1 Chapter 9 Domestic Terrorism
9
Domestic Terrorism
Understanding the Nature of Domestic Terrorist Threats and Counterterrorist Responses
Starting point:
Go to assess your knowledge of the basics of domestic terrorism
Determine where you need to concentrate your effort.
What you’ll learn in this chapter
* The nature of domestic terrorist threats facing the United States
* The American operational environment and how it contributes to terrorist activity
* The nature of counterterrorism in the United States
After Studying this Chapter you will be able to
* Assess the types of domestic terrorist threats
* Evaluatethe structure and nature of terrorist threats in the United States
* Judge the operational environment that motivates and enables terrorism in the United States
* Critique counterterrorism and how it reflects American traditions on the rule of law
Introduction
This chapter focuses on domestic terrorism and counterterrorism. Itinvolves learning about terrorist groups that form and/or conduct terrorist campaigns against domestic and foreign targets inside the U.S. homeland. Furthermore, we will look at recruiters for foreign terrorist groups that raise funds and enlist people for terrorist operations against U.S. or foreign interests overseas. As you may or may not expect, terrorism has a long history inside the United States stretching back to the colonial period. Additionally, there are a wide variety of terrorist groups that have, or continue to operate inside the United States. Not all threats are from foreign terrorists. In fact, the majority of terrorist activity inside the U.S. comes from domestic groups hoping to influence or change any number of political or social policies. At the same time, we do face ongoing threats from foreign terrorists attempting to penetrate the homeland security network. Overall, what we see is a wide range of threats against American interests. Because of the variety of domestic terrorist threats the United States is required to develop a flexible plan to secure the country. This counterterrorism policy (set of laws, agencies, and programs targeted at controlling and reducing terrorist threats) must address the threat of domestic and foreign groups. Meeting these threats means identifying the source of threat, assigning the cases to the appropriate government agencies, and applying the best strategies to eliminate the threat. One cannot apply the same tactics and strategies to defeat domestic terrorists as you would to foreign terrorists. Different sets of laws, criminal procedures, and strategies are needed in order to effectively meet these terrorist threats.
In this chapter we will provide the context of domestic terrorism and counterterrorism. You will evaluate thedimensions of the domestic terrorist threat with an eye to homegrown terrorists, foreign terrorists, and foreign terrorist organizers. You will rate the operational environment for terrorism in the United States in order to assess the features of the physical, political, security, and resource environments that contribute to the formation of terrorist threats. Finally, you will appraise the U.S. response to domestic terrorist threats including the laws and policies that have evolved over the past 40 years to meet the various types of threats we face.
9.1 Analyzing the Domestic Terrorist Threat
We begin with an analysis of terrorism in the United States. Terrorism has a long history, stretching back to the 18th century at about the time of the American Revolution and continues to the present. As an overview, note that the United States faces three types of terrorist threats. First, the homegrown terrorist group whose members originate within the U.S. borders and conduct operations against targets inside the United States. Second is the foreign terrorist group where operatives originate in countries outside the U.S. and conduct operations against internal targets. Finally, we have the foreign terrorist organizers that include foreign recruiters and planners that raise funds and enlist operatives for operations against U.S. and other national interests overseas. The dominant domestic terrorist threat comes from homegrown terrorists. If to evaluate terrorism statistics from the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (provided by the National Counterterrorism Center show that between January 2004 and March 2006 there were 14 terrorist incidents inside the United States, producing 9 injuries. Of these terrorist attacks over half were committed by either the Earth Liberation Front or the Animal Liberation Front (a.k.a. the ELF and ALF respectively), domestic terrorist groups attempting to change policy regarding the environment and treatment of animals in medical testing. While the predominant threat is the homegrown terrorist, events like the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, DC certainly alert us to the potential threat of foreign terrorists. In sum, the U.S. faces a variety of terrorist threats, and we cannot afford to ignore any of them.
9.1.1Overview of Domestic Terrorism
Evaluating trends in domestic terrorism provides a picture of the types of groups in the United States and shifts in terrorist violence over time. A cautionary note is needed. Information on terrorist events is not complete. Out of approximately 518 domestic terrorist attacks from 1968-2006 provided by the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (based on the RAND/St Andrews Chronology of Terrorist Events) only 443 are attributed to a specific group. Thus 14.5 percent of these events can not be placed in any meaningful category. We do not know who conducted the attacks, or for what purpose. Additionally, not all terrorist events are listed as terrorist offenses. Some events, like white supremacist attacks on immigrants, or attacks on abortion clinics in the United States are likely underreported because they are categorized as criminal offenses. Hence, the information provided here present reasonable picture of terrorism in the United States but this picture is not complete.
