Study reveals the many faces of terrorism
Source:
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Recent terror alert renews concern about al Qaeda, authors say
- Their study shows domestic terrorism often comes from non-Islamist sources
- Non-Islamist terrorists have been more likely to seek unconventional weapons, they say
- Authors: In U.S., Islamist terrorism no more deadly than other forms since 9/11
Peter
Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a director at the New
America Foundation, where Andrew Lebovich is a policy analyst.
(CNN) -- The credible but as yet unconfirmed reports
that three men directed by al Qaeda have plans for an attack on the
United States to coincide with the 10th anniversary of September 11
reminds us of the persistence of the threat from Islamist terrorists.
Yet our research indicates that al Qaeda and those motivated by its
ideology are not the only sources of terrorism that the country faces
and that terrorists across the ideological spectrum from those motivated
by Osama bin Laden's ideology to neo-Nazis have managed to kill only 30
people in the United States since the attacks on Washington and New
York a decade ago.
While each of those deaths is, or course, a tragedy, it is orders of
magnitude smaller than the 15,000 Americans who are murdered every year.
Our study also found that Islamist terrorism has been no more deadly
in the United States than other forms of domestic terrorism since
September 11.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, one of the fears of ordinary
citizens and terrorism experts alike was that a new wave of terrorists
would strike, some of them armed with chemical, biological, radiological
or even nuclear materials.
Ten years later, we have yet to see an Islamist terrorist incident
involving such weapons in the United States, and no Islamist militant in
this country has made a documented attempt to even acquire such
devices.
Yet this is not the case for other terrorists. Indeed, the record of
the past decade suggests that if a chemical, biological or radiological
attack were to take place in the United States, it is more likely that
it would come not from a Islamist terrorist but from a right-wing
extremist or anarchist.
In partnership with Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public
Policy, the New America Foundation has conducted a survey of terrorism
incidents and cases in the United States since September 11 motivated by
political ideologies other than the violent Islamism advocated by bin
Laden.
Those ideologies span the spectrum from neo-Nazism and militant
Christian fundamentalism to anarchism and violent environmentalism. In
the 114 cases we examined, we found five instances of the successful or
attempted development or purchase of biological, chemical or
radiological weapons by violent extremists motivated by ideologies that
have no relation to al Qaeda:
William Krar, a right-wing militia activist, together with his
common-law wife, Judith Bruey, had stored enough chemicals to produce a
quantity of hydrogen cyanide gas that could kill thousands, along with
more than 100 weapons, nearly 100,000 rounds of ammunition and more than
100 pounds of explosives. They were arrested in 2003. Krar was
eventually sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, while Bruey
received nearly five years.
Anarchist and self-proclaimed "Dr. Chaos" Joseph Konopka was
stockpiling dangerous chemicals, including sodium cyanide, when he was
arrested by Chicago police in 2002. He is currently serving a 13-year
sentence.
Microbiologist Bruce Ivins, an FBI investigation concluded, sent
waves of panic throughout the country and killed five people when he
sent letters filled with anthrax to politicians and journalists during
fall 2001. Ivins committed suicide in 2008. (Some reports have cast
doubt on Ivins' responsibility for the attacks, but the FBI remains firm
in its conclusion that Ivins was responsible, based on the scientific
and other evidence.)
White supremacist Demetrius van Crocker was arrested in 2004 after
trying to purchase sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosive from an undercover
government agent. His efforts to obtain the weapons earned him a 30-year
prison sentence.
Another white supremacist, James Cummings, managed to acquire a
supply of radiological materials from scientific research companies and
may have been planning to build a "dirty" radiological bomb when his
wife killed him after years of domestic abuse in 2008.
To be clear, the 114 cases of right-wing and left-wing terrorism we
examined probably do not represent a complete survey of non-Islamist
terrorist cases in the United States since September 11. While some of
this case information is available from the FBI, as well as
organizations that track right-wing radicalism such as the Southern
Poverty Law Center, keeping track of these incidents is far more
difficult than tracking incidents of Islamist terrorism.
