By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has signed a new national counterterrorism strategy that focuses in part on the “neutralization” of hemispheric threats and incapacitating cartel operations, top White House adviser Sebastian Gorka said on Wednesday.
Gorka, the White House counterterrorism director, told reporters Trump signed the document on Tuesday “driven by the principle that America is our homeland and must be protected.”
The United States has destroyed dozens of boats as part of what Washington has called a counternarcotics campaign linked to an operation that included the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro this year.
“Our new counterterrorism strategy first prioritizes the neutralization of hemispheric terror threats by incapacitating cartel operations until these groups are incapable of bringing their drugs, their members and their trafficked victims into the United States,” Gorka said.
Within the U.S., Gorka said the strategy will also focus on identifying and neutralizing what he called “violent, secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro gender or anarchist, such as Antifa.”
“We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent,” he said.
Gorka said U.S. counterterrorism officials will meet with international partners on Friday to ask how allies can increase efforts to combat terrorist threats, especially from Iran and in the Strait of Hormuz.
After the assassination in September of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, White House aides called for a coordinated effort against unnamed left-wing groups accused of promoting violence.
Gorka said the strategy would also focus on right-wing groups that foment violence.
He said the strategy also focuses on maintaining pressure on what he called the global jihadi movement, including the “targeting and destruction” of groups like al Qaeda.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Daphne Psaledakis, Rod Nickel)
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