Lone Wolf Terrorism (14 page)

Because of the missteps in the FBI investigation, including initially suggesting that Hatfill was the anthrax letter attacker, and the lack of a “smoking gun” to implicate Ivins, many people believed that Ivins was innocent. The FBI, however, announced shortly after his suicide that charges were about to be brought against Ivins for the anthrax letter attacks. Then, in February 2010, the Justice Department, FBI, and the US Postal Inspection Service formally concluded their investigation into the attacks and issued a report that presented the circumstantial case against Ivins.
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In January 2011, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that while the genetic analysis of the anthrax used in the attacks “did not definitively demonstrate” that they were grown from a sample taken from his laboratory, the evidence was “consistent with and supports an association” between Ivins's flask and the anthrax used in the attacks.
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Additionally, the panel of behavioral analysts that faulted the army for not taking earlier action against Ivins in view of his serious psychological problems also stated that the government's case against Ivins was persuasive. They wrote: “Dr. Ivins was psychologically disposed to undertake the mailings; his behavioral history demonstrated his potential for
carrying them out; and he had the motivation and the means.”
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The panel also found that Ivins committed the attacks in order to get revenge against an array of imagined enemies, including the news media, and also “to elevate his own significance” and thereby rescue his anthrax vaccines research, the funding for which was being threatened in 2001.
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The tragic case of Bruce Ivins demonstrates what can happen when you take a brilliant but very troubled man and give him access to some of the deadliest germs in the world. Although he served his country well for most of his life, dedicating his career to finding the best vaccine to protect Americans from anthrax infection, he ultimately could not fight the demons in his mind that drove him to become the most infamous lone wolf bioterrorist in US history. Part ego, part greed, and a lot of paranoia, Ivins could not resist the temptation to use the very germs he dedicated his life to fight against as a weapon in his nefarious plans for glory, revenge, and possible financial reward. That an entire nation was held at bay by the acts of a solitary individual illustrates the impact of the lone wolf terrorist.

WHEN INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY BECOME DANGEROUS

In most fields, we applaud individuals and organizations that are innovative and creative. From art, music, and theater to science, technology, and business, those who dare to be different and think outside the box can be rewarded with financial and professional success. But when terrorists become innovative and creative, they can be quite dangerous. Their innovations can become new ways to inflict fear and bloodshed upon the world. Earlier, I described some of the reasons why lone wolves are innovative, including the lack of any group decision-making process that could stifle creativity. Lone wolves are also not afraid of failing, unlike many terrorist groups that carefully calculate the costs and benefits of any planned attack. How, then, do some lone wolves use their creativity and innovation for
terrorist operations?

First, several lone wolves have combined knowledge of a particular field with creativity in designing an attack. For example, Bruce Ivins was one of the world's foremost authorities on anthrax and was able to use that expertise in preparing anthrax spores for the letter attacks. Other individuals or groups may have thought up a similar scenario but felt it was beyond their capability to produce spores that would survive being sent through the mail. Ivins, although depressed and suffering most of his life from mental illness, was still confident enough in his own abilities as a scientist to believe he could do something nobody before had ever attempted. He was aware, like most people, that the Postal Service had been used in the past for terrorist attacks, such as the sending of letter and package bombs in the United States and other countries. Why not try something different, he most likely thought, such as sending a biological agent through the mail?