Beginning with a broad overview of terrorism in the United States we note the following trends. First homegrown terrorists account for the largest amount of terrorist violence in the United States. Homegrown terrorists account for 77 percent of all terrorist violence in the United States. There is no single decade from the 1960s through to today where foreign terrorism supersedes homegrown terrorism. A second trend, in most decades right-wing and religious terrorism are the dominant forms of terrorism in the United States. This trend changes in the last decade (2000-2006) where ideological (or left-wing) terrorism becomes dominant. Ethno-national terrorism is a threat from 1970-1990 driven by Puerto Rican nationalists, and various forms of émigré terrorism (foreign victims killed by a foreign terrorist group). By the last decade of our analysis ethno-national terrorism disappears. Third, Anti-Castro Cuban terrorism is the most prevalent terrorist threat in the U.S accounting for 32 percent of all terrorist activity. Furthermore, since this form of terrorism is anti-communist in nature, it falls into the category of right-wing terrorism. As such, Anti-Castro Cuban terrorism accounts for 56 percent of right-wing terrorism in the United States. Finally, in most years terrorist activity is located in major urban cities like New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. As the ideological terrorist campaigns take off in the late 1990s we observe a shift in terrorist violence away from major urban areas towards suburbs and rural areas.
Summarizing this information we can say the following about the broad trends. First, terrorism in the United States is largely homegrown, ideological, shifting away from the urban centers towards more rural environments. Second, foreign terrorist threats have never been a major problem for the U.S. This does not diminish the significance of events like 9/11. Rather, the information tells us that the United States faces other terrorist threats inside our boundaries. There is a lot of terrorism taking place in the United States and it is not all coming from Islamic extremists located in the Middle East and Central Asia. One additional comparative note…despite the rather large number of terrorist events in the United States, the threat we face is not as significant as the threat faced in other countries. For instance, in the United States, from January 2004 to March 2006 there were 14 terrorist events. During the same time frame there were 156 terrorist events in Britain, 149 events in France, and 27 events in Saudi Arabia. Thus, when putting the data in perspective, we see terrorism is a problem in the United States, but not as significant as in other countries. Moving past the big picture into the various forms of terrorist threat (homegrown, foreign terrorist, foreign terrorist organizers) we do observe a variety of mini-trends. We now turn our attention to these subsets of terrorist activity.
9.1.2Homegrown Terrorists
The homegrown terrorist threat consists of groups that form on U.S. soil and conduct operations against targets in the United States. These targets may be U.S.-based targets where a group attacks a target that is symbolically linked to the United States, either nationally or locally (e.g. the Federal building in Oklahoma City or an abortion clinic in Georgia). Additionally, groups may attack foreign targets located in U.S. territory. For instance, a group may attack an embassy of a different country (technically all embassies are considered the domestic territory of the country, not U.S. territory). Terrorists may also attack foreign nationals living inside the U.S., or foreign business interests in the United States. A large portion of domestic terrorist attacks, conducted by homegrown terrorists, are against foreign targets, not U.S.-based targets. This makes the United States similar to European countries as it serves as an operational field for terrorists. The tendency for foreign targets changes beginning in the late 1990s U.S.-based targets become common with the rise of the eco-terrorism (groups conducting terrorist operations in order to influence domestic policy regarding land development, environmental policy and animal testing).
The dominant threat during the 1960s and 1970s was the leftist group. Many groups formed on the fringes the American Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement. These groups barricaded various American Universities, planted bombs in banks and public areas, and attacked the military and police, and conducted kidnappings and prison breaks for group members (Griset & Mahan, 2003). The most prominent groups were the Weather Underground (a.k.a. the Weathermen);Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and Republic of New Africa among others. Leftist groups were largely disorganized and fragmented, making them easy targets for infiltration and arrest. By the late 1970s many organizations collapsed. The American left has revived since 1998 with eco-terrorism in the form of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) initiating their campaigns of terrorism throughout the American interior. The campaigns of the EFL-ALF demonstrate that the left is not dead.
