Will Carless
Appearances
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
30 years ago, a van full of homemade explosives was detonated outside the Alfred P. Mara building, the federal building in Oklahoma City. 168 people died, including I believe it's 19 children who were in a preschool in the building. It was and remains the most deadly, the sort of most horrific act of domestic terrorism in the United States history.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
Sure. Sure. And I want to stress, I mean, look, an awful lot of people serve in the US military and everybody you talk to says, look, extremism is called extremism for a reason. It's extremely rare. And the vast, vast majority of service men and women don't have an extremist sort of thought in their minds.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
However, what the research has shown is that when you look at who commits violent extremism in this country and you look at their background, More often than not, they are likely to have a background in the U.S. military. And that as a factor is sort of more of a defining factor than things like race or political affiliation, things like that.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
So that's how they've concluded that there is this kind of uncomfortable connection between military service and violent extremism.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
So in the wake of the January 6th insurrection, at which hundreds of people who were arrested turned out to have military backgrounds or indeed to have been serving in the military at the time, Then Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin launched a really significant campaign to try and basically root out extremism.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
He set up a working group to study the question, and the working group came up with a number of different recommendations. I did a big investigation back in 2023. This was a couple of years after that effort had been launched. that found that basically only two of those recommendations had ever come to any fruition and that the others had pretty much fallen by the wayside.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
Now, we're a couple of years on from then, we have a new administration, we have a new Secretary of Defense, and
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
There's really a feeling that there's very little being done on this front, that most any of the programs that were set up to try and identify extremists have been shut down or are not continuing at the same time that we've got sort of potential risk of domestic violence, extremism, particularly from veterans.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
yeah so one thing i didn't realize before reporting out this story is that something like one in three federal workers has a background in military service. An awful lot of veterans end up working for the federal government.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
And that's the same federal government that has since sweeping cuts and sweeping reforms in the name of this Department of Government Efficiency, this Elon Musk doge effort that's sent an awful lot of people basically kicked out of their jobs.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
And the people I've talked to at sort of veterans organizations have said, look, it's not only that they've been laid off and have lost their livelihoods, but they've essentially been told, You were a waste. We didn't need you. And that's upset a lot of people.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
Extremists come from pools of disgruntled people, particularly people who have lost their financial livelihood, particularly people who are facing financial hardship and financial strain. Domestic extremists also come from people who have
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
beefs you know who have a problem with the federal government and we've just created thousands of those people and then when you overlap the fact that you have this connection to veterans and to the military and you think of how many of the people who've been laid off and have lost their livelihoods over the last few months have military backgrounds that's what concerns people who research and study this nexus between domestic violence extremism and the military there's just the more
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
people you create, the more people you put in a position of being disgruntled with the federal government, the more likely you are to have somebody who goes out and commits an act like this, unfortunately.
The Excerpt
Kilmar Abrego Garcia tells senator of traumatizing stay in El Salvador prison
Nothing, I mean, is the simple answer. I mean, I sent them several detailed emails asking for more information. I sent to the Pentagon, to the DOD, literally didn't receive a single response to that. So the answer is just nothing. They're not talking about it.