The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced today the release of a public summary of a classified Management Advisory Memorandum for the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As described in the public summary, the classified memorandum details the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) concerns about inadequate actions taken by the FBI to mitigate a national security threat.
As described in the summary, in March 2017 the OIG began an audit of the FBI’s efforts to address homegrown violent extremists (HVE). In August 2017, during the audit, the OIG became aware of a national security threat posed by activities of an HVE who is incarcerated at a federal facility outside DOJ’s authority. Upon receiving this information, the OIG alerted FBI Counterterrorism Division (CTD) executive management of the concern, and in response to the OIG’s notification, FBI executive management took formal steps to coordinate with parallel leadership of the non-DOJ federal entity to mitigate this threat.
The public summary of the memorandum provides an unclassified description of the OIG’s recommendations to the FBI to further mitigate the threat to national security identified by the OIG during this audit. The FBI concurred with the OIG’s five recommendations, while noting some disagreements with the OIG’s analysis.
The OIG has provided the classified memorandum, which contains more detailed information about the circumstances discovered during the audit, to the FBI, congressional oversight committees, and the non-DOJ entity. The OIG will continue its audit of the FBI’s efforts to address HVEs and will incorporate in a final report any actions taken by the FBI to address the issues raised in this summary and in greater detail in the classified memorandum to the FBI.
The summary is available on the OIG’s website under “Recent Reports” and at the following link: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/1806.pdf.
A description of the OIG’s ongoing audit of the FBI’s efforts to address homegrown violent extremists is available on the Ongoing Work page of the OIG’s website.