if you do not mind, go ahead and I will let 

you answer the question about the digital communications efforts, 

the campaigns. 

Mr. SELIM. Yes. In terms of the campaigns that we have initiated, the methodology that we are currently implementing is not 

for the Department or Department personnel to issue or to create 

campaigns and then implement them via social media or some 

other means. We are really utilizing the methodology behind 

prizes, challenges, competitions, and engaging young people and 

Millennials on these issues. So the effort that I mentioned in my 

beginning statement and in my written statement, the Peer-2-Peer 

Challenge Extremism competition, what we have done is essentially we have created a 15-week academic curriculum for college 

and university students both in the United States and across the 

globe to, in a 15-week academic semester, identify a target audience for challenging extremism, create a campaign, implement the 

campaign, and measure the effectiveness of that campaign on a 15- 

week academic semester. 

Mr. Chairman, you asked for some statistics. Roughly, to date we 

have run this program for about three academic semesters with approximately 150 colleges and universities across the globe. This 

coming fall, we are interested in scaling that effort significantly 

with up to 200 colleges and universities across the globe. And our 

metrics for assessment are on an individual university-based pro-
24 

gram and then on an aggregate, the level of impressions and influence that each of those campaigns are having. 

To date, of the programs that we have implemented, we have 

anywhere between 30,000 and a million social media impressions 

and campaigns that have made micro impressions on various social 

media platforms that have attempted to counter or negate the message of ISIL in terms of recruitment and radicalization. I think this 

is one of the initiatives that we can take to scale significantly in 

the semesters to come, and the program has the flexibility to allow 

us to scale or tweak or adjust our measurements, our assessments, 

and the number of universities we are implementing on a semester-by-semester basis. 

Senator PORTMAN. On the composition of the audience, what kind 

of metrics do you have and what kind of information do you have 

to share with us today? In other words, who are you reaching? 

Mr. SELIM. So there are several different criteria of audiences, 

audience criteria that we are assessing. At-risk individuals on the 

fence are those that can be amplifiers of positive or alternative narratives. And each of the campaigns that is initiated is required to 

assess how to best target or communicate with that audience and 

then implement the campaign to effectively do so. 

Senator PORTMAN. Do you have metrics? 

Mr. SELIM. We do. Again, on a university-by-university assessment we do, and then as an aggregate we do overall. 

Senator PORTMAN. But not in terms of the audiences that are 

being reached, the composition of the audiences who you are reaching? 

Mr. SELIM. We do, and I will share with you one set of data and 

analytics as an anecdote. Just a few weeks ago, at the State Department we launched the completion of our third successful semester of this competition. One of the finalist universities from the 

United States was the Rochester Institute of Technology from New 

York. They had one specific statistic that was worth mentioning. 

Prior to the implementation of their campaign, roughly 87 percent 

of respondents of a 300-person survey they conducted associated 

Islam with terrorism and had a negative interpretation of the religion or of Muslims writ large. 

After the implementation of their campaign, 97 percent or 98 

percent of the respondents of that same survey understood the distinction between Islam, Muslims, and terrorism and had a positive 

or favorable view in terms of both the Middle East, American Muslims, and American Arabs and felt the need to be compelled to do 

proactive work with their communities in terms of reaching out to 

Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, again, I think we are catching up. The 

jihadists we talked about earlier have been at this really for 3 

years, I would say it is fair to say. It has been an evolution but 

in a very sophisticated way online. You talked about three semesters. That is good that we have gotten started, but we have a lot 

to catch up on. And I think having this data on the composition is 

important. It is important that we are distinguishing between the 

Muslim community and the terrorist community, as you just said. 

It is also important, though, we are meeting some of these vulnerable people online where they live and communicating that mes-
25 

sage. And I guess that would be what I and I think the Committee 

would be very interested in, is to know how can we come up with 

a better metric to judge that. Every marketing department in practically every company in the United States, certainly every online 

company, is focused on this. How do you reach your audience? And 

that is certainly something that—Peer-2-Peer is a good start in my 

view. I support it. But I think it needs to be even broader than that 

and we need to have better data coming back. 

I would say, Mr. Steinbach, as a general matter, it seems to me 

there is both a public and an encrypted part of this communication 

strategy on the public part, as I understand, and you correct me. 

There is a wide net being cast by the jihadists who are online to 

create this sense of interest or excitement in the jihad or the mission, and that is very public. And we see it, you see it. Mr. Selim, 

your people see it. That is what you are countering, I hope, with 

these messages, is telling the truth, dealing with the 

disinformation. 

Then there becomes, once those people make contact, I assume 

that is when what you talked about earlier occurs, which is the 

encrypted part of the communication, which is more challenging. Is 

that an accurate assessment of what is going on? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I think that is a very simple but accurate model. 

We see the volume piece, the initial piece, public information 

pushed out through a variety of means of social media, the hundreds and hundreds of companies casting a wide net, trying to 

identify individuals who are like-minded, who are willing to act, 

who are willing to travel. And then once they identify somebody 

who raises their hand and says yes, then the conversation switches 

to mobile messaging apps that are encrypted so that there is complete secrecy. 

Senator PORTMAN. And this is the challenge you talked about 

earlier and Director Comey has talked about in this Committee 

publicly, is how do we deal with that second stage. Is there anything you can tell us today about any attempts that you are making to be able to break through on that second tier? And what is 

the way in which we can intervene there as well? 

Mr. STEINBACH. So I think it is important to understand that the 

FBI looks at this as an important issue for the American public to 

vigorously discuss, and that really is privacy versus national security, encryption versus national security. I think all of us as citizens, myself included, want strong encryption. But we need to continue to have conversations about where the limits of that are, and 

we would argue that strong encryption, although important, must 

be balanced with national security interests so that when a judge 

or a magistrate provides authority, we have the ability, law enforcement has the ability to see those unencrypted communications 

or have access to that. We feel that is an appropriate balance. 

Ultimately, it is a decision for the American public through Congress, but that for us is fundamental. We see today more and more 

of our bad actors using encrypted communications in a variety of 

ways. Without the ability to see those encrypted communications, 

we are dark, we are blind as to their operational intent. So we try 

to identify workarounds, but those are few and far between. 
26 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, I appreciate that, and that is not really 

the topic so much of this conversation. And, in fact, a lot of that 

is better, I guess, undertaken in a classified setting. But the reality 

is that the funnel starts in a more broad and public way, and to 

keep people from going into that funnel, I would say the funnel of 

darkness, we have an opportunity on the public side. And I think 

that is where Mr. Selim and Ms. LaGraffe have an opportunity of 

working with you to try to avoid so many people going into that 

place where it is much more difficult for you to be able to understand what their communications are. 

Are there any models, to you, Mr. Steinbach, or you, Mr. Selim, 

that you look at globally that you think are working better in 

terms of dealing with this challenge of online recruitment and online propaganda and disinformation? 

Mr. SELIM. I would say as we think about countering violent extremism domestically, it needs to be a blend of both online and offline programs. While the radicalization and recruitment can start 

online, what we have seen and what the data has shown us are primarily from closed and processed FBI investigations is that individuals around someone who is being radicalized—friends, neighbors, 

peers, associates—see some type of behavior that may be out of 

place, but do not report it for one reason or another. 

So to the extent that radicalization and recruitment starts online, it can end offline, like we have seen tragically happen in several American cities. And so we are really working diligently toward an integrated approach where there are countermessages online and there is a prevention framework offline as well. And it is 

really that combination that we are working toward. 

Senator PORTMAN. And I assume a prevention framework online 

as well. 

Mr. SELIM. Correct. 

Senator PORTMAN. In other words, part of the audience we talked 

about earlier is the vulnerable potential jihadists, but it is also to 

the friend and the co-worker and the neighbor. 

Mr. SELIM. Correct. 

Senator PORTMAN. And the family member, and San Bernardino 

being perhaps the most recent tragic example of that, where there 

are people who after the fact said, ‘‘Something seemed strange, but 

I felt that I was constrained, I could not report it,’’ for some reason. 

And that is part of your effort, I assume. 

Mr. SELIM. It is to raise awareness. The three primary—— 

Senator PORTMAN. And you empower people to step forward. 

Mr. SELIM. Exactly. The three primary objectives of our office 

are: No. 1, really raise awareness as to the nature and scope of 

threat of radicalization and recruitment, online and offline, and we 

have discovered, dozens of cases where community-based groups 

are not aware to the extent that radicalization is happening online. 

We need them to come in and provide tools and resources to those 

communities and help develop and sustain long-term partnerships 

for them, whether they be with Federal, State, and local law enforcement or other trusted community institutions—mental health, 

social service, and education providers. 

Senator PORTMAN. When I was looking for a model, I was hoping 

you would talk about the British Research Information and Com-
27 

munications Unit (RICU), which has gotten some good plaudits 

internationally for being very aggressive in pumping out messaging, being very aggressive online, using third parties, as you are 

now doing with Peer-2-Peer. They use traditional media as well as 

social media, as you know. 

I think we have some legal constraints the British do not have 

in this regard, so we cannot do exactly what they are doing. But 

what do you know about what they are up to? And why have they 

been successful and what can we learn from them? For either one 

of you. 

Mr. STEINBACH. I am not familiar with that, sir. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. George? 

Mr. SELIM. I am pretty familiar with the British model on this. 

I was recently there would Deputy Secretary Mayorkas, General 

Taylor, and a senior leadership team from DHS. They provided a 

deep dive in terms of their program, their analytics and so on. Senator, as you pointed out, their legal structure affords them a number of different flexibilities that we do not have here in the homeland, and from my perspective as the Director of the CVE Task 

Force, it is important to have a comparative understanding of what 

is happening not just in the U.K. but in Germany, France, other 

Western European and, frankly, other coalition countries outside of 

Europe. The RICU model is an interesting model. They have some 

interesting data and analytics that has proven effective so far. And 

it is important that both the U.S., the U.K., and other partner 

countries keep in close contact with not just best practices but really promising practices that are showing effectiveness. 

Senator PORTMAN. This brings us really to the global effort, and, 

again, if you do not mind providing more information to us as to 

what you think we can learn from them and with regard to the 

legal constraints, just to be sure we are all on the same page, we 

understand what constraints you feel you might have. I know you 

also likely are going to tell us today that you have some resource 

constraints. You would not be doing your job if you did not. And, 

that is another issue that I think maybe the British have put a 

greater emphasis on this in terms of their resource allocation, as 

I understand it, within their budget. 

But on the global side—I do not want to leave Ms. LaGraffe out 

of this conversation—do you think that the Global Engagement 

Center, which is also aimed at changing attitudes over the long 

term, is adequately using the data analytics tools we talked about 

here to focus on those who are most vulnerable to radicalization? 

And to the extent you can, can you give us one or two examples 

of where the Center has done that kind of micro targeting? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Thank you, Senator. To answer your first question, the data analytics shop within the Global Engagement Center, as you know, is in its sort of early stages, and we are working 

very closely with the State Department Office of the Legal Adviser 

to make sure the analytics tools we identify to be potentially most 

appropriate for our organization are in keeping with the regulations specifically related to the Privacy Act. 

Thus far, what that has looked like in practice is that we have 

identified tools that give us access to aggregate data, so we are able 

to see in near-realtime trends on social media platforms to really 
28 

assess what messages and what themes are resonating most with 

potential target audiences. 

Senator PORTMAN. Yes, I think it would be good, to the extent 

you are able, to explain what you are talking about to the Committee today. You are talking about the Privacy Act, I assume. 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. Yes. 

Senator PORTMAN. Which you mentioned the Office of Legal Adviser at the State Department giving you advice on this. My understanding is that the Privacy Act prevents the government from collecting certain information about Americans or lawful permanent 

residents but not about foreigners. Is that accurate? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. I am not an attorney. I think the way you characterized it is accurate. My understanding of the challenge we face 

at the Global Engagement Center is, as you have said, we are not 

a law enforcement agency, nor are we an intelligence agency and, 

therefore, have restrictions related to the Privacy Act. These restrictions mostly focus around what is called ‘‘user-level data,’’ so 

we have worked, as I mentioned, closely with the legal adviser’s office to determine what tools we need to get aggregate-level data, 

but the user-level analysis is something that we as the Global Engagement Center do not have authority to access. 

Senator PORTMAN. I think we should have further discussion of 

this because I think it is in all of our interest that you do micro 

target. Again, as I mentioned, every company in the United States 

practically, as well as those online companies, are doing this—and 

wouldn’t it be ironic if our own State Department is not able to do 

that to fight terrorism?—to be able to understand who the people 

are who are most vulnerable to these potential disinformation campaigns and then provide them the countermessaging. 

So I am concerned about the way in which the State Department 

has interpreted the act. I think what they would say—and, I am 

a recovering lawyer so I have to be careful here, and did work at 

one point during law school at the legal adviser’s office. But I think 

what they are saying is that it could inadvertently collect information about Americans. So it is not that you are unable to collect information about foreigners or, again, this vulnerable overseas 

group we are talking about. It is that apparently they think that 

there could be information collected about Americans inadvertently. Is that your understanding? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. It is. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. What are you losing by not being able to 

do that kind of micro targeting? 

