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CNN's Jim Acosta this morning filed the first part of a three-part report on the return of the militia movement, something we've been tracking regularly here at C&L.

The piece, unfortunately, is like a lot of mainstream reportage on the movement -- that is to say, reporters "parachute" in to a location (in this case, southeastern Michigan) and provide a facile report that's about toe deep in content. As with so many such reports, it's typically susceptible to swallowing whole the mythology that militia members like to toss up for mainstream consumption.

In this case, Acosta willingly transmits the main purpose of the militia movement -- which is to say, remaking genuinely extremist belief systems as mainstream and legitimate. Lee Miracle, the Michigan group's leader, is portrayed as just a gee-shucks ordinary guy concerned about his constitutional rights.

But then there were the other members, and it was clear there was the usual undertow of unhinged paranoia present -- along with clear statements that they were motivated by fear of a Democratic president, and particularly Obama:

ACOSTA (voice-over): Training for what depends on who you ask, but this militia member, who didn't want to give his last name, worries the government will eventually take away his gun rights.

"BRIAN", SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN VOLUNTEER MILITIA: Well, any time we get a Democratic president in the office, people become concerned, including myself and we get a resurgence out here.

ACOSTA: Others just don't like President Obama. So, you don't trust him?

MICHAEL LACKOMAR, SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN VOLUNTERR MILITIA: In short, I think he could be dangerous for the nation.

While overall it gives a pretty warm and fluffy view of the militias, it's not a thoroughly bad report; it at least manages to quote the SPLC's Mark Potok, who points out how they are driven by a combination of anti-liberal animus and wingnutty paranoia:

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: The truth is, is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain.

ACOSTA (voice-over): Earlier this year, Mark Potok with the Southern Poverty Law Center put out a report warning of a surge in militia activity that came with the election of President Obama. Since that report was issued, Potok says his staff has counted 100 new militia groups across the country.

POTOK: There really is this kind of terrible fear mixed with fury about the idea that President Obama is somehow leading a kind of socialistic, you know, takeover of America.

In Acosta's on-air segment after the report, he talked it over with John Roberts and Kiran Chetry, and noted that, as it was in the 1990s, the militias are being driven by fear about both gun rights and Obama generally:

ROBERTS: All right. Is it all about gun rights then?

ACOSTA: A lot of it is about gun rights. A lot of it is about distrust. They just don't trust this president. They think he is out to peel back rights and the gun issue is their big ones. You know, we should mention that the gun control issue specifically is really unrealistic in many ways. Because the Obama administration knows and Democrats know that it will be political suicide for them to go after gun control measures. In fact, the attorney general indicated just recently that he's not even going to go back to the assault weapons ban that was enacted during the Clinton administration.

Then they ran one of their phone-in polls:

CHETRY: We also want to know what you think. Are militia members patriots or are they extremists? And o you think that your rights are slipping away or do you think that these militias go too far? Join us tomorrow and we're going to have part two of Jim's piece.

At the CNN/amFix blog, Acosta described what the next two parts will look like:

Not to worry, says the group's leader Lee Miracle. A military veteran and postal worker, yes postal worker, Miracle says he urges respect for the president.

He's out to change the way the world views militia groups. We get an up-close look at his family in part two of our series. A family Miracle refers to as "Lee and Kate plus eight plus a gun rack." That's because they have eight kids and 22 guns in the house. And the kids take part in militia day.

In part three of our series, we go to Las Vegas to go behind the scenes with an organization called "Oathkeepers." It's a group of ex-law enforcement officials and military veterans who say they've sworn an oath to the Constitution, not the president. The president they're referring to, of course, is Mr. Obama.

The ADL released a report today about the growing rage in the American landscape, of which the militia movement is a significant part:

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It appears Chuck Todd didn't take too kindly to Jeremy Scahill's drubbing he received on Real Time the other night. From Glenn Greenwald:

According to Scahill (via email), Todd approached him after the Maher show and the following occurred:

Right as we walked off stage, he said to me "that was a cheap shot." I said "what are you talking about?" and he said "you know it." I then said that I monitor msm coverage very closely and asked him what was not true that I said on the show. He then replied: "that's not the point. You sullied my reputation on TV."

