By the standards of the San Francisco Bay Area’s hard left, Casey Goonan’s crimes were unremarkable. A police SUV partially burned by an incendiary device on UC Berkeley’s campus. A planter of shrubs lit on fire after Goonan unsuccessfully tried to smash a glass office window and throw a firebomb into the federal building in downtown Oakland.
But thanks to a series of communiques where Goonan claimed to have carried out the summer 2024 attacks in solidarity with Hamas and the East Bay native’s anarchist beliefs, federal prosecutors claimed Goonan “intended to promote” terrorism on top of a felony count for using an incendiary device. Goonan’s original charges notably did not contain terrorism counts. In late September, US District Court Judge Jeffrey White sentenced Goonan, whom they called “a domestic terrorist” during the hearing, to 19 and a half years in prison plus 15 years probation. Prosecutors also asked that he be sent to the Bureau of Prisons facility that contains a Communications Management Units, a highly restrictive assignment reserved for what the government claims are “extremist” inmates with terrorism-related offenses or affiliations.
Although Goonan’s case began under the Biden Administration, it offers a glimpse of the approach the Department of Justice may take in President Donald Trump’s forthcoming offensive against the “left,” formalized in late September in National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), an executive order targeting anti-fascist beliefs, opposition towards Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids, and criticism of capitalism and Christianity as potential “indicators of terrorism.”
In addition to Goonan’s purported admiration for Hamas—a designated terrorist organization since 1997—and cofounding of True Leap, a tiny Anarchist publisher, the 35-year-old doctorate in African-American Studies’ biography includes another trait being targeted by the Trump administration and its allies: Goonan identifies as a transgender person. While NPSM-7 cites “extremism migration, race, and gender” as an indicator of “this pattern of violent and terroristic tendencies,” the Heritage Foundation has attempted to link gender-fluid identity to mass shootings and is urging the FBI to create a new, specious domestic terrorism classification of “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,” or TIVE.
The executive order, meanwhile, directs the American security state’s sprawling post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus to be reoriented away from neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and other extreme right-wing actors that have been overwhelmingly responsible for the majority of political violence in the past few decades, and towards opponents of ICE, anti-fascists, and the administration writ large. Along with potentially violent actors, NSPM-7 instructs federal law enforcement to scrutinize nonprofit groups and philanthropic foundations involved in funding organizations that espouse amorphous ideologies, from “support for the overthrow of the United States Government” to expressing “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
“NSPM-7 is the natural culmination of ‘radicalization theory’ as the basis for the American approach to counterterrorism,” says Mike German, a retired FBI agent who spent years infiltrating violent white supremacist groups and quit the Bureau in response to its post-9/11 shift in terrorism strategy. German explored radicalization theory’s trajectory in his 2019 book, Disrupt, Discredit and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy.
Radicalization theory attempts to establish a logic of progression by terrorists from introduction to a particular ideology through political and social activism, ending with targeted violence.
“When I worked domestic terrorism in the 1990s, the ‘radicalization’ theory was discredited, and it was resurrected after September 11,” German says. The theory centers on excising “bad ideas” from the broader political body and neutralizing the voices of dissident figures who may inspire and possibly radicalize others—which, according to sentencing filings, is precisely how federal prosecutors view Goonan.
“Thanks to that framework, they can target anyone they choose,” German says. “And because of this logic, they’ve constructed where bad ideas necessitate mass surveillance, financial scrutiny, and disruption. The paradigm that was initially aimed at Al Qaeda is now being directed towards mainstream Americans, mainstream ideas, and mainstream political parties.”
Sentencing records make clear that Goonan’s political convictions began moving away from the American mainstream long before their weeklong spree of direct action in the late spring of 2024. The former high school baseball standout began to get immersed in the East Bay’s radical political circles after suffering an injury in junior college, then continued their intellectual journey during their undergraduate studies at UC-Riverside and in a doctoral program at Chicago’s Northwestern University.