Ms. LAGRAFFE. I do not think we as an organization have yet 

fully fleshed out what missed opportunities there may be in either 

lack of analysis in this realm or any other. Frankly, it is so early 

days for the Global Engagement Center—we have been up and 

running for just a few months—that we are focused more on what 

opportunities we can identify to actually start having a result in 

the aggregate. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, again, I think we are in a crisis mode 

in the sense that, as Mr. Steinbach has talked about today, this online messaging is a huge part of the radicalization effort, and certainly this relates both to domestic and overseas. So I would want 

to be sure that, as hard as your task is, it is not made harder by 
29 

constraints that keep us from targeting the very population that is 

most vulnerable or more predisposed to accepting the 

disinformation and the message from the jihadists. 

So I would just say, as one member of the Committee, I would 

like to follow-up on that further with you all and to get some information about how the State Department is interpreting the privacy 

rule as it relates to foreigners and what that keeps us from doing 

in terms of being able to target these groups. 

Senator McCaskill has now returned, so I am going to turn to 

her for her questions. And, again, we are going to sort of tag team 

here. I may not have the opportunity to speak to the three of you 

again, so thank you very much for your service to our country And 

I know each of you has a distinguished background of service in 

various law enforcement and State Department and now communications areas, and we need you very badly right now to be able 

to have an effective countermessage out there. I think it is as important as anything else that is being done, and everything else, 

as I said at the outset of the hearing, can be done successfully, the 

military side, protecting the homeland in other ways, and still, if 

we do not deal with this threat of the disinformation online and the 

radicalization that is going on, we will not be successful. So we 

thank you for your hard work and for your willingness to continue 

to work harder to do even better to redouble our efforts to be more 

successful. Senator McCaskill. 

[Pause.] 

Senator MCCASKILL. Sorry. We are trying to figure out how we 

can vote and do this hearing at the same time. 

Senator PORTMAN. Call the second panel whenever you want. 

Senator MCCASKILL [Presiding.] OK. A couple of things. 

Mr. Steinbach, I was the elected DA in Kansas City in the 1990s, 

and we had an awful lot of work that the Justice Department did 

through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and other parts of 

Justice about gangs and how did we stop somebody from being 

radicalized into a group that was intent on violence. And there 

were millions and millions and millions of dollars spent on how we 

gain cooperation of the community, how we identify young men— 

and sometimes young women but primarily young men—from entering gangs. 

I am reading a lot of things in preparation for this hearing, and 

so much of it began to take on a ring of familiarity. And I am wondering to what extent have we taken out the volumes of research 

and work that were done in terms of accessing communities, getting the help of communities, identifying someone who is being 

radicalized to a life of violence. The only clear difference I see here 

is that obviously this is being clothed in a false costume of religion, 

and it is convincing people that they should die for this, although 

the young gang members at the time would say, they were proud 

of going—I do not know if you remember. You probably do remember this. You were probably working as an agent at that point. I 

am guessing. Were you or are you too young to have worked as an 

agent in the 1990s? 

Mr. STEINBACH. No. I was an agent. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. So you know that one of the saddest 

things that law enforcement encountered were some of these young 
30 

men that were 12 and 13 years old going with their first pile of 

cash to buy caskets and to plan their funerals. So they were anticipating their death. 

Has there been any work—I mean, Homeland Security was not 

around then, but has there been any work at Justice to try to pull 

off some of the strategies that proved to be effective in fighting the 

gang wars of the 1990s as it applies to radical extremism that we 

are working with now? 

Mr. STEINBACH. Yes, ma’am. I think you are right on. I think at 

the core, the reasons for disaffected youth joining something they 

can belong to, whether it is a gang or radical Islam, there is something to that. So in partnership with all these agencies at the table, 

we look to the communities to answer our questions. So just as we 

used the communities and developed trust within the neighborhoods, we do the same thing with the communities of interest now. 

We work with the communities, focusing our efforts, empowering 

them to identify—because once an individual comes to the FBI’s attention and we have predicated an investigation, it is too far down 

the road. It is gone. It is too late. We need to identify those individuals as they start down that path of radicalization, and the key to 

that, quite frankly, is in the communities. The only difference between the 1990s and today is the online space and working within 

the online arena, which is where I think George’s efforts are focusing on. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And have we looked at—I mean, I know 

that we are talking about calling in psychologists and psychiatrists 

and paying money to contractors. I mean, what I am really wanting 

to make sure is we are not reinventing a wheel that we have already spent a lot of taxpayer dollars researching since the problems 

are so similar. Is anybody pulling out any of the work that was 

done by professionals? Are any of you familiar with any of that 

work that was done by professionals back when we were dealing 

with extremism in the form of gangs? 

Mr. SELIM. Senator, if I may, we are indeed very familiar with 

a great body of that work, which is the wealth of information that 

the Justice Department as our partners and the Executive Office 

of U.S. Attorneys, many of whom have been prosecutors at the 

State, local, and now at the Federal level for the past several decades, bring to bear in this regard. I think when we are thinking 

about prevention models, whether it be gang prevention, we have 

looked at the model of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), how does that public-private partnership with law enforcement and NGO work, how do you prevent 

whether it is human trafficking and smuggling, prevent recruitment and radicalization to transnational gangs and other models 

like that, we have definitely pulled heavily from that body, and 

that has helped inform the models that we apply today. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Mr. Steinbach, I know that you all are engaging in the Muslim community in the United States. Can you 

give us anything in this setting as to what percentage of the leads 

that you all work actually are generated by Muslims who are concerned about someone at their mosque or someone in their community that they believe might be subjected to some kind of 

radicalization of their faith? 
31 

Mr. STEINBACH. Yes, ma’am, and the answer is no, I do not have 

those numbers with me. And part of the problem is when incoming 

tips come in, we are not cataloguing them by the type of person 

that provides it. But I will say that every field office commander 

through all 56 field offices of the FBI works closely in partnership 

with the communities of interest, with the mosques, the churches, 

the temples, and develops strong relationships for a number of reasons. They recognize, those field office commanders, that the leaders of those communities do not want that bad apple, those bad apples affecting their children or impacting in a negative way their 

areas of worship, their places of worship, their communities. And 

so there is quite a bit of communication back and forth at the 

foundational level in the communities. I could not give you a number on the number of tips. I will say that we get a lot of information and assistance from those communities, however. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Is it your sense from talking to your SACs 

that are out there in the field and that are working with these 

communities, do you sense a frustration with them that these communities are failing to cooperate? What is your overall impression 

about the willingness of the Muslim community in the United 

States to try to be helpful as opposed to the way they are sometimes categorized in the media or by other politicians? 