That is because unlike Islamist terror cases, which are nearly all
tried under anti-terrorism laws or statutes dealing with "material
support" to terrorist groups, other domestic terrorism cases are often
tried under an array of other statutes, from weapons and explosives
violations, property destruction and arson to "seditious conspiracy" in
the case of the anti-government Hutaree militia in Michigan.
Research on the subject is also hampered by the fact that many of
these cases received only limited media attention, unlike the now 188
cases of Islamist terrorism that the New America Foundation and
Syracuse's Maxwell School have found in the United States since
September 11.
We sought to impose as clear a standard as we could for politically
motivated violence across a broad spectrum of cases, ranging from
environmental terrorism to white supremacist terrorism. We were careful
to exclude cases in which insanity or mental deficiency may have had a
significant impact, such as that of Jared Lee Loughner, who is accused
of killing six people and seriously wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in
Arizona in January.
We also excluded cases of violence that appear not to have been
premeditated, such as when Jerry Kane and his son Joseph, both steeped
in anti-government ideology and armed with an assault rifle, killed two
Arkansas police during a traffic stop in 2010 before they were shot dead
themselves in an ensuing car chase.
On the other hand, we did include cases in which there was no defined
plot but the individual involved had both extreme political views and
had bought or constructed high-explosives and other offensive weapons.
Officials said that was the case with Jeffrey Harbin, a neo-Nazi and
border vigilante who was arrested this year in Arizona with a dozen
powerful homemade grenades.
As in Islamist terrorism cases in the United States, right- and
left-wing terrorists were not all young hotheads but instead had an
average age of 36. But unlike the Islamist terrorism cases, which
involved only 4% females, in other cases of domestic terrorism women
were involved in 15 percent of the cases.
The right- and left-wing terrorists in our dataset are almost
entirely native-born American citizens, and nearly all appear to be
Caucasian.
But the political motivations behind their acts were diverse in ways
that the participants themselves were not. Thirty-seven percent of cases
involved anti-government extremism; 23% were motivated by environmental
or pro-animal rights extremism; 17% involved white supremacist ideas or
bias against particular ethnic groups; and 11% of cases were animated
by religious bias or were acts committed on the basis of religious
beliefs, including attacks against abortion doctors and providers.
At least fourteen people have been killed in right- and left-wing
terrorism-related incidents over the past decade, while acts inspired by
Islamist militant ideas killed 17 people (13 of them at Fort Hood,
Texas, in 2009). The number of non-Islamist incidents that caused
fatalities (eight) was also twice that of the Islamist cases (four).
And while in the Islamist terrorism cases firearms and explosives
figured into around a third of the cases, more than half the cases of
non-Islamist terrorism involved firearms or explosives.
Right- and left-wing terrorist incidents involved a broad array of
targets; a third focused on government buildings or institutions; and 9%
targeted police. Five percent of cases involved acts committed against
abortion doctors or women's health clinics, and 11% targeted religious
institutions: churches, mosques and synagogues. Another 16% of plots and
attacks, many of them carried out by environmental extremists, targeted
businesses or corporations.
There was also a slightly greater number of government informants and
undercover agents in the right- and left-wing terrorism cases, relative
to the Islamist terrorism cases. More than half of the right- and
left-wing terrorism cases involved an informant or cooperating witness,
and nearly 40% of those cases also involved an undercover government
agent.
By contrast, in our survey of Islamist terrorism cases, a third
involved an informant, while 11% involved a government agent (six cases
involved both a government agent and an informant).
And in 18% of right- and left-wing terrorism cases -- compared with
22% in Islamist terrorism cases -- authorities were tipped off or
assisted by family members or people within the same social or religious
communities as the arrested individual.
The data indicate that federal and local authorities are just as
aggressive in their use of informants and undercover agents with right-
and left-wing terrorists as they are with Muslims extremists. And
Muslims and non-Muslims alike are just as likely to cooperate with
authorities when they see extremist acts going on, contrary to
well-publicized claims from the head of the House Homeland Security
Committee, Rep. Peter King, that Muslim community involvement in
disrupting terrorism plots is uncommonly low.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors.
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