DNI releases secret Biden plan raising serious civil liberties concerns

By John R. Lott Jr.
Real Clear Wire

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a shocking plan by former President Joe Biden’s administration for dealing with domestic terrorists. Last week, Gabbard released a June 2021 document titled “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism” (henceforth “the Plan”). But despite the release receiving over 6.3 million views on X by April 21, the mainstream media has ignored the document.

While Americans are very familiar with many Biden era policies, the newly declassified document reveals that the actions were part of a coordinated action from early in the administration across a wide range of government agencies to target “domestic terrorists.” To combat this domestic threat, the Biden administration advocated censorship, closing people’s accounts at banks or financial institutions (so-called “de-banking”), and gun control.

Identifying criminal activity through people’s speech already raises serious concerns, but the new document goes even further. It shows that officials aimed to track “concerning non-criminal behavior” – a move with no precedent in the U.S. This revelation casts the Biden administration’s actions in a very different light and redefines how the public should interpret recent revelations.

The Plan starts by casting a wide net in how it identifies “concerning” activities. It instructs authorities to “provide resources to state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement that cover relevant iconography, symbology, and phraseology used by many domestic terrorists.” Most disturbingly, and completely absent from the publicly released unclassified version of the Plan in June 2021, it directed the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security to target “incidents of concerning non-criminal behavior.”

Although the original unclassified and newly declassified versions of the Plan mention “freedom of expression” a few times, the updated version strongly suggests that censorship is necessary to protect both democracy and free speech. The language closely mirrors the European Digital Security Act, which claims to fight “disinformation” and “hate speech” in the name of safeguarding democratic values.

The Biden administration obliterated the line between lawful expression and criminal intent by encouraging federal agencies to monitor speech that involved no criminal activity. Once you read the declassified version of the Plan, it becomes clear that the Biden administration actions weren’t necessarily by accident. Despite repeated public denials, it followed an explicit policy of identifying people based solely on their political views.

In 2022, an FBI whistleblower exposed the rollout of a related document: the FBI’s “Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide” for identifying “Militia Violent Extremists” (MVEs). As Congressman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the guide advised agents to be suspicious of symbols like “2A” and imagery referencing the Second Amendment. It also flagged historically significant emblems like the Betsy Ross Flag and Gadsden Flag as indicators of potential domestic terrorists.

Of course, in December 2023, reports revealed that the FBI categorized “certain Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists.” And FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend testified before Congress in May 2023 that he was tasked with recording the license plate numbers of parents who attended school board meetings and expressed concerns about topics such as critical race theory and gender ideology. 

While the Biden administration publicly stated their intent was limited to criminal activities, the declassified documents reveal the targeting of individuals based on their expressions of free speech or religious practices.â?? The concerns and criticisms about overreach arose from the administration’s explicit policy.

Several mentions are made of “disinformation” and how it can lead to “domestic terrorist recruitment and narratives.” The Plan calls for the U.S. government joining forces with other Western countries and forming partnerships with private-industry companies to “control the spread of disinformation” and participate in the “Christchurch Call to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online,” which calls for using AI to censor “hate” speech.

As opposed to the original publicly released version, the newly declassified document explicitly calls for the U.S. government to “lead” a global push to addressing this disinformation content. It also supports such things as “evidence-based research on information literacy education for both children and adults learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”

After a March 2019 massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, the New Zealand government pushed for Twitter accounts to be locked even for simply pointing out that the murderer was “a socialist, environmentalist, who hates capitalists & free trade.” That went against the government and the media’s line. Even linking to newspaper pieces making that point resulted in censorship.

The Plan called for expanding Obama’s Operation Chokepoint to include de-banking of “financial activity associated with domestic terrorists.” Given all the emphasis on the supposed threat from the Jan. 6 “insurrection,” this might explain why some lawyers who represented President Trump after the 2020 election lost access to their bank accounts.

For example, Bank of America and USAA abruptly canceled John Eastman’s bank accounts. Eastman, who was an attorney for Trump after the 2020 election, lost his accounts with no prior notice or ability to respond. Others were supposedly de-banked because of their “religious or political beliefs.” In every case, authorities made no allegations of criminal activity.

This concern about domestic terrorism was used as a basis for advocating a variety of gun control policies: banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, state adoption of extreme risk protection orders allowing courts to confiscate people’s guns without due process, a national education campaign urging people to lock up their guns, and banning homemade guns (so-called “ghost guns”).

The declassified Plan raises serious civil liberties concerns. It obliterates the line between legitimate security threats and constitutionally protected speech and behavior and casts a dangerously wide net. The revelations show how far the Biden administration was willing to go to silence opposing political views.

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

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