Mr. STEINBACH. I would say overwhelmingly the religious communities across the United States are very helpful to us in identifying sources of radicalization, whether that is Islam, Christianity, 

Judaism. We could not do our job without them. So I would not 

characterize it as an adversarial relationship or a negative relationship at all. It is a very positive relationship. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I am usually here preaching about interagency cooperation, and now I am going to ask a question that I 

did not really anticipate that I would ever be asking. But we now 

have the National Counterterrorism Center, the DHS-led Interagency Task Force, and the Global Engagement Center, and there 

are probably a few others. Now we are in danger of the interagency 

groups not coordinating with other interagency groups because we 

have a plethora of interagency groups. 

Can any of you speak to any sense you have of how well we are 

cooperating with these various interagency groups that are all ostensibly driving towards the same purpose? 

Mr. SELIM. I will start, and I will ask my co-panelists to join in. 

From where I sit at the Director of this Task Force, what we have 

done by creating the Global Engagement Center, the CVE Task 

Force, and other models across the Federal Government, including 

the National Counterterrorism Center, we have really honed in and 

specialized in what the key tasks and objectives are. So the National Counterterrorism Center is a part of the intelligence community, and they cannot play the same role that a DHS or a Justice 

Department official has due to their authorities and regulations 

and so on. 

In terms of cooperation with my colleagues at the State Department on the Global Engagement Center, the Department of Homeland Security has a full-time detailee at the Global Engagement 

Center, again, a very discrete mission set different from ours, and 

we meet regularly. If not several times a month, every few weeks 
32 

we get together, our leadership gets together to figure out how we 

can better coordinate or integrate our efforts abroad and domestically. 

And so I think what you have identified, Senator, is a number 

of interagency bodies that have been really honed in on a specific 

set of tasks rather than aggregated overall to a department or 

agency’s mission. 

Senator MCCASKILL. It would be really helpful, to the extent that 

you can in a nonclassified setting, not for testimony today but if 

somebody would put on paper how you would diagram this in 

terms of responsibilities. The thing I am most concerned about is 

being sure who is accountable for a situation. That is the other 

thing that happens sometimes when you have more than one group 

in charge. I have seen it. I will not give specific examples, but I 

could, bunches of them. If you just look at contracting in Iraq, it 

was a big old quagmire of a mess between United States Agency 

for International Development (USAID) and the Comprehensive 

Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) funds and, there were just a 

lot of things that there was not really—it was not clear who was 

watching all the money. 

And so I would love a diagram as to what are the different responsibilities between these different interagency task forces and 

who is reporting to whom and who is ultimately accountable—besides the President, who obviously is ultimately accountable. 

I am sure I will have other questions for the record. 

I really appreciate all of your work, your dedication. I like to remind people that are so cynical about their government, I have not 

met any of you types that came into this line of work for money. 

And, frankly, for the vast majority of you and your colleagues, it 

is not for glory either. So it is a sense of purpose and a sense of 

serving the public and a sense of accomplishment. So please convey 

to all of your colleagues how appreciative we are. Even though you 

do not get probably enough love day in and day out other than 

from your families, what you do is really important, and I respect 

it very much. And we will call the next panel. 

[Pause.] 

Thank you all for being here. 

Peter Bergen is vice president of New America where he directs 

the international security program which conducts research and 

analysis on extremist groups, homeland security, and other things. 

He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy Magazine, a professor 

at Arizona State University, and writes a weekly column for CNN. 

Mr. Bergen is also a member of the Aspen Security Group and a 

documentary producer and author. 

Alberto Fernandez is the vice president of the Middle East Media 

Research Institute and a member of the board at the Center for 

Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. 

From 2012 to 2015, he served as the State Department’s Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications and prior to 

that was a Foreign Service Officer for over 30 years. 

Thank you both for being here today. It is the custom of this 

Subcommittee to swear in all witnesses, so at this time I would ask 

both of you to please stand and raise your right hand. Do you 

swear that the testimony you are about to give before the Sub-
33 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen appears in the Appendix on page 64. 

committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

Mr. BERGEN. I do. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I do. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Let the record reflect the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. 

All of your written testimony will be printed in the record, and 

we would ask that you try to limit your oral testimony to 5 minutes. 

Mr. Bergen, we will hear from you first. 

TESTIMONY OF PETER BERGEN,1 VICE PRESIDENT, NEW 

AMERICA FOUNDATION 

Mr. BERGEN. Senator McCaskill and other Members of the Committee, thanks for this opportunity. 

You asked a question of Michael Steinbach, and I think I have 

an answer. He did not have an answer for the reasons he laid out, 

but we looked at more than 330 jihadi terrorist cases since 9/11. 

We found based on the public record that a third of them, a third 

of those cases were generated either by community tips or family 

member tips. So there is a high degree of cooperation amongst the 

community. 

Turning to just my overall comments, on Friday we saw something that I think is indicative of something we need to be concerned about, which is terrorists are now the media. Maggie 

Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, famously said that terrorists were—the ‘‘oxygen of publicity’’ is terrorism. She said that in 

1985. Well, what if terrorists themselves control the media, they 

completely bypass the traditional media? We saw on Friday, for instance, that the attackers in Bangladesh murdered the people in 

the cafe. They immediately posted it all to Amaq, which is effectively ISIS’ news agency, which then in turn published it. 

So now we have an interesting situation where the terrorists are 

the perpetrators, the producers of the media around this, and the 

propagators. And this is something new. 

We saw in Paris the ISIS-inspired militant last month who killed 

the French police official and his partner. He immediately posted 

pictures and videotape a whole disquisition about his allegiance to 

ISIS on Facebook. 

In the Orlando case and in the San Bernardino case, as you 

know, the perpetrators immediately pledged their allegiance to 

Facebook in the middle of the attack. 

So one big idea is terrorists are now the media, and that is something that is new. They have always tried to influence the media. 

The second, I think, big idea is that ISIS is effectively 

crowdsourcing jihad, and we have had a lot of testimony today 

about that fact. But there are obviously results. In the United 

States, in the last 2 years we have had six ISIS-inspired attacks, 

two of them lethal in San Bernardino and Orlando, four of them 

luckily not lethal in places like Garland, Texas, in New York City, 

in Philadelphia, and in California. But even in the nonlethal cases, 

people were severely wounded in a couple of these cases. 
34 

So who is ISIS appealing to in the West? At New America, where 

I work, we looked at—and also in the United States, we looked at 

715 cases, again, based on public records and trials, and we found 

that one in eight were women, which is unprecedented. In previous 

jihads we had never seen that. The average age is 25. The average 

age for the females is 22. Many of them had family ties to jihad. 