Mario Buda, another lone wolf we discussed earlier, combined expertise with creative thinking as the likely perpetrator of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. Buda was quite knowledgeable about dynamite, having been involved in prior attacks that used that type of explosive. When he was active with an Italian anarchist group, the Galleanists, Buda was a major player in constructing dynamite bombs that were used in a national mail-bomb plot and then in another series of attacks in which the Galleanists simply left bombs in the middle of the night in front of the homes of prominent officials, including the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. When Buda, who was hiding in New Hampshire, decided in September 1920 to strike one last time in retaliation for the recent indictment of his friends and fellow Galleanists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, he had to come up with a new mode of attack. He probably knew that the authorities would be on the lookout for attacks similar to those that Galleanists had tried before. That would eliminate the use of package bombs or placing bombs at the doorsteps of targets. A standoff attack, in which a powerful bomb would be far enough away from the target not to arouse suspicion but still near enough to
cause damage, would seem to be the best option. Since there had not been any major automobile or horse-and-cart bombings by terrorists in the United States in the past, Buda likely felt confident that police and security guards would not be suspicious of a horse-drawn wagon parked close to the J. P. Morgan building and other targets on Wall Street.
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Buda was thus able to implement the first vehicle bombing in US history. He traveled to New York, where he constructed the bomb with a timer and placed it in a horse-drawn wagon that he rode to Wall Street.
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He then fled the scene of his carnage, never to be heard from again.

Another area where a lone wolf can combine expertise in a field with imaginative thinking is cyberterrorism. This involves using the Internet and other communication and information systems that are linked by computers to cause disruptions and chaos in government, businesses, and everyday life. Among the worst-case scenarios would be terrorists sabotaging air traffic control systems and thereby causing airplane crashes; sabotaging electric power systems, thereby causing power blackouts; or sending computer viruses around the world that cause disruption or even collapse of international financial and banking systems. Most cyberterrorist attacks thus far, however, have been relatively low-level incidents, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which are “attempts to render computers unavailable to users through a variety of means, including saturating the target computers or networks with external communication requests, thereby denying service to legitimate users.”
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Although no cyberterrorist attack has yet to approach the worst-case scenarios, the history of terrorism has taught us to never underestimate the ability of individuals or groups to defy expectations. What makes cyberterrorism so attractive to lone wolves is that they can launch an attack in the privacy of their own home. The targets could be a government or business located anywhere in the world. Just as the Internet is growing with breathtaking speed, so too are the computer skills of individuals everywhere. It would be naïve and dangerous to assume that a sophisticated cyberterrorist attack is beyond the capabilities of
the knowledgeable and skilled lone wolf computer geek.

Having a particular skill, however, is not a prerequisite for a lone wolf to think up and implement an innovative attack. Lone wolves can get up to speed regarding weapons, tactics, and other aspects of a terrorist operation through individual research via the Internet or, in pre-Internet days, through acquiring books, articles, and other materials from libraries and other sources. For example, Muharem Kurbegovic, the Alphabet Bomber, who was among the first terrorists to threaten to use chemical warfare agents, learned how to make chemical weapons in the mid-1970s by reading such books as
Guide to Chemical and Gas Warfare
,
The Book of Poison
, and
Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques
. These books were found in his apartment after his arrest.
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In today's Internet world, there is really nothing holding a creative terrorist back. Once an individual thinks up a new or different type of terrorist scenario, he or she can begin reading webpages, blogs, online publications, and other information to learn enough about the target, tactic, and/or weapon required for the planned attack.

Lone wolves can also use their creativity and innovation to catch counterterrorist planners off guard. Protecting against terrorism in the past has been more of a reactive than anticipatory strategy. Airport security, for example, adapts rather than anticipates what terrorists may do. Once terrorists began sneaking knives and other weapons onboard for hijackings in the early 1960s, airports screened passengers with metal detectors. When terrorists began blowing up planes in midair with bombs hidden in luggage in the late 1960s, x-ray machines were put in place at airports in an effort to discover these bombs. Following an attempt by Richard Reid, a British citizen with ties to al Qaeda, to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001, with explosives hidden in his shoes, airports began requiring passengers to take off their shoes for inspection before boarding planes. The tendency by security officials to wait until something happens and then take measures to try to prevent similar attacks plays into the hands of the creative terrorist,
who, by thinking up something clever and new, is able to stay one step ahead of those dedicated to combating this threat.

