A three-day conference on quelling violent extremism this week did not include the nation’s most senior official tasked with preventing terrorist attacks – FBI Director James B. Comey.
The reason the White House didn’t invite him: The administration doesn’t want too much of the focus on law enforcement, The New York Times reports.
Oddly, the administration still invited Comey’s Russian counterpart, Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, the director of the Russian Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet K.G.B.
The meeting in Washington D.C. “has been criticized as ineffectual and irrelevant, and not focused on immediate and tangible solutions to stop terrorists,” The Times wrote.
An administration official defended the actions.
“While the F.B.I. works tirelessly to keep the country safe, this conference was not centered on federal law enforcement.”
So what was the focus?
Anti-terrorism efforts “are premised on the notion that local officials and communities can be an effective bulwark against violent extremism, and most of the participants — spanning community leaders, local, law enforcement, private sector innovators, and others — reflected this bottom-up approach.”
The FBI declined to comment.