A third of them had family ties to jihad, a brother or father who 

went, they got married over there. And we found that the profile 

of the Americans who joined the jihad or tried—either succeeded or 

attempted to join ISIS was very similar. So one in seven were 

women, the average age was just under 25, a fifth of them had 

family ties to jihadism; and, crucially, more than three-quarters 

were very active online, meaning not that they were just sending 

emails but they were posting jihadi material on Facebook or Twitter. So I think none of that is necessarily surprising, but I think 

that has implications for how you try and contest this. 

What are ISIS’ messages? Again, if we understand what the message is, we can contest them. One is they are victorious, and, at 

one point they controlled territory the size of the United Kingdom 

and a population the size of Switzerland. That is now going down. 

They created a utopian society, it is the caliphate. There is a cool 

factor, there is a romanticist factor. The message shifted in early 

2015 from joining the caliphate to attacking the West if you look 

at their kind of messaging. 

What to do? In the 1 minute I have left, I have a few ideas. 

One is I think with CVE there has been kind of a rather crucial 

conceptual confusion between countering radicalization and countering recruitment. And these things are related. But at the end of 

the day, what we are trying to do is stop people joining the gangs 

in the 1990s or joining ISIS, and trying to stop radicalization. It 

is not illegal in this country to have bad ideas, and it is a very hard 

task. Tens of millions of people probably have militant ideas. Very 

few of them join ISIS. Maybe 60,000 over the last 2 years have actually—30,000 from around the world have joined ISIS. 

So employing defectors is useful. Employing clerics like Imam 

Magid, who works not far from here, who has personally intervened with a number of cases in Northern Virginia. Twitter obviously enforcing its terms of use. The military campaign has had 

some success. 

Finally, just to round it up, what we should not do is ban immigration from Muslim countries, as is being proposed. That would 

have absolutely no effect on this issue. Every lethal terrorist attack 

in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or American legal permanent resident. And so I will 

leave it at that. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I will certainly give you time for any other 

ideas in a minute as soon as Mr. Fernandez finishes his testimony. 

Mr. Fernandez. 
35 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Fernandez appears in the Appendix on page 82. 

TESTIMONY OF ALBERTO M. FERNANDEZ,1 VICE PRESIDENT, 

MIDDLE EAST MEDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Thank you, Senator. I am happy to be here. 

If we look at the space that the Islamic State and its rivals and 

colleagues occupy, we do see over the past couple of years some 

small measures of incipient progress. Certainly, the military campaign has begun a little bit to dent the victory narrative that the 

Islamic State has propagated. 

Social media companies, government, and the private sector, civil 

society groups have begun to at the very least dismantle the diffuse 

online networks that the Islamic State had for many years. 

In 2014, none of this stuff was being taken down. In 2016, the 

stuff is being taken down more rapidly. When people return, they 

return with less followers. So the space of the fan boys, the space 

of the online networks is being shrunken and being contested, has 

been contested, there is more material, there is more messages of 

defectors. There is a really good NGO, the International Center for 

the Study of Violent Extremism which is producing defector videos, 

which I highly recommend. So there is more stuff happening. 

However, the ISIS brand has to a large extent been internalized 

and metastasized to a large extent of the population. Now, of 

course, we are talking about minorities. We are not talking about 

1.5 billion Muslims. We are talking about a small percentage of the 

population where the ISIS message has been internalized. It does 

not even need new material. It is old material that functions. It is 

old things that work. It is not the latest thing. 

By the way, in the time that this session has taken place, the 

Islamic State Al-Furqan released a 15-minute high-quality video 

talking about itself, talking about how great it is, which they announced on social media ahead of time this morning that they were 

going to do. I think it underscores Peter Bergen’s point, that they 

are able to get—despite the pressure that we put on them, despite 

the fact that we are taking stuff down quickly, they are able to 

surge and get their message out at will when and where they want. 

Now, what has not been touched? I think there are several points 

that we need to think about when we think about what we have 

done and what has not been done. We still have not gotten the full 

benefit we have out of the slow but real military progress we are 

making on the ground. 

We should be talking in the last few days about ISIS’ defeat at 

Fallujah and ISIS’ near defeat at Mambij. And instead what are we 

talking about? Orlando, Istanbul, Medina, Bangladesh, et cetera, et 

cetera, et cetera. They have succeeded in changing the narrative. 

Instead of talking about how they are physically under great pressure in the field, we are seeing how the digital caliphate and the 

work that they do overseas is kind of serving as a substitute for 

military victory. So that is an area where they are still undented. 

The other area where they are still undented and something that 

almost no one either in the United States or overseas touches is 

the ideology, the building blocks of the ISIS message. The Salafi 

jihadist world view which empowers it and generates it is largely 

untouched. I can understand the government not wanting to do 
36 

this. This is something that the U.S. Government is probably not 

very good about talking about, the intersection of politics and religion. But this is not something that is happening anywhere. 

As a thought process, when I was writing my testimony, I went 

on YouTube, and I put in some of the key terms that Salafi 

jihadists like ISIS use to radicalize people. I put them in English 

on YouTube. I thought, ‘‘What if I was a 17-year-old boy, I am confused, I do not know what is what,’’ and I put in these terms. And 

every single time the immediate return you got on YouTube was 

that of extremists, not of humanistic, tolerant, good people that we 

have in the Muslim community in the United States or overseas. 

One of the key terms, ‘‘Al-Wala wal-Bara,’’ which is about loyalty 

to radical Islam and hating the West and hating the country you 

are in, the No. 1 person that returned to it was Anwar al-Awlaki. 

So Anwar al-Awlaki 5 years after his death is still helping to 

radicalize people. 

So the ideological challenge of the Islamic State has not been 

challenged yet, and the sectarian dimension, even our victories in 

the region, are tainted by the sectarian dimension. So while we are 

making real progress on the ground against the Islamic State and 

even in cyberspace, some of the key building blocks for the Islamic 

State of today and of tomorrow are actually untouched or even enhanced by events on the ground. 

Thank you. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Thank you, and I have 2 minutes left to go, 

and Senator Portman has not returned. So I am going to ask you 

to sit tight. I am going to run to vote. He will be back I am sure 

before I will, but we will be back in—and I apologize for this, but 

it cannot be helped. 