Media stars are so unaccustomed to being held accountable for the impact of their behavior -- especially when they're on television -- that they consider it a grievous assault on their entitlement when it happens.

Check out the entire post where Glenn's got much more on some similar events going on lately besides just his own dust up with Chuck Todd. Joe Klein got into it with Aimai of NoMoreMisterNiceBlog who happens to be I.F. Stone's granddaughter. Glenn and Marcy Wheeler had an ongoing feud with Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. And now we've got Scahill and Todd's back and forth on Real Time.

Glenn summed all of this up much better than I could ever hope to:

Todd's condescending responses illustrate the same point as the above episodes with Klein and Ambinder: in the eyes of Beltway mavens, those who warned about and worked against the radicalism and lawbreaking of the Bush administration are the fringe, crazed, out-of-touch radicals. While Todd was fiddling around with pretty colored maps and fun polling games, Scahill was courageously investigating one of the most corrupt, dangerous and lethal private corporations in the world, yet it's Todd who understands and must solemnly explain the hardened realities of politics to Scahill, the confused and silly Leftist.

There's little question that when people look back at this period in American history, it will be difficult to comprehend what happened in the Bush era -- and especially how we blithely started a devastating war over complete fiction, while simultaneously instituting a criminal torture regime and breaking whatever laws we wanted. But far more remarkable still will be the fact that, other than a handful of low-level sacrificial lambs, those responsible -- both in politics and the establishment media -- not only suffered no consequences, but continued to wield exactly the same power, with exactly the same level of pompous self-regard, as they did before all of that happened. Looking back several decades or more from now, who will possibly be able to understand how that happened: the almost perfect inverse relationship between one's culpability and the price they paid for what they unleashed?

In fairness to Chuck Todd, he was not one of the ones out there cheerleading for the war and I really liked him when I'd see him on C-SPAN's Washington Journal about every morning when he was working for The Hotline. He's a numbers guy. He was one of the best in the business at reading and sorting through the numbers on how our elections were going to turn out. I don't think coming to MSNBC however, has been good for Chuck Todd.

And now he's on there with the rest of them repeating the narrative of how terrible for the Democrats it would be if any investigations are allowed to happen, and if anyone from the Bush administration is held accountable. It's all politics to Chuck.

Here are my thoughts on that. One of the reasons it would be turned into a game of politics is because Chuck Todd and the rest of the beltway media would report it as such, instead of a legal matter. What Chuck Todd is relaying is what the Republican Party would like to see happen if the Democrats or this Department of Justice goes after the law breaking. It would be the choice of those in the media to validate the Republicans' sniping, which would inevitably follow (and already has for that matter), or to dismiss them as playing partisan politics in order to cover up law breaking for political gain.

Of course since the media was part and parcel in allowing the atrocities of the last eight or nine years, that's never going to happen.

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Jeez. On the same day that one of their leaders and key organizers is arrested for pulling a gun on an elderly man, the folks who run the Tea Parties in Boise got to announce that Blue Dog Democrat Walt Minnick would be meeting with them.

Now that's what I call timing.

The Political Game has the details:

What is even more unconscionable than Republicans lying about reform efforts to keep average Idahoans from supporting any of those efforts is the fact that Congressman Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) is going to speak to those who have halted civil discourse across this nation--teabaggers. Our one and only "Democratic" congressman, Walt Minnick, conducted a telephone town hall last night and will again on the last day of this month, but has otherwise avoided meeting with average constituents throughout his district (he's happy to meet with business leaders and corporate interests) who have real concerns about health care reform. The sting of Minnick's conservative positions and opposition to health care was made exponentially worse today when the Statesman reported that on Saturday Minnick will speak to TEA Party Boise at the Owyhee Plaza.

Congressman Minnick is willingly going before a potential group of extremists who are gun toting, anti-Obama, health care reform obstructionists. He has chosen principles, if he has any, over party. He is catering to the lunatic fringe in ways we haven't seen an Idaho politician of either party do since Congressman Helen Chenoweth.