During the 1990s fear arose around the looming threat of right-wing terrorism in the form of Racial Supremacy groups. Racial Supremacygroups believe the general social climate of a country is deteriorating, and this condition is caused (in part or wholly) by the tolerance of different racial groups in society. To restore the proper condition requires segregating races and dominance of one particular race over all others. The long time terrorist threat comes from the Ku Klux Klan, formed just after the Civil War. The KKK still exists today, but in a much neutered form from its early 20th century form. Today, the emergent threat is the Neo-Nazi groups and the Christian Identity Movementthat support the racial purity programs advocated by Adolph Hitler during the 1930s and 1940s. Purity of the Aryan Race (whites) is the primary goal for such groups. Tolerance for African-Americans and immigrants of any kind must be avoided. Black Racial Supremacy groups exist inside the United States as well. Groups related to the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s were militant, conducting a series of assassinations and arsons to promote Black Supremacy (Griset & Mahan, 2003). Today, the Nation of Islam has tempered its rhetoric and has no known affiliation with acts of terrorism.
The racial supremacy thread of terrorist activity moved into the Militia Movement in the United States during the 1990s creating a network of potentially terrorist-like groups throughout the United States. The most direct threat came in the form of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, where associates of the Christian Identity Movement and the Militias (Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols) conducted the largest single terrorist operation on U.S. soil by a homegrown terrorist cell. To date the Militia movement remains more threat potential than actualized threat. But potential does exist. Most right-wing groups remain highly fragmented and disorganized. Infiltration and arrests have been difficult.
The United Statesalso has its share of religious terrorism. Religious terrorism is similar to right-wing terrorism in that groups believe a society is experiencing deterioration in its social condition. This decay is caused by society’s abandonment of its religious principles. Recovery from this condition requires a return to religious purity. Hence, tolerance of different religions (e.g. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) must be avoided. Fundamentalist Christian religious principles must be adhered to. The actions of the group take on religious meaning by invoking prophecy or aiding in the return of the messiah. Hence, violence is sanctioned as part of the process for fulfilling religious goals.
In the religious terrorist camp we find three types of groups. First, the secular religiously based group that advances its interests, not necessarily religious in nature. An example of this type is the Jewish Defense League. The JDL was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1968 in New York City and served primarily to protect the Orthodox Jewish population. In the 1970s the group initiated terrorist campaign against Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) targets. Their campaign expanded to include Soviet targets in the U.S. to protest the treatment of Soviet Jews. The JDL has officially abandoned terrorism, but incidents associated with the group have continued and plots were uncovered as late as 2002 (MIPT, 2006).
A second type of religious group is the cult terrorist group. Cult groups are not overtly terroristic in nature. Many have a tendency towards internal self-destruction rather than outwardly oriented terrorist violence. However, some cult groups have engaged in terrorist activities against external targets or have made plans that included attacks against external targets. One notable example is Charles Manson’s Cult that included a series of brutal murders against wealthy, white victims in California in order to initiate a race war in the United States. Another example is the Branch Davidians, a messianic cult in Waco, Texas that many believed was planning to initiate God’s wrath and usher in Armageddon. The exact plans of the group are disputed, as much evidence suggests they were defensive in nature and had no overt plans to conduct terrorist attacks. But the group was heavily armed and the messianic cult around David Koresh provoking a confrontation with the Federal government ending with an attack that killed most members of the cult in 1994 (Wessinger, 2000). Similarly followers of Bhagwan Sharee Rajneesh released salmonella at local restaurants in Dalles, Oregon (1984) in order to influence local elections in favor of the cult. Examples of cult groups are rare, and the threat of a cult group becoming a major terrorist threat is low, but the violence we have observed around such groups warrants monitoring.
A third type of religious group is the single-issue group, like anti-abortion terrorist violence. In the anti-abortion movement, there is no centralized organization conducting a terror campaign against abortion clinics or doctors. However, individuals, and rogue groups have taken it upon themselves to advance their position on the abortion issue, including bombing abortion clinics and assassinating doctors and other health care professionals associated with abortion practices. The lack of a centralized campaign by a single group or coalition of groups works against this variation of single-issue terrorism emerging as a major national threat.
The United States does not have the domestic equivalent of an Islamic Fundamentalist, or Christian Fundamentalist group using terrorism to promote a new form of government that applies religious laws or principles. Fundamentalist groups appear to be the province of foreign environments at the moment. This does not preclude the potential rise of such groups in the future. However, the established political climate and processes appears to allow such groups to operate satisfactorily within the conventional political framework, which is perhaps why these groups have not formed inside the United States to date.