Senator PORTMAN [Presiding.] Thank you, and I assume we did 

not recess. OK. Thank you all very much for your patience. I apologize. I have gotten my exercise for the day literally running back 

and forth. We think we are done voting. We may have one more, 

but we will not ask you to stay if we leave again. I promise you. 

First of all, I apologize not to be here to hear your testimony, but 

I got a chance to review your testimony, and as I said at the outset, 

I really appreciate both of you being here and your distinguished 

backgrounds in this area trying to figure out, what the best things 

are to do. The government panel we heard from a little while ago 

told us that—and the FBI Director had said this late last year— 

the lone-wolf radicalization online he believes is the biggest threat 

to our national security here at home. And we now know the nature of that threat, but we need to get a deeper understanding of 

some of the trends that we are seeing. That is where you guys can 

be really helpful. 

In these attacks here, in all but one, I think there was no what 

you would consider, I suppose, direct contact between the terrorists 

and an ISIS cell overseas. Is that accurate, Mr. Bergen? 

Mr. BERGEN. Yes. The only case is the Garland, Texas, case, 

where there was an actual attack in motion where they had communicated with ISIS. 

Senator PORTMAN. Why do you think there has not been an overseas element in most of these U.S. attacks? Either one of you. 
37 

Mr. BERGEN. Let me try to answer that. On 9/11 there were 16 

people on the no-fly list. Now there are 47,000. There are like a 

million and a half people on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list. On 9/11, the FBI and the CIA barely talked 

to each other. On 9/11, there was no NCTC, TSA, DHS. We have 

tripled our intelligence budget, and we are a much harder target. 

In fact, the last time a foreign terrorist organization tried to attack 

us unsuccessfully was May 1, 2010, with the Faisal Shahzad Pakistani Taliban attack. So the point is the reason we are talking 

about lone wolves is because we have erected these very large defenses against foreign terrorist organizations directing somebody, 

training somebody, sending them to us. 

Senator PORTMAN. You note in your testimony that about 20 percent of American ISIS members had a familial connection to jihad. 

That was your quote. 

Mr. BERGEN. Yes. 

Senator PORTMAN. Can you elaborate on that point? I ask because I think it implies that even here in the U.S. there might be 

a strong in-person element to radicalization, which is an interesting wrinkle to the story, in addition to what happens online. 

Mr. BERGEN. Well, an example of that is the Khan family from 

Chicago, three teenagers, 19, 17, and 16, they have kind of 

radicalized together, two boys and one girl. They were all planning 

to join ISIS. They were arrested at O’Hare airport. That is one kind 

of example. 

Another kind of example is people go to join ISIS, of which there 

have not been that many Americans who have succeeded, but 

sometimes they marry somebody in ISIS or associated with ISIS 

when they get there. 

Senator PORTMAN. And the content of the ISIS propaganda and 

how it is uniquely suited to the Internet is something you both 

have addressed. Ambassador Fernandez, you have noticed that this 

brand can be all things to all extremists. Mr. Bergen, you have also 

commented on this, and you have noted that the thrust of the ISIS 

message is that it offers a sense of purpose and community—we 

talked about this earlier—to the vulnerable, the disillusioned, the 

alienated. 

To both of you guys, what kind of countermessaging challenges 

and opportunities does that present for us? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Well, a couple of things. No. 1, of course, is the 

most effective countermessaging are people that know the Islamic 

State best, and those are defectors, those are families of victims. 

The Islamic State is essentially a Sunni Arab Muslim organization. 

Yes, it has thousands of non-Arabs in it, but in terms of its world 

view, it is a Sunni Arab Muslim organization. That is where the 

issue comes from. That is the heart of its core. Those are the voices 

that are most useful. We often focus on many of the victims who 

are not Sunni Arab Muslims. Obviously, we care about all the victims, including Americans. But it is that core audience that it appeals to that we need to work on. 

The other thing, of course, is that the ideological dimension of 

the ISIS appeal is rarely touched. What are these elements that 

mobilize people, concepts of jihad, of kufr, of shirk, of Al-Wala walBara, of taghut? These terms which are complicated, nuanced 
38 

terms in Islamic history which ISIS uses as bumper stickers to kill. 

It is not Islam for Dummies. It is Salafi jihadism for Dummies. 

And so those are two of the challenges that we face in that space. 

Senator PORTMAN. In some of your testimony, you talk about the 

fact that our messaging can be more effective, and we talked a little bit about that yesterday at the staff level about, what works 

and what does not work. You mentioned defectors, for instance. 

That seems to be more effective, for instance, than, as you say, 

someone who is not connected. 

You also talk about the victory narrative and that that is something that we need to respond to because that victory narrative encourages more people to feel as though they are part of something 

that is working. 

In your written testimony, you contrast our message that you 

thought was relatively ineffective after retaking Fallujah with that 

of a more productive messaging after taking a different Iraqi city. 

From a message perspective, can you talk about the difference between those two and just elaborate on your comments on what is 

most effective in terms of messaging? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Sure. Both the taking of Fallujah and the taking of Mambij in Syria are good. They are good because you are 

taking something from ISIS. You are defeating them. So there is 

benefit even in a flawed retelling of military victory. So even 

Fallujah, which has been controversial in the pan Arab media and 

the Sunni Arab media—these are, Iranian militias and Shia death 

squads. That is some of the rhetoric out there. But even the way 

it has turned out, taking it from the Islamic State is a good thing. 

The point I make is that it could have been a better thing. It 

could have been a victory of a united Iraq, a united multiethnic, 

multireligious Iraq against the Islamic State. And that is not exactly how it was portrayed. 

In contrast, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish Allied 

Forces in northern Syria that we support took a different tack. 

What they did is they put up front Sunni Arab Muslims who were 

allied with the Kurds in the taking of Mambij, and this is what is 

called the ‘‘Mambij Military Council.’’ So they took a back seat. 

They had the Arab Muslims take a front seat. That presented a 

less sectarian, less provocative way of doing things. They were both 

good. Victory in Fallujah is good, and victory in Mambij is good. 

Any defeat of the Islamic State is good. But you want to wring all 

the benefit that you can out of military victory, and we are not 

doing that. We are talking too much about what they are doing and 

not what we are doing to them. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, thank you. I have some additional questions for you both about the narrative and specifically what we 

ought to be doing better. But I would like to give my colleague an 

opportunity to ask questions. Senator Ayotte was here earlier. She 

has a background as a prosecutor and is on the Armed Services 

Committee and has spent a lot of time on these issues, and I would 

like her to have a chance to ask some questions. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you so much, Chairman. 