Well, it's one thing to waffle, but to embrace the people who have been turning our national discourse into a three-wingnut circus is indeed unconscionable.

The ironic thing, as we've explored previously, is that none of these people will ever, ever vote for Walt Minnick. He has a better chance of convincing a rock to vote for him.

Especially the folks who run Tea Party Boise. As we noted, one of their leaders -- a fellow named Challis McAffee -- was just arrested for pointing a handgun at an elderly man whose home McAffee was photographing.

McAfee, as the AP story explains, was a key figure in the recent takeover of much the Idaho GOP apparatus by supporters of Ron Paul. McAffee also runs a Paul-supporting organization called Idahoans for Liberty.

His friends also have a fondness for getting bellicose to the point of being arrested; one of them, a fellow named Christopher Pentico, was convicted of trespass earlier this year when he refused to leave the grounds of the state Capitol building. McAffee, in cohort with Tea Party Boise, organized the Tea Partiers to appear in the courtroom at Pentico's sentencing.

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We've been reporting steadily on the return of the militia movement in post-Bush America, and now that reportage has been confirmed by a disturbing report from the Southern Poverty Law Center describing a "Second Wave" of militiamen organizing across the countryside.

The AP has the story:

Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he's seen in more than a decade.

"All it's lacking is a spark," McEntire said in the report.

It's reminiscent of what was seen in the 1990s — right-wing militias, people ideologically against paying taxes and so-called "sovereign citizens" are popping up in large numbers, according to the report to be released Wednesday.

You can read the report here [PDF file]:

They’re back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country. “Paper terrorism” — the use of property liens and citizens’ “courts” to harass enemies — is on the rise. And once-popular militia conspiracy theories are making the rounds again, this time accompanied by nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest. One law enforcement agency has found 50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers. Authorities around the country are reporting a worrying uptick in Patriot activities and propaganda. “This is the most significant growth we’ve seen in 10 to 12 years,” says one. “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate. One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media
pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president’s country of birth.

As you can see, the report also details how nativist, anti-immigrant sentiment has been an important undertow in the reborn "Patriot" movement and the associated militia-organizing activity. Some of this is built on the bones of the now-moribund Minuteman movement:

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We've already seen evidence, particularly from the last round on July 4, that the "Tea Party" movement was attracting a significant bloc of extremists of various stripes: conspiracy theorists (particularly Birthers), xenophobes, anti-government radicals, gun nuts. And they're not just filling the ranks -- they're taking leadership roles, particularly in speaking at their events.

When this bloc starts taking over, you have to start wondering where all this is going. Because you know it's not going to be a healthy direction.

Greta Van Susteren last night featured a segment on an incident in St. Louis in which the local teabaggers came out in force to "hijack" a public forum on health care hosted by Sen. Claire McCaskill's office. She and her guest, Dana Loesch, were eager to applaud the "hijacjking," but the whole thing was actually pretty disturbing.

A couple of things stood out: First, the pretense that "this isn't about political parties" is manifest nonsense. These events are about stopping Barack Obama, the newly elected president, from enacting the very policies he campaigned for and was indeed elected to enact.

Trying to pretend that it's anything else simply doesn't wash any longer. Anyone who can say with a straight face that they voted for Obama but oppose what he's doing with health care -- when in fact he openly and significantly campaigned on promises he would enact just this kind of program -- is a pretty good liar, but a liar nonetheless.

More disturbing, I thought, was the way the teabaggers used their numbers to shout down their opposition and generally intimidate the town-hall nature of the forum. What was supposed to have been an open discussion of the issues instead became a pushy shoutfest. That's not how democracy works. It's ugly when the left does it, and it's ugly when the right does it too.

Is this what the Tea Parties are morphing into? Street theater for the right, becoming increasingly extremist in nature, and increasingly prone to disruptive tactics? The disenfranchised right is getting desperate, and this sure looks to be the direction they're heading.

