Lone Wolf Terrorism (28 page)

Another characteristic often exhibited as an early warning sign of lone wolf terrorism is individuals who have had a troubled past, have displayed abnormal behavior, or have various personality issues. For example, the
New York Times
quoted an FBI bulletin that described people with difficult work and personal relationships and who have stood out to others due their erratic behavior as potential lone wolves. “Often there are early warning signs concerning these individuals that could be useful to law enforcement,” the bulletin stated. “Many lone extremists, for example, have a history of functioning poorly within traditional communities, such as educational institutions, churches, and places of employment.”
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However, how to distinguish these types of individuals from those with similar behavioral patterns who, instead of becoming lone wolves, actually become very successful in life is difficult to determine.

Yet many lone wolves have exhibited psychological and personality disorders that, given their jobs and access to weapons and targets, should have been an early warning sign of trouble. Bruce Ivins, the perpetrator of the anthrax letter attacks, had a history of mental problems that, as a panel of behavioral scientists concluded, should have prevented him from attaining a security clearance and from being allowed to work with biological warfare agents. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, also displayed abnormal behavior for a person employed by the US Army. As noted in
chapter 2
, an instructor and a colleague each described him as a “ticking time bomb,” and he once told his supervisor that, as an infidel, she would be “ripped to shreds” and “burn in hell.”

Sudden changes in behavior could be another indication that an individual is considering an act of violence. Several suicide terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere withdrew from their family and friends once they decided, or were persuaded, to embark upon
a suicide attack. Others, who may have had personal problems, suddenly appeared calm and relaxed to their friends after they decided they would launch an attack that would result in their death. The flip side of this are those individuals who are normally calm and friendly but who suddenly become extremely agitated and angry. This was true of Joseph Stack, who, as mentioned earlier, flew a plane into a building containing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. Stack, who was described by most people who knew him as easygoing, became increasingly angry in the weeks before his suicide mission, leading his wife to leave their house with their daughter the night before the attack.
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Another early warning sign of potential lone wolf terrorism is the suspicious purchase of various materials that can be used in constructing bombs or other weapons. In addition to monitoring the online purchases of such material, it is also important that law-enforcement agencies be able to know who has made such purchases in person at various stores throughout the country. The FBI, therefore, has a program in place known as Operation Tripwire, which enlists the aid of businesses in identifying such individuals. FBI agents meet with owners and employees of gun stores, chemical companies, beauty supply stores, and other industries to explain what types of suspicious activities to look out for. This includes, among other things, large purchases of precursors for making explosives (beauty shops, for example, sell hydrogen peroxide for coloring hair and acetone for removing nail polish, two ingredients that can also be used to make peroxide-based explosives, also known as “liquid bombs”), purchases of short lengths of pipe for constructing pipe bombs, and using cash for large transactions. The FBI urges these businesses to engage their suspicious customers in conversation, asking them questions and observing their responses, to gauge whether something doesn't sound quite right. If an interaction or transaction seems unusual, the business owners and workers are advised to contact the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which has offices throughout the United States.
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Lone wolves may also give themselves away by their recent travels.
Visits to countries or regions known for their presence of militants, terrorists, and the like should obviously raise red flags for any nation's security personnel. While such travel is not necessarily an indicator of being part of a terrorist plot or having ties to a militant organization, individuals who have recently traveled to these areas might nevertheless return home more radicalized and more susceptible to the influences of extremist groups and other militants than they were before they left their home country.

Countering the Message of Terrorists

Part of the battle against terrorism is a propaganda war. Al Qaeda has been among the best at the game of exploiting the Internet and traditional media for maximum benefit. Its media arm, al Sahab, has produced numerous videos and other online content over the years. Related groups, such as AQAP, have also played the propaganda game very well, particularly al-Awlaki, who, until he was killed in 2011, was the most influential media personality in terms of reaching potential lone wolves around the world. It remains to be seen if anybody else will be able to replace him as the Internet star that he became, but just like a corporation that has a high-profile vacancy at the top, there are likely to be several militants eager to advance their careers by taking his place.

How to counter the message of not just al Qaeda and related groups but also other extremist movements has been a major challenge for governments around the world. With respect to Islamic extremism, working with Muslim moderates to convey the message that the terrorism preached by al Qaeda and other militant groups goes against the teachings of the Koran has been one approach tried. The message that bin Laden and others “hijacked Islam” has been heard many times. However, as Sageman points out, there are limits to the effectiveness of counter-ideology as a strategy against terrorism. “I am not sure,” Sageman writes, “that this strong emphasis on ideology, religion, and fighting ‘extremist Islam' is fruitful…. I
have come to the conclusion that the terrorists in Western Europe and North America were not intellectuals or ideologues, much less religious scholars. It is not about how they think, but how they feel. Let us not make the mistake of over-intellectualizing this fight. It is indeed a contest for the hearts and minds of potential terrorists, not an intellectual debate about the legitimacy of an extreme interpretation of a religious message.”
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One of the recommendations that Sageman and others make, as noted earlier in this chapter, is to “take the glory out of terrorism.”
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Many impressionable youths around the world view terrorists as their heroes and only see the thrill and glory in engaging in terrorist attacks, not the suffering it causes to innocent victims and their families. The more these other types of images can be conveyed, as well as portrayals of terrorists as criminals and not glorified combatants or fighters, the better the prospects for countering the appeal of some terrorist movements. To that extent, as Sageman notes, high-profile press conferences announcing the arrest or capture of a terrorist can be counterproductive and only serve to elevate that terrorist to a higher status and generate more publicity. Indeed, one of the lessons about terrorism that has been ignored throughout history is that overreaction by governments, media, and the public to various incidents and attacks allows terrorist groups, cells, and lone wolves to achieve a status they would not ordinarily attain due to their size, power, and influence.