Mr. Bergen, when you testified before the Committee before and 

I see it again in your written testimony, the discussion about—unlike prior terrorist groups that we have dealt with, that they have 
39 

been—that there are many women involved, and you and I had an 

exchange on that. 

As I read your testimony today from where we were before, that 

continues, I think, to be the case, no diminishment in that, and obviously we saw with the San Bernardino situation, while that was 

more of a radicalization here, still, obviously, she was a big driver 

in this. 

So have you seen any diminishment in that and what we should 

be doing in terms of, as we are thinking about individuals that 

were involved in ISIS—and in your steps of recommendations, you 

say—and I think that Mr. Fernandez just talked about that as 

well. If you have been a member of ISIS, get people who have been 

part of it, and then also get them to go out online and obviously 

talk about the real experience. What about with women? Are we 

having any success with how we are going to engage women who 

join ISIS and why it is so attractive to women as well? 

Mr. BERGEN. I mean, Senator, yes, I think they are still recruiting women. Part of it is sort of a romantic message, that you can 

marry the man of your dreams in part, which has been reinforced 

by people who get married there. What the countermessaging is to 

that I am not really sure, except I think I completely agree with 

Ambassador Fernandez that defectors are the most effective approach. And, the New York Times ran a very interesting massive 

piece with two women who defected. They gave them pseudonyms. 

They painted a very bleak picture. 

I think the United States faces an interesting question, which is 

we have a guy in Alexandria, Virginia, Mohamad Khweis, who is 

26, who has defected. He could face 20 years in prison. He has obviously defected because he thinks ISIS is against Islam. So, the 

kind of bigger question is: What do we do with people who are defectors, American defectors? Do we throw them in prison for 20 

years, or do we come up with something more creative? 

Senator AYOTTE. Ambassador, did you want to comment on that? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Yes. One of the problems we have, even when 

we have defectors, I am sure you have seen the images. The ISIS 

spokesman is looking at you, unmasked, telling you about his life, 

telling you about his personal testimony. He is unashamed, 

unembarrassed. And then we have all too often the defector, and 

what does the defector look like? The defector is masked or covered, 

obviously—— 

Senator AYOTTE. Because they are afraid. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ [continuing]. For security reasons. So this is the 

disadvantage that we have with them. 

Senator AYOTTE. Right. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Their personal testimony is more powerful than 

ours, and it is more numerous than ours. So this is the challenge 

that we face, kind of a technical basic problem that we face. 

Senator AYOTTE. I was interested also, Mr. Bergen, as I looked 

at your action items, this idea that you had about a database of 

foreign fighters, because we do know obviously that there are a 

number of individuals who have flown back and forth, especially 

fewer Americans, significant, a couple hundred Americans, but also 

with the Europeans, thousands. And as you raise the issue, it 

seemed clear to me that we still have significant information-shar-
40 

ing issues across our allies in Europe, and even with countries like 

Turkey, and that we probably do not know all are collecting in one 

place, people that we do know, in fact, have joined. And I think 

that is a significant issue that you point out that we should address. 

Mr. BERGEN. Yes, I mean, Interpol has 5,000 names. We have 

30,000 people who have joined from around the world. 

Senator AYOTTE. Right. 

Mr. BERGEN. So we are 25,000 short. And my intuition is we had 

no idea about any of these people who blew themselves up over the 

past month in Bangladesh and Turkey. I think with the British 

and other European partners there is pretty good information sharing, but clearly a lot more has to be done. 

Senator AYOTTE. And even if you look at countries like what happened in Belgium, with the deficiencies there, with some of the law 

enforcement deficiencies there in terms of compiling that, that 

seems something in terms of an intelligence tool that would be 

helpful to all of us. 

What other things, if you think about the intelligence front, that 

you think, the two of you think that we should be focusing on? 

Mr. BERGEN. Well, one thing I would look at is if Amaq is ISIS’ 

new service—and there are a couple of other entities that put out 

ISIS’ message—why aren’t we taking them down? I mean, I am not 

saying—— 

Senator AYOTTE. Right. 

Mr. BERGEN. I mean literally taking out their production facilities. They must exist. 

Senator AYOTTE. Exactly. It makes logical sense that we would 

do that, and that is something we should be asking our officials. 

Why aren’t we just taking them down? I know it is a Whack-AMole situation. 

Mr. BERGEN. Well, you whack enough moles—— 

Senator AYOTTE. Exactly, and you make it harder enough to do 

something, then they are—it is not that it will not come back, but 

why would you let it continue if you know it is there. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. And one thing we have seen, we have seen with 

the—initially people were skeptical about, well, taking stuff down 

on the Internet, right? They are just going to come back. And, yes, 

there are individuals who have been taken down 500 times and are 

back for the 501st time. But what we have seen is that many, 

many of the maybe less motivated people drop off. So the WhackA-Mole work on social media does pay dividends over time. 

Recently at MEMRI, we saw that, they have been driven mostly 

off of Twitter, and they are on Telegram, which is this GermanRussian site, and we recently saw—just 2 days ago, we saw an 

ISIS message calling for people to return to Twitter, because even 

though Telegram is very useful and is a safe haven for them, nothing is as good as mobilizing, getting your message out very broadly 

as Twitter. So we need to continue to be mowing the lawn on Twitter because they will come back if they are given the space to do 

so. 

Senator AYOTTE. And the other issue is, as you heard Director 

Steinbach testify—and it is replete in your testimony as well—that 

they are consuming this extremist material. Now, there is line of, 
41 

obviously, what can you consume without taking action in terms of 

where you can take legal action. But it is a strong indicator, if 

somebody is consuming this extremist material, that this is something that we have to be focused on, obviously not just eliminating 

the ability to push this out on the Internet, but we have seen it 

over a series of attacks, that that is one of the components of an 

individual who ends up being radicalized, or self-radicalized. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. At the very least, you want to give the potential 

consumer in the United States the same ability to access material 

that is not going to radicalize them, that is going to counter that 

as the radicalization material. To me, it is unconscionable that you 

go on YouTube, which is an American company, and you put in a 

term, an Islamic term, which is not necessarily an ISIS term, and 

the No. 1 thing you get is the algorithm gives you basically a wellknown American terrorist that we killed. 

There has to be ways that, you do the algorithms or whatever 

you do to make sure that the voices of tolerance, the voices of reason, the voices of humanity are there, at least to compete with the 

extremists if you cannot take them down. 

Senator AYOTTE. It seems to me that, of course, we can do that, 

and we know that not only what the government activity and responsibilities but the private sector responsibility in terms of how 

these sites are being used. And we know that they are taking some 

steps that are important, but I think further engaging on that is 

critical. 