When lone wolves suffer from mental illness, their creativity and innovation present even greater challenges for counterterrorist officials. No longer can any sense of rationality be expected from these types of terrorists. While all lone wolves, as noted earlier, have an advantage over terrorist groups in not having to worry about alienating their supporters with a misguided attack or having their group wiped out in a government or law-enforcement crackdown following a major incident, there is still an element of rationality for most lone wolves in their decision making. Not so for those lone wolves who are emotionally disturbed. That makes it more difficult for authorities to anticipate the actions of these types of terrorists.

The creative and innovative nature of lone wolves also makes them capable of launching “black swan” types of attacks. These are unique, novel terrorist incidents that nobody had previously thought possible. The term “black swan” was originally a metaphor for things that were believed impossible to exist. This was due to the fact that, for centuries, people in Europe had only seen white swans in nature. However, after the discovery of Australia and the sightings of black swans in the late-seventeenth century, the meaning of the term changed to refer to things and events that were perceived to be impossible but could actually occur. According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the bestselling book
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
, a black swan has three main attributes. First, it is an event that is an outlier, since it lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Second, it has an extreme impact. And third, even though we never expect such an event to occur, we tend to come up with explanations for it after its occurrence, which then makes the black swan seem to be explainable and predictable.
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While terrorist groups may also be capable of perpetrating black-swan attacks, the boundless nature of lone wolves and their total freedom to think up anything they want and then try to act on it makes them more likely than a terrorist group to commit an attack off everyone's radar.
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GAS, GERMS, OR NUKES: WHICH IS MORE LIKELY FOR A LONE WOLF WMD ATTACK?

I discussed earlier why I believe lone wolves are prime candidates for using weapons of mass destruction. These reasons range from a lack of any self-constraints concerning casualties or reactions as lone wolves decide upon an attack to the ability to think outside the box and design creative, innovative, and dangerous attacks. However, since WMDs include chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, it is important to determine which of these is more likely to be used by the individual terrorist.

Of the three different, basic types of WMDs, chemical weapons are the easiest for a lone wolf with a background in chemistry to produce. Chemical agents are “poisons that incapacitate, injure, or kill through their toxic effects on the skin, eyes, lungs, blood, nerves, or other organs.”
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The precursor chemicals for the production of many chemical warfare agents are readily available from commercial chemical suppliers, and several chemical weapons, such as sarin, tabun, and VX gas, can be made either at home or in a small laboratory. As is true for terrorist groups, a lone wolf still has obstacles to overcome in terms of dispersing chemical agents. If not done properly, as in the case of Aum Shinrikyo, the attack is compromised. Yet, with information on how to effectively disperse chemical agents available from the Internet and other sources, this is not an insurmountable obstacle for a lone wolf.

Acquiring, producing, and dispersing biological agents is somewhat more difficult, but it's still within the ability of those lone wolves with scientific backgrounds. While Bruce Ivins had the expertise to produce the particular strain of anthrax that he sent through the mail to his various targets, not every lone wolf who chooses to use bioweapons needs to be a Fort Detrick microbiologist. As with chemical weapons, there is enough publicly available information on the Internet and in other sources to help the lone wolf who wants to launch a bioterrorist attack. One of the major differences between chemical and biological weapons is that chemical weapons are primarily
manmade (such as sarin nerve gas), while biological weapons are comprised of living organisms such as bacteria and viruses as well as toxins derived from plants or animals. Biological warfare agents involve “the deliberate use of disease and natural poisons to incapacitate or kill people.”
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Among the biological agents that could be used by lone wolves are bacterial agents such as anthrax, viral agents such as smallpox, and toxin agents such as ricin. An important distinction to make regarding biological agents is that some, such as anthrax, cause infectious but not contagious diseases, while others, such as smallpox, cause infectious and contagious diseases. People exposed to anthrax, therefore, do not have to be quarantined, but those exposed to smallpox will have to be isolated from others. Contagious diseases can also spread around the world as one person passes the disease to another. The mass-killing potential of biological agents makes these attractive weapons for lone wolves.