The Government Killed National Guard Member Sarah Beckstrom
Why the DC-deployed Guardswoman shot last week may never see justice
20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom was killed last week in the most heavily surveilled and guarded place on Earth, just two blocks from the White House. This in itself is a scandal. Since 9/11, tens of billions have been spent on keeping an eye on the nation’s capital, on greater intelligence collection and analysis, on ever more surveillance and guards.
The suspect, an Afghan national granted asylum in the U.S. after reportedly serving in a CIA-backed Afghan paramilitary unit, is a textbook profile of the very kind of attacker this sprawling, multibillion dollar national (and homeland) security apparatus is supposed to catch.
The administration’s response to what should be seen as a humiliating attack is to put more Guardsmen on the streets of DC and to “beef up” security and surveillance, their reflexive after-the-fact response to every one of their failures. Congress’ response has been to offer the Department of Homeland Security millions more in funding, according to one bipartisan proposal that is sure to be followed by other similar budget top-offs. All of this ignores the Everest-sized mountain of funding that these agencies already enjoy.
What about the multi-billion dollar network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces that already exists in every city and state across America? What about the watchlisting apparatus? The National Counterterrorism Center, the Threat Screening Center, the DC Fusion Center, the interagency “national capital” this and that?
What about the counterterrorism programs of the FBI, homeland security, CIA, NSA, the Pentagon and countless other civilian departments and agencies?
What about the multi-billion dollar vetting enterprise set up after 9/11 (and expanded under Donald Trump)?
What about the multi-billion dollar “insider threat” program?
What about the multi-billion dollar “counterintelligence” program, which is growing by leaps and bounds and is particularly busy snooping into everyone’s lives?
What about the multi-billion dollar “behavioral” analysis cottage industry of the FBI, homeland security, and the intelligence agencies?
What about the special programs that exist in DC to protect the federal government and the White House? What about the Secret Service? The uniformed secret service? The local FBI? The Park Police? The Capitol Police? The Federal Protective Service? The Pentagon Force Protection Agency? The U.S. Marshals Service? The military’s Northern Command? Joint Task Force National Capital Region? Military District of Washington? All the joint and interagency task forces created after 9/11, after previous attacks, after the George Floyd protests, after January 6?
What about the law enforcement officers of DEA, ICE, homeland security investigations, Customs and Border Protection, Library of Congress Police, Supreme Court Police, Government Printing Office Police, Postal Inspection Service, United States Postal Police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and State Department Diplomatic Security?
What about the National Vetting Center? What about the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who are supposed to check people? What about the CIA itself, or whoever else was the secret sponsor of the Afghan suspect?
What about the Justice Department’s multi-billion dollar vetting system for gun purchases?
What about the multi-billion dollar vetting system for transportation security run by TSA, a system that is supposed to include safeguarding the roads?
Not a single member of Congress has criticized these federal agencies for their failure to identify Beckstrom’s alleged shooter as a threat, despite friends of his as well as social workers reportedly having known about serious mental health issues going back years.
“He has not been functional as a person, father and provider since March of last year, 03/2023,” an email sent by a case worker last year said of him, according to CBS. Just two years ago he had been allowed into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds.
The reason the panoply of federal agencies missed blaring signs like these was not that they didn’t have resources. Their problem is that led the Secret Service to allow a would-be assassin to come within an inch of killing Donald Trump at a rally in Butler Pennsylvania last year: mission creep.
In a devastating review that went largely unnoticed, a Department of Homeland Security-appointed bipartisan panel blamed the Butler shooting on the Secret Service’s authorities not directly related to its protective mission.
“The Secret Service’s dual mission has placed nearly unbearable demands on the agency,” the report found, expressing “extreme skepticism” for the agency’s second mission:
“In this regard, the Panel expresses extreme skepticism that many of the Service’s non-protective (investigative) missions meaningfully contribute to the Service’s protective capability and is concerned that they may materially distract from it” and that this “may require shedding certain peripheral responsibilities like financial fraud and counterfeiting investigations, and perhaps all criminal investigative work that is not directly tethered to the protective mission.”
Congress might bother reading this report. Or, failing that, the story I wrote before the report came out in which I made the same point, detailing the 50 Secret Service missions that have nothing to do with protecting presidents. Even though the Secret Service’s budget had more than doubled in the previous 10 years, that didn’t mean much for the mission that is supposed to be the reason it even exists.
Throwing money at similar agencies won’t prevent the next National Guard shooting either. But that won’t stop Congress from doing so anyway.
As for the equivalently unnecessary mission in this case, it’s hard to think of a better example than the DC Guard deployment of which Beckstrom was a part, officially called the “DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force.” Its stated purpose being fighting crime as well as “beautification,” the U.S. military has even released promotional video of task force Guardsmen picking up trash around the city.
I’ve written about how Guard soldiers being deployed to places like Los Angeles cities regard their missions as idiotic theater. Now we can add deadly.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Thank you for covering this. Sarah could have been my daughter... what happened to her makes absolutely no sense, except when you look at it through the lens of what's happening in the US. Virtually nothing in place is about protecting us, it is only about protecting the established system of greed, corruption and power.
they took a 15 year old boy made him into a killer and traumatized him even if it didn't show up until now.