Well, I appreciate both of you being here today, and thank you, 

Chairman. I know you have more questions. 

Senator PORTMAN. I just have a couple more questions. 

One, building on what you just said, Ambassador Fernandez— 

and, Mr. Bergen, I would like to hear your view on this—you mentioned the Twitter work. I said in my opening statement they have 

closed down more than 100,000 ISIS-linked accounts, and you have 

to assume a lot of that comes back. But you were saying also, 

‘‘mowing the grass’’ I think is the analogy you used, it is important 

to keep that up. I hope Twitter, Facebook, and others are continuing that effort. Do you think what Facebook has done, which 

is apparently worked to remove offending users but also to help 

promote counter-jihadist propaganda, has also been effective? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I believe that there has been progress across the 

board by the Big Three—by Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. So 

there has been tremendous progress if we are looking at 2 years 

ago or even 1 year ago. That is a good thing. 

Facebook has been particularly effective or particularly aggressive in taking material down and shutting things down. So we 

want to encourage that. We want to encourage all of them to do 

that. 

And then we want to focus on these other safe havens where 

they are jumping to, so Telegram, JustPaste.it, Archives.org, what 

can be done with these companies, these entities that are in the 

West, to at least make life a little more difficult for the extremists? 

Realizing that in the end the message is going to get out, and the 

message has to be countered, it has to be answered. But we certainly do not want to give them a free ride in our own space. 
42 

Senator PORTMAN. I think that is very sensible, and, this Subcommittee has worked hard on this issue in some other contexts 

with human trafficking where there is a challenge, the ‘‘dark side 

of the Internet,’’ as I call it, and that same dark side unfortunately 

is being utilized by some of these radicalized elements. 

Something that struck me in your testimony, Mr. Bergen, was 

about women and the fact that ISIS has had luck in attracting 

more women to its ranks, and this is remarkable to me because of 

how poorly they treat women. As one example, ISIS has women 

marry fighters, and if a woman’s husband dies, she is quickly married off again, I am told, sometimes in violation of Islamic law. You 

talked a little about that earlier. But what accounts for this phenomenon? Why are women feeling compelled to sign up given the 

reality? 

Mr. BERGEN. I do not have a good answer to that, but I think 

in the 1970s they might have joined the Weather Underground or 

the Black Panthers or some other utopian group that promised utopia through revolutionary violence, and this is one of the last revolutionary ideologies left standing. And so, I mean, that is an attempt at answering the question, but, given their ultra misogyny, 

it is really a mystery. 

Senator PORTMAN. And, again, the counternarrative needs to be 

out there, defectors included, and there are women who have defected who have come forward, and that seems to me to be, one of 

our opportunities given the phenomenon. 

On the Global Engagement Center and the work that we talked 

about earlier with the previous panel, Ambassador Fernandez, of 

course, you have lots of experience with the predecessor, the head 

of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. I 

know it is early—the Global Engagement Center is really only a 

few months old—but what are you encouraged by so far? What are 

you discouraged by? In your written statement, you talk about the 

Global Engagement Center not having a dedicated line item budget 

appropriation, the funding issue that I mentioned earlier; emphasis 

on building out a professional staff, they need to still do that; too 

much emphasis on transitory events rather than building out something that is focused on combating the threat long-term. Can you 

elaborate on your concerns and any suggestions you have for improvement? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Well, I am encouraged in the work that they are 

doing with recanters, with defectors. That is good. I am encouraged 

with the idea of building proxies, building a network of proxies 

across the world that do stuff. So that is the good stuff. 

The areas where I am concerned is a lot of what the work of 

proxies are doing is not very impressive. It is just churning stuff 

out. It is not well aligned. It is material that—‘‘Do not do drugs,’’ 

right? That kind of stuff. Of course, yes, do not become a terrorist. 

But it does not go deep. It is not as personal. It is not as powerful 

as one would want it to be. 

Now, it is early days, but there is a lot of movement and not necessarily progress yet. So I think they need to—they need some 

more time. I see some good things, and I see some things which 

are a little concerning. 
43 

Senator PORTMAN. Part of what I am hearing you say is that we 

need to target the message more precisely. This is the analytics 

point that we were making earlier, and I talked about this particular issue of the legal constraint of the Privacy Act. You had to 

deal with that as well, I assume. 

Do you have thoughts on that? To me it just does not make sense 

that we would not be able to target those most vulnerable, susceptible who are foreigners, not American citizens, not permanent residents. Do you have thoughts on that? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Well, we assumed, sir, when I headed CSCC, 

that if we are messaging in Arabic, Urdu, and Somali in platforms 

that we know are outside the United States, we are going to assume that the overwhelming majority of the people that we are 

messaging against or with or to are not Americans. Yes, some guy 

in Minneapolis could see what we are doing, but we are assuming 

that if we are messaging or looking at a Yemeni tribal forum, 

which is one of the places that we looked at, most of the people 

there are not Americans. 

So that was actually not a concern of ours at all. I was actually 

kind of very surprised by that testimony myself. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, we are going to be digging into that further, as you know from my questions there. We have an opportunity here online, in addition to the other things we talked about 

earlier that need to be done on the military side or, protecting the 

homeland through law enforcement and so on. But we have an opportunity here to step up our game, don’t we? And not that there 

is any one silver bullet, but to me this is the most difficult and perhaps, therefore, the most important part of the entire effort to better protect our homeland and better protect the free world from 

this terrorist threat. 

So we thank you for your expertise on it. You want us to keep 

writing about it. What is the book that you have next to your 

microphone there? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I mentioned the International Center for the 

Study of Violent Extremism, Dr. Anne Speckhard of Georgetown 

University, and this is actually the book that just came out as part 

of their work, and it actually collates the testimony of defectors. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. And it has a recommendation by Peter Bergen 

and Alberto Fernandez on the back. 

Senator PORTMAN. Wow. You are on the book cover. So Bergen 

has a book, too. He has a 1–800 number for his book. [Laughter.] 

What is your new book, Peter? 

Mr. BERGEN. ‘‘United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s 

Homegrown Terrorists,’’ and it is an attempt to look at many of the 

issues we just discussed. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, you get to talk about your book because 

you were kind enough to come here and testify before us, spend 

your day with us. Sorry about the interruptions, and thank you for 

your expertise and your willingness to help us to be more effective 

in our fight against terrorism, specifically this countermessaging 

online. 

The hearing record will remain open for 15 days for additional 

comments or questions by any of the Subcommittee members. 
44 

This hearing will now be adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:36 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(45) 

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