Homegrown Violent Extremism

Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: The FBI is seeing an increase in cases involving homegrown violent extremists, or HVEs.

Michael A. Clancy: We see people on the Internet that are becoming radicalized very, very quickly.

Halpern: I’m Mollie Halpern and this is FBI, This Week. An HVE is a person of any citizenship who has mostly lived in the U.S. and who engages in a terrorist activity to advance an ideology. This person is influenced by foreign terrorist organizations but acts alone. Michael Clancy, the deputy assistant director of the Counterterrorism Division, says the FBI investigates actions—not belief systems.

Clancy: We are not the thought police. It’s the sociopaths, it’s the ones that are willing to take it a step further to get a gun, to get a bomb, to do something—those are the ones that I worry about.

Halpern: HVEs are often under the radar, but the FBI stays ahead of the threat.

Clancy: We stop the threats by being proactive. At the end of the day, the FBI is about two things. It’s about arresting people and neutralizing threats.

Halpern: To learn more about the FBI’s counterterrorism role, visit www.fbi.gov.