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By: Anthony Kimery
'Lone Wolf' Terrorists, Extremists Pose Growing Homeland Threat, Administration Believes
08/18/2011 ( 9:22am)
This past week, the Obama administration launched a full court press to alert citizens, law enforcement and other federal, state and local authorities to be on the lookout for activities that could be indicative of potential terrorist plotting and extremist behavior.
Tuesday, President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN that a "lone wolf" terror attack in the United States is much more likely today than a coordinated attack like the attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
Conceding that the federal government is in a state of heightened awareness in the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, Obama said “the biggest concern we have right now is not the launching of a major terrorist operation, although that risk is always there.”
Obama said “the risk that we're especially concerned [about] right now is the lone wolf terrorist, somebody with a single weapon being able to carry out wide-scale massacres of the sort that we saw in Norway recently. You know, when you've got one person who is deranged or driven by a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it's a lot harder to trace those lone wolf operators."
These so-called lone wolves can be both Islamist jihadists or homegrown extremists like the Tampa, Florida student arrested this week on charges of plotting what officials said was potentially “catastrophic” bombing at his high school.
Echoing Obama, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that “lone wolf" terror attacks are increasing and "much more difficult to intercept" than 9/11 magnitude plots.
In a speech at a Chamber of Commerce event, Napolitano said the US has a "layered system of security that would give us multiple ways to deter" an attack like the one on 9/11.
"What we see now is smaller plots," Napolitano stressed, adding, “we are also seeing a rise of activities by individuals who are actually in the country, and they are acting by themselves and that kind of attack is the most difficult to prevent because there is nothing to intercept."
Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told WCBS 880 that when you have no “chatter” indicating a large plot, “then you [have to start looking for things like] weapons sales. You look for, for instance, purchase of explosives. So, you try to track that down [to] see any type of unusual activity.”
Napolitano and the President’s comments coincided with DHS’ launch of public service announcements about the department’s “See Something, Say Something” initiative, and the “For Official Use Only” (FOUO) Joint Intelligence Bulletin on lone wolves issued Tuesday by the FBI Counterterrorism Analysis Section and DHS’ Intelligence & Analysis Production Branch.
Obtained by Homeland Security Today, this new intelligence bulletin, Use of Small Arms: Examining Lone Shooters and Small-Unit Tactics, updated a September 3, 2010 DHS-FBI joint analytic product of the same title that “is intended to provide warning and perspective regarding the scope of the potential terrorist threats to the United States, specifically towards US persons,” the bulletin stated.
The alert is intended “to support the activities of DHS and FBI and to help federal, state and local government counterterrorism and law enforcement officials deter, prevent, preempt or respond to terrorist attacks directed against the United States,” it stated.
The “Key Findings” of the bulletin are:
- “The current evolving and diversified homeland threat environment and recent incidents involving small-arms operations in the United States and abroad demonstrate the need for continued vigilance and awareness. Small-arms operations could be employed through a range of tactics from a lone offender - as illustrated by the recent 22 July 2011 lone shooter attack that took place in Norway - to a coordinated small-unit attack involving several operatives;” and
- “We continue to assess that the scale and complexity of any attack of this type is dependent on a variety of factors, to include the sophistication and training of the attackers, the parameters of their targets, and the local security environment.”
Continuing, the alert warned that “recent lone offender attacks and plots in the United States and abroad illustrate the effectiveness of the small-arms tactic and the need for continued vigilance and awareness of this tactic. Attacks by lone offenders - which by definition lack co-conspirators, and therefore provide fewer opportunities for detection - may be more difficult for law enforcement and homeland security authorities to disrupt.”
Additionally, the bulletin warned, “incidents involving lone gunmen in the United States and abroad demonstrate the potential danger, lethality, and effectiveness of an unrehearsed small-arms attack by a single individual with little or no training, and underscore the potentially higher consequences of an assault-style attack involving multiple operatives.”
The bulletin stressed that “terrorist and violent insurgent groups overseas - in many cases operating in nations battling violent civil unrest - have long favored small-unit assault tactics, in which small teams of operatives storm a target using small arms to defeat security. The frequency of these attacks is likely attributable to perceptions of their effectiveness, the prevalence of small-arms instruction at terrorist and militant training camps, and the widespread availability of assault weapons …”
Regarding the homeland threat posed by small-unit tactics, the joint DHS-FBI bulletin issued Tuesday stated that, “given recent events demonstrating the success of small-arms tactics and the evolving, diversified threat faced by the United States from Al Qaeda and those inspired by its ideology, we assess that transnational terrorist groups and homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) could employ small-unit assault tactics in the United States.”
And “although we have no information indicating transnational terrorists have attempted to execute a small-unit assault operation in the homeland,” the bulletin stated, “we note that disrupted HVE plots … planned to employ small arms-based assault tactics.”
The bulletin noted that because of terrorists’ failure to successfully pull-off homeland attacks using improved explosive devices, or IEDs, small-unit assault tactics “may increase [their] attractiveness.”
“While terrorist organizations almost certainly will continue to attempt future homeland attacks using IEDs, it is also possible that operational planners will incorporate small-arms attacks that do not require mastery of IED construction or risk the failure of a complex bomb design,” the FBI and DHS warned.
The intelligence bulletin emphasized the importance of suspicious activity reporting, which is the cornerstone of DHS’ aggressive promotion of its “See Something, Say Something” public awareness campaign.
“We face an increased challenge in detecting terrorist plots underway by individuals or small groups acting independently or with only tenuous ties to foreign handlers,” the DHS-FBI bulletin said, noting that “recent events have illustrated that state, local, tribal and private sector partners play a critical role in identifying suspicious activities - such as unusual purchases of or inquiries about firearms, gunpowder, or ammunition - and raising the awareness of federal counterterrorism officials.”
Similarly, DHS is funding the Information Collection on Patrol (InCOP) training program to enhance the capacity of the line police officer to be able to identify and report suspicious or criminal behavior. InCOP has been adopted by major police departments across the nation.
The training is provided by the Oklahoma City-based Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), whose executive director, David Cid, is a retired career FBI official.
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