Department of Justice use of training materials on counter terrorism
- How do local police forces and FBI offices find material and instructors for training?
- Well, there is nothing online anywhere, nor on the FBI website that provides any information on the process of choosing materials and instructors for training, except that the counter terrorism training division has a lot of autonomy and it is essentially in charge of putting together its own training module and then is supposed to find a way to fit that training into the broader curriculum for agents. I think this would be a good question to ask the United States Department of Justice in a FOIA request. To know how the process is done, it will help in creating ways to make sure the trainers and materials chosen to train FBI agents regarding terrorists are not anti-Muslim and anti-Islam. It will help in implementing methods in which unbiased trainers and materials are chosen. This could be a great step in combating against the common misconception of all muslims being terrorists and Islam being a violent religion.
- Identify what an FOIA request is.
- FOIA is the Freedom of Information Act. It provides everyone the right to to obtain access to federal agency records unless its a matter of national security or the other few exceptions. To file a request, you have to describe the information you want in as much detail as possible and the format you want it in. It has to be a written request that you send to the specific agency that relates to your request. The standard time to receive a response is one month, but it can take longer than that.
- What has CAIR done regarding this issue?
- CAIR sent a letter to the Department of Justice accused the FBI of hiring anti-Islam experts to teach law-enforcement agents about Islam and of focusing a disproportionate amount of the training on the threat from Islamic terrorists. The link below is a pdf file with the actual letter that was sent. Now, CAIR is working on requesting specific information on the FBI's trainers to prevent anti-Muslim teachings. file://localhost/Users/family/Downloads/signed-to-the-doj-to-investigate-fbi-trainings.pdf
- What media coverage has been dedicated to this issue?
- NPR dedicated a news piece titled "How Did Anti-Muslim Bias Seep Into FBI Training?". This article talked about the biased teachings of anti-Muslim in the FBI and how slides of a FBI training session presentation were leaked. On these slides were biased pieces of information regarding Muslims being terrorists and Prophet Muhammad being a terrorist, military leader.
- Also, below is a link to a video which is a discussion on counter terrorism and intelligence . Robert Mueller, the FBI director is being interviewed about this issue. The FBI director apologizes for the inappropriate training material and insures that they are taking all measures possible to prevent such material to ever be seen at FBI's training sessions.
- What have public officials said about this issue?
- Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky challenged the anti-Muslim training and even questioned the FBI director about the allegations.