(photo courtesy of Democralypse New)

The ridiculous, fringe Birther conspiracy theory was dealt a big blow Monday, when the House unanimously passed a bill declaring Hawaii the birthplace of President Obama:

It would make some political sense for congressional Democrats to start pressing their Republican colleagues on the Birthers. If Republicans don't reject the conspiracy theories about President Obama's birthplace outright, their opponents can use it to paint them as extremists; if they do reject them, they might have a problem with their base.

Greg Sargent reported Monday that one House Democrat, Hawaii's Neil Abercrombie, was doing just that. Abercrombie, Sargent wrote, "is going to introduce a resolution on the House floor today that seems designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam .... [The resolution] commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. But here’s the rub, his spokesman tells me: It describes Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace." Read on...

The bill passed unanimously -- even the nutty Michelle Bachmann voted for it. So, how long will CNN continue to parrot Fox News and right wing clowns like Limbaugh and Beck in perpetuating this right wing myth? I guess as long as it gets ratings...

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It's kind of funny how Bill O'Reilly can benignly declare a nakedly nativist organization like the Minutemen, despite a clear proclivity for attracting racists and violent extremists, "in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups" -- and indeed assiduously decline to report on it when the violent evidence at hand makes clear they are much, much more than that.

And then he can turn around, as he did last night on The O'Reilly Factor -- assisted by his "internet cop" Amanda Carpenter -- and attack a relatively benign advocacy organization like Presente Action, a project of Color of Change, whose purpose revolves around providing an effective voice on the Web for minorities.

What has his goat, of course, is their campaign to defend Sonia Sotomayor by pointing out the prominent role played by hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. So he dismisses them as merely a "tentacle" of MoveOn.org and the "radical left."

Funny how that standard is a one-way street in O'Reillyland.

You have to wonder if maybe he, like Jeff Sessions, believes that "Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another".

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Well, we've seen plenty of recent evidence that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the nativist law-enforcement chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, attracts genuine extremists in support of his cause.

This recently released YouTube by Humanleague makes the case even more starkly. Its centerpiece is the opening comments by an avid supporter of the Minutemen and Sheriff Arpaio named Brandi Baron, who opines thus:

Baron: I say, give orders to shoot to kill, and kill any man, woman or child who comes across the border illegally. I'll bet you, you kill enough of them, right off the bat, people will stop coming over that way.

[Questioner]

That's what I just said. Personally, I think a minefield would be good. Why build a fence when you can plant some mines?

Q: You just said that you would kill kids.

Baron: If they're being drug across the border, hell yes. The difference between those people and us -- Our country is No. 1. Theirs? Pffft!

This sort of inhuman callousness and disregard for human life is part and parcel of why nativist movements like the Minutemen -- and the mainstream embrace of such factions by public figures like Arpaio -- inevitably spawn violent offspring like Shawna Forde and her gang of killer Minutemen, who gunned down a family in cold blood because they mistakenly believed the father was a big-time drug dealer with cash on the premises. There's a powerful continuum between gangs like Forde's and "mainstream" nativists like Arpaio and his supporters.

As Jill Garvey at Imagine 2050 observes:

This is exactly why Shawna Forde felt justified in breaking into a Latino family’s home and murdering a little girl and her father.

While some of the individuals featured on this video may be unstable or exhibit strange behavior, they are not crazy. These are functioning adults who are perfectly capable of behaving in a reasonable manner. They choose not to. They choose hate over tolerance. They choose to advocate violence over rational dialogue. Violence against immigrants occurs because bigots in positions of power (Sheriff Joe) set the stage and provide an atmosphere that make it acceptable.

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(In all likelihood, the ones in this photo are probably the parents of the ones demonstrating today)

The eerie similarities in news reports from 1978 and this past weekend. In 1978 it was overthrowing the Shah. In 2009 it was reaction to a rigged election. In 1978 the overthrow was hijacked by extremists bent on employing their own forms of repression. In 2009 it's the repressive regime bent on suppressing the majority's desire for reform.

Where this story will end is anyone's guess at this point. But I suspect the ride, as it was in 1978, will be very bumpy.

Matthew Balan at Newsbusters is unhappy because a CNN chryon identified Shawna Forde's killer-Minuteman gang "extremists", while Rick Sanchez talked a bit about how Forde had been a player in the movement:

A chyron which accompanied a report on CNN’s Newsroom program on Wednesday about the arrest of a leader of an organization inspired by the Minuteman Project, referred to her and her accused accomplices as “extremists.” Despite qualifying how the largest Minuteman organization had distanced itself from the suspects, anchor Rick Sanchez questioned how she became a “player in the anti-immigration movement.”

OK, so if Balan doesn't want to call Forde's gang of thugs "extremists," what would he call this?

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

... "She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug-cartel dealers — rob them and steal their money or drugs," Metzger said.

... Investigators think the May 30 robbery was intended to be the first in a series of such attacks intended to fund the border-watch group and a new venture, O'Connor said. Forde planned on starting a business of helping free kidnap victims in other countries, he said.

Oh, and then they shot a 9-year-old girl and her father to death in cold blood.

And yes, Forde indeed was a player in the Minuteman movement, appearing on TV as a Minuteman spokesperson and onstage with Jim Gilchrist here in the Northwest.

What, exactly, does Balan think Sanchez should have reported?

Now, Sanchez never suggests that the larger Minuteman movement might be riddled with extremists, but that seems to be what Balan is accusing him of doing. Or at least sidling up too close to that proposition.

Well, tell ya what, Matthew: We'll gladly say it here. The Minuteman movement is and always has been an extremist movement, and so it is no surprise to see it devolve in its decaying phase into a radical and violent one.

Oh yes, and you know what else? It's a big moneymaking scam, too.

But I guess you're unhappy unless they're described as a big "neighborhood watch." Yeah, that fits 'em to a T, eh?

Here's what's actually noteworthy about all this: Unlike CNN, you'll never see this story reported on Fox. In fact, I haven't seen a single mention of this story on Fox TV. Gee, I wonder why that is. Well, no I don't.

Shepard Smith seems to understand what we've been saying for a long time.

Smith says Holocaust Museum shooting "reminds me" of the DHS report on "crazy extremists"; Herridge concurs.

Janet Napolitano apologized for the DHS report on right wing extremism after being hammered relentlessly by the Limbaughs and Hannitys. How long before right wing talkers try to blame liberals for targeting their hate speech? How long before FOX News has a little talk to Smith? Naw, he got a big contract recently. Nevermind.

(Please donate to C&L's 2009 fundraiser if you can. We need your support.)

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There are some things that are always constant. It rains a lot in Seattle, their coffee is great and it's north of California. And whenever Bill O'Reilly feels threatened he summons Juan Williams to appear on The Factor to apologize for BillO's actions. Last night Juan did his job well. He plays a good faux liberal when BillO needs one. Just remember, "when O'Reilly's in a jam, who's he gonna call? JuanBusters." Check this out.

Williams: There are people who are going to try and use this now to make others who have critical of a women having the right to choose, make that into a political tool to beat people up and to try and convince people that these are all extremists and the fact is that you're not extremist. There are a lot of people who by a matter of conscience are troubled by abortion, especially late term abortion and I know you O'Reilly, what you did is you said it bothered you personally and there's nothing wrong with that.

----

But let me just say, they're going after you, Bill O'Reilly and I've never heard you say to block a clinic , I've never heard you say to create violence to intimidate women who are legally seeking an abortion. I've never heard you say go after the doctor's, berate them, certainly not kill them. Never. Never! Not true.

No, he just used his ambush producers to stalk him.

Oh, my friend Brian Russell was on that segment.
And of course he doesn't want to be a vigilante but...

And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech.

David Neiwert has an excellent post with with some great video.

Bill O'Reilly has Dr. George Tiller's blood on his well-stained hands
O'Reilly similarly accused anyone who refused to buy into his accusation of coddling killers:

I don’t care what you think. We have incontrovertible evidence that this man is executing babies about to be born because the woman is depressed…if you don’t believe me, I don’t care…You are OK with Dr. Tiller executing babies about to be born because the mother says she’s depressed.

