Lone Wolf Terrorism

ALSO BY JEFFREY D. SIMON

The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism

Published 2016 by Prometheus Books

Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat
. Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey D. Simon. Preface © 2016 by Jeffrey D. Simon. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Simon, Jeffrey D. (Jeffrey David), 1949- author.

Title: Lone wolf terrorism : understanding the growing threat / Jeffrey D. Simon.

Description: Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, [2016] | Originally published in hardback version in 2013. | Includes a new preface by the author. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016014589 (print) | LCCN 2016023761 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633882379 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781633882386 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Terrorists. | Internet and terrorism. | Terrorism—Prevention.

Classification: LCC HV6431 .S524 2016 (print) | LCC HV6431 (ebook) | DDC 363.325—dc23

LC record available at
/2016014589

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK

FOREWORD

by Brian Michael Jenkins

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. THE GROWING THREAT OF LONE WOLF TERRORISM

CHAPTER 2. WHO ARE THE LONE WOLVES?

CHAPTER 3. WHY LONE WOLVES ARE SO DANGEROUS

CHAPTER 4. WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

CHAPTER 5. LONE WOLF ASSASSINS

CHAPTER 6. STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH LONE WOLF TERRORISM

CHAPTER 7. UNCOVERING THE LESSONS LEARNED

CHAPTER 8. A LOOK TOWARD THE FUTURE

CONCLUSION

PHOTO INSERT

APPENDIX:
DEFINING LONE WOLF TERRORISM

NOTES

INDEX

Lone wolf terrorism—the Boston Marathon bombing, the shooting of church folk in South Carolina, the massacre of innocent people in San Bernardino, the attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando. Each of these events and others in recent years have dominated the news and sent an increasing shudder through the American public, raising a host of questions: Why is this happening now? How safe are we really? Is this the world we can expect to live in?

These tragic events were yet another reminder of how one or two individuals, working alone without any outside assistance, can wreak havoc on unsuspecting victims and create fear and anxiety throughout a nation. The threat of lone wolf terrorism has emerged as one of the most bