And look who’s gloating over the news:
Via Danger Room/Wired:
The White House quietly ordered a widespread review of government counterterrorism training materials last month, following Danger Room’s reports that officials at the FBI, military and Justice Department taught their colleagues that “mainstream” Muslims embrace violence and compared the Islamic religion to the Death Star.
According to a Pentagon memorandum acquired by Danger Room, the White House’s National Security Staff in October requested “Departments and Agencies” to “provide their screening process for CVE trainers and speakers.” (.pdf) CVE refers to “Countering Violent Extremism,” the euphemism du jour for the war on terrorism. The memorandum says that “recent media attention” led to the review, and contains a single attachment to demonstrate that attention: “Spencer Ackerman’s Wired.com article.”
The ongoing review will examine whether counterterrorism training material throughout the government is accurate and relevant, and will make sure the briefings given to federal field offices and local cops meet the same standards as FBI headquarters or the Pentagon. […]
The purpose of the review, Mayorga writes, is to “determine the criteria used to establish professional qualifications for teachers and lecturers providing instruction on countering violent Islamic extremism; with particular focus on Military Information Support Operations, Information Operations, and Military Intelligence curriculum.” Mayorga adds that information on “cultural awareness” for troops preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan is also subject to the White House review.
Some security agencies already have their own internal reviews. After Danger Room reported on presentations at the FBI training academy at Quantico and for FBI partners in New York that taught al-Qaida was “irrelevant” compared to the threat of Islam itself, the bureau began what it describes as a thorough scrub of its counterterrorism curriculum. It enlisted the Army’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to purge material that conflates terrorism with mainstream Islam. Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department initiated a separate counterterrorism training review, recently told Congress that those instructional materials hurt the U.S. fight against al-Qaida.