O'Reilly later attacked Kathleen Sebelius for her refusal to prosecute Tiller. And he kept it up. As recently as this spring he again spent a segment excoriating Tiller as a murderer. Priscilla at Newshounds ran through the file in March.

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On ABC's THIS WEEK, Admiral Mullen reiterated President Obama's call to close Guantanamo Bay to be closed.

The concern I've had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So and I think that centers -- you know, that's the heart of the concern for Guantanamo's continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it," Mullen said.

Didn't the Bush administration and all their flunkies, including Newt Gingrich, say that you can never go against the military or you hate the troops?

REP. GINGRICH: Let me say, first of all, there were over 550,000 troops who served in Iraq. I'm sure you can find one to agree with you.

OK, I guess Newt only likes troops who agree with his positions, and I guess Admiral Mullen is one of those troops too. Well Newt, are you now putting all your hate on the members of our armed forces who want to close Gitmo?

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On ABC's THIS WEEK, Admiral Mullen reiterated President Obama's call that Guantanamo Bay should be closed.

The concern I've had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So I think that centers -- you know, that's the heart of the concern for Guantanamo's continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it," Mullen said.

Didn't the Bush administration and all their flunkies including Newt Gingrich say that you can never go against the military or you hate the troops?

REP. GINGRICH: Let me say, first of all, there were over 550,000 troops who served in Iraq. I'm sure you can find one to agree with you.

OK, I guess Newt only like troops that agree with his positions and I guess Admiral Mullen is one of those troops too. Well Newt, are you putting all your hate on the military now who want to close Gitmo?

Trying to respond to the insane eruption of self-revealing wingnuttery over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin outlining the coming wave of right-wing domestic terrorism, Janet Napolitano went on CNN this morning to talk it over with John King on "State of the Union":

NAPOLITANO: Here is the important point. The report is not saying that veterans are extremists. Far from it. What it is saying is returning veterans are targets of right-wing extremist groups that are trying to recruit those to commit violent acts within the country. We want to do all we can to prevent that.

And again, I regret that in the politicization of everything that happens in Washington, D.C., some people took offense, but when you read the report, what it was saying -- what it was saying is, look, we have a threat of terrorism within our own shores, and one of the groups being targeted to see if they will be aligned with that are some of our veterans. Let's make sure we prevent that.

KING: Do you regret the politicization, or do you regret the choice of words by your department? Could it have been written better, to maybe reduce the politicization?

NAPOLITANO: In retrospect, anything could have been written differently to prevent politicization, but I think any fair reading of the report says this is very consistent with other reports that have been issued before, they were issued before Obama was president, they're being issued now. They're meant to give people what is called situational awareness, and they're certainly not intended to give offense, far from it.

This confirms our earlier reportage, as well as our more thorough analysis of the bulletin and the response to it.

Finally, and most on the tip of wingnut tongues, is the claim that the report "singles out" all returning veterans as potential recruits for right-wing extremists. In reality, the report only singles out returning veterans who become active in violent hate groups.

Here's the actual language of the report:

U//FOUO) Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

This is, in fact, precisely accurate -- and as we pointed out from the get-go, this is the view not merely of DHS, but of the FBI. A July 2008 assessment of the situation by the FBI (titled White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel Since 9/11) found that the numbers of identifiable neo-Nazis within the ranks was quite small (only a little over 200), but warned:

Military experience—ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces—is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement. FBI reporting indicates extremist leaders have historically favored recruiting active and former military personnel for their knowledge of firearms, explosives, and tactical skills and their access to weapons and intelligence in preparation for an anticipated war against the federal government, Jews, and people of color.

... The prestige which the extremist movement bestows upon members with military experience grants them the potential for influence beyond their numbers. Most extremist groups have some members with military experience, and those with military experience often hold positions of authority within the groups to which they belong.

... It's important to understand how FBI investigations into these kinds of activities take place: The FBI is constrained by DOJ guidelines that do not allow them to investigate organizations merely because of incendiary rhetoric or politically worrisome beliefs. They only open investigations into the activities of members of such groups when there is evidence of actual criminal activity.

And it's at that time that the presence of an extremist with a military background becomes not merely relevant, but potentially important.