Senators Warn Trump Administration Is Developing Secret Watchlist of Americans

[Thiệu Ngô]

One called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 “a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act.”

By Ken Klippenstein

The Trump administration is drawing up “secret lists of terrorist groups inside the United States,” Senator Elissa Slotkin said on the floor of Congress yesterday — the first such reference to the effects of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7).

The directive, as I’ve reported, lays out Donald Trump’s policies with regard to equating “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist” sentiment with domestic terrorism. As a result of the directive, the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist is expected to double in the coming months, sources told me.

The Senator from Michigan would know. She is a former CIA analyst and Assistant Secretary of Defense, and now serves on the Senate Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. She defends the national security state as “good, corn-fed people who just want to help their country” and has said “I’m as hawkish as anyone” on Iran.

In other words, Slotkin is no hater when it comes to the national security system — which makes her warning especially chilling.

Slotkin in her Senate speech warned that with NSPM-7, the Trump administration had directed law enforcement agencies to “make secret lists of terrorist groups inside the United States and send the full force of the U.S. government against those terrorist organizations.”

“They are not telling anyone about this, but asking that the law enforcement [community] come up with that list,” she added.

Consistent with her remarks, NSPM-7 says, “The Attorney General shall submit a list of any such [domestic terrorist] groups” to the White House.

“The Trump administration define[s] domestic terrorism incredibly broadly,” Slotkin said. “It suggests that any group that talks about anti-Christian values, views they don’t like on migration or race, differing views on the role of the family, religion, or morality could all be grounds for labelling an organization as domestic terrorists.”

She also decried the Trump administration’s secret list of designated foreign terrorist groups in its war on cartels, saying: “If this administration is not telling us who’s on their secret designated terrorist list for groups in the Caribbean, they’re definitely not going to tell us who is on their list of domestic terrorist organizations.”

Slotkin also revealed that the Trump administration had refused to provide its list of cartel terrorist groups to Congress, including even the Republican leadership. According to her, the list numbers in the “dozens”; this suggests that the administration is quite comfortable with such lists and is employing them against more than just the high-profile groups like Tren de Aragua.

In response to a request for comment for this article, Slotkin’s office directed me to another point she raised in a confirmation hearing this week for Trump’s nominee for general counsel of the Army, Charles Young. During the hearing, Slotkin asked if a list of domestic terrorist organizations would authorize the military to take action within the United States — a possible way that the administration could get around posse comitatus restrictions on the use of the active military to enforce the law.

Young’s reply: “Not to my knowledge”

I’ve been critical of Congress’ silence on NSPM-7 so I am heartened by the seriousness of Slotkin’s questions.

A small but growing number of members has now spoken up. Representative Ro Khanna of California was the first, saying: “NSPM-7 is a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act.”

Khanna was also kind enough to shout me out for my work in covering this.“It was @kenKlippenstein, an independent journalist, that broke the dam on this first,” Khanna said. “This is why it is so important we support independent media.”

The dam does seem to be finally breaking. Democratic Reps. Pocan, Jayapal and Huffman criticized NSPM-7 in a letter they’re circulating. Pocan himself discussed the issue on MSBNC. Today the first investigation by a major media organization into NSPM-7 was published by Reuters.

Also, some 3,000 nonprofit groups signed an open letter condemning NSPM-7 and the direction that it is moving the nation.

Other national security insiders have flagged NSPM-7 as dangerous, sometimes with even starker language.

“NSPM-7 is one of the most dangerous documents to come out of the White House since the orders to inter Japanese citizens during WWII,” Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff and director of the George Mason University Hayden Center, said.