Another strategy that can be used to reduce the ranks of those who become attracted to terrorism via the Internet is to demonstrate the reality of a terrorist lifestyle. As one terrorism scholar notes, “Radical clerics and ideologues often glamorize and aggrandize the life of activists and martyrs and ignore the real-world lack of romance associated with this role…. [A] special emphasis must be placed on highlighting [online] the inglorious nature of a terrorist's life and daily separation from family and undisputedly denouncing the concept of martyrdom and use of violence for political ends.”
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An innovative approach to countering the message of extremists
is the community outreach program that President Barack Obama unveiled in August 2011. The idea behind it is to have the federal government “support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism.” The strategy is aimed at “improving support to communities, including sharing more information about the threat of radicalization; strengthening cooperation with local law enforcement, who work with these communities every day; and helping communities to better understand and protect themselves against violent extremist propaganda, especially online.”
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The program, however, has been criticized for allegedly collecting intelligence on individuals in some cases, primarily in Muslim American communities, under the guise of working as a community partnership.

Increased Public Awareness

The idea that an alert and aware public can be an important element in preventing not just lone wolf terrorism but any type of terrorism is commonly accepted in many countries. Israel, for example, has experienced its share of terrorism over the years, and Israelis are therefore always on the lookout for unattended packages, suspicious individuals, and other things that may portend a terrorist attack. In other countries, such as the United States, however, the lack of sustained terrorist incidents has led to a sense of complacency among the public concerning the terrorist threat. Government officials have contributed to this perspective with the numerous terrorism warning alerts of previous years, including the ill-fated color-coded alert system that needlessly worried people about impending attacks that never materialized. The heightened public awareness regarding terrorism that occurred following 9/11 and the anthrax letter attacks eventually dissipated as the years went by without another major incident.

Nevertheless, the value of an alert public in preventing terrorism has been demonstrated in several cases, including, as noted
in
chapter 1
, the case of passengers and crew onboard a Northwest Airlines flight who overpowered Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man who was connected with al-Awlaki's AQAP, when he attempted to detonate a bomb as the plane flew over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009. Passengers and crew also subdued Richard Reid, a British citizen linked to al Qaeda, as he was trying to ignite explosives hidden in his shoes onboard an American Airlines flight in December 2001. Meanwhile, in Britain, a worker in a market in Brixton spotted one of the bombs left by David Copeland, the notorious nail bomber who set off three bombs in London neighborhoods in 1999, and alerted police. Although the bomb still went off, injuring scores of people, many more would have been hurt had an evacuation of the market not already been underway.

RESPONSIVE MEASURES

When a lone wolf succeeds in an attack, a combination of strategies can then be employed in response. Some of these overlap with the preventive measures just discussed, such as using CCTV cameras to identify and track the movements of the lone wolf both before and after the incident and using biometrics to identify the perpetrator. Other preventive measures, including the monitoring of Internet activity, can also be used to determine who may have been responsible for the incident. Diplomatic, economic, financial, and military countermeasures will not be effective, as noted earlier, in responding to lone wolf terrorism. (Though, in one case, the killing of al-Awlaki by a drone attack did eliminate an inspirational and influential figure for many lone wolves around the world.) Law-enforcement crackdowns on suspected terrorist groups will also not be likely to yield any information on a terrorist who works alone. However, there are still a number of response measures that may prove valuable for dealing with the lone wolf terrorist.

Use of Forensic Sciences

Forensic sciences, often referred to simply as forensics, is the application of scientific knowledge to legal issues. This is commonly known as the “crime scene investigation” of evidence. Television shows such as
CSI
, among others, have made many people familiar with the use of forensics by law-enforcement agencies for solving all types of crimes, including terrorist attacks. Investigators wearing special protective gloves sift through every piece of evidence at a crime scene, meticulously gathering physical biometrics such as latent fingerprints and DNA from blood, hair, fibers, and other material. For terrorism investigations, in addition to the above, forensics can also include, among other things, collecting explosives residue to help uncover the type of bomb used and where the bomb-making material may have been purchased, which, in turn, can lead to the identification of the terrorist or terrorists involved. Forensics for car or truck-bombing incidents also includes recovering the vehicle identification number (VIN) for the vehicle used in the explosion, which then leads investigators to who may have purchased or rented the vehicle.

The case of Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, illustrates how forensics, along with other investigative tools, can help catch a terrorist. Although Shahzad was not a lone wolf, since he had received some training in Pakistan on how to build a bomb prior to his attack and had received some funding from extremists in that country, the way he was identified and captured would have been similar had he worked entirely alone without anybody's knowledge. On the night of May 1, 2010, Shahzad drove an SUV containing a fertilizer-based bomb hidden in the trunk into Times Square in New York City. He set the bomb to explode in approximately five minutes' time and then walked away to a safe distance. He waited to hear the explosion, but instead the bomb malfunctioned, leaving a trail of smoke that attracted the attention of an alert street vendor who notified the police. Shahzad went home, thinking he would be more successful the next time.
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