EDCA U.S. Attorney Lays Out Efforts Against Islamic Extremists

Here are the first few paragraphs of the Sacramento Bee piece on the EDCA U.S. Attorney's efforts at combating radical islamic terrorism, which includes a question and answer session with U.S. Attorney Ben Wagner: 

How do you prevent the Islamic State and other violent terrorist groups from operating on American soil? By identifying lone wolves and disaffected youths ripe for recruitment, battling the extremists in cyberspace, and building bridges with local Muslim communities to identify potential threats from within, says one of those involved in the effort, Sacramento U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner.

Last week, Wagner was among a handful of U.S. attorneys invited to join President Obama’s summit on countering violent extremism. Obama told Wagner and 300 other invitees from 60 nations the key to stopping groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State (also known as ISIL and ISIS) is by preventing them “from radicalizing, recruiting or inspiring others to violence.”

Before Obama appointed him U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California – 34 inland counties from the L.A. County line to the Oregon border – Wagner served as the district’s hate crimes and anti-terrorism coordinator. Upon his return from the summit, he immediately began to put some of what he learned into action.

Q: What’s our first line of defense?

A: Saturday, my office and the California Office of Emergency Services held a “community resilience exercise” at Sacramento State with 30 members of the region’s Muslim community and 30 representatives from the FBI and eight local law enforcement agencies. The president said the best solutions are going to be community-based, because the community has the best information on who might be vulnerable to recruitment.