Israel’s brutal response to the October 7, 2023 attacks, deemed genocidal by an independent commission at the United Nations, appalled Goonan, and they went headfirst into Palestinian solidarity activism in the East Bay. The Gaza solidarity encampment at UC Berkeley caught Goonan’s attention in spring 2024, and they became an active participant in that movement. Court records indicate this was a particularly challenging time, with Goonan suffering serious hypoglycemic episodes from their Type I diabetes and also being involuntarily hospitalized on a mental health hold and formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, according to court documents.
“I am not an arsonist but an activist who in a manic fit of rage and desperation committed arson,” Goonan wrote in a September 13 letter to Judge White ahead of sentencing.
When the UC Berkeley solidarity encampment quietly disbanded in late May—a stark contrast to violence inflicted on other campuses by police and pro-Zionist vigilantes—Goonan, per court records, decided to mount a one-person direct action campaign they entitled, “Operation Campus Flood.” Federal prosecutors claim Goonan made explicit reference to Hamas’ name for the October 7 operations (al-Aqsa Flood) and referenced a propaganda pamphlet FBI agents found in Goonan’s family residence narrating Hamas’ justification for their decision to attack Israel.
These factors, outlined in the government’s sentencing memo plus Goonan’s online communiques after the arsons urging others to follow their example, their desire to publish writings on the rationale behind their actions, and their purported attempt to use legal mail to conceal communications from the authority underpinned the prosecution’s request that Goonan be housed in BOP’s highly restrictive unit.
“Even after being arrested and pleading guilty to his crimes, he has refused to show any remorse and in fact has taken substantial steps to continue to publicize his actions and recruit others to his cause,” assistant US attorney Nikhil Bhagat wrote in a September 18 filing. “The defendant is a highly educated, unrepentant domestic terrorist who sought to use violence against law enforcement officers and the federal government.”
The Communications Management Units, created by the George W. Bush Administration, have been criticized for contributing to the ongoing radicalization of inmates. There is only one such unit left in the federal prison system, at FCI Cumberland, where a combination of radical Islamists, neo-Nazis, and left-affiliated prisoners are currently being held. The two other CMUs, at FCI Marion and FCI Terre Haute, were closed within the past year, according to court records.
Sarah Potter, Goonan’s defense attorney, tells WIRED that the government’s demands for a heavy sentence came once Goonan had reached a plea agreement on January 14, 2025 (Before Trump’s inauguration) that limited their sentence to 20 years. When they got hold of Goonan’s jail correspondence, Potter says, they had expanded their concept of his radicalization from earlier anarchist beliefs to Islamist terrorism. “By the time we got to sentencing, they were drawing a much closer and clearer connection to Hamas,” Potter says. “The main core of their beliefs is anti-oppression in various aspects, whether that’s racial oppression, prisons, or other marginalized groups.”
The potential assignment to a CMU—which will be a unilateral decision by federal prison authorities—alarms Potter considering Goonan’s Type I diabetes and documented history and episodes, per court documents, of severe mental health episodes. “Their comments at sentencing were designed to paint Casey as a dangerous ringleader, who if allowed to have free communication would continue to present a true threat of violence to the country,” Potter says.
In addition, Potter believes federal law enforcement’s ongoing attempt to unseal Goonan’s correspondence with the Transgender Law Center, which could represent Goonan should they decide to become party to the TLC’s class action lawsuit brought by transgender inmates against BOP and the Trump Administration, represents a unique and undefined threat. Even though Goonan’s case is formally closed and he is already in FCI Mendota awaiting assignment to another prison, Potter and federal prosecutors are still sparring in court filings about divulging Goonan’s confidential legal correspondence with the TLC to USDOJ.
“TLC has filed a class action over gender-affirming healthcare against BOP, and the government knows that Casey might well become a client when they go into Bureau of Prisons custody,” Potter says. “The TLC and transgender Americans are clearly on the government’s radar, and not in a good way.”
Should the legal services organization be targeted for promoting extremism by the Trump Administration, German, the former FBI agent, maintains that the grounds for the overarching counterterrorism strategy originated long before 2024.
“There’s been a bipartisan acceptance of this kind of theory of terrorism that is often unconnected and unrelated from acts of violence,” German says. “NSPM-7 is a natural culmination of the adoption of this radicalization theory over 20 years as the basis for counterterrorism, and the government can target anyone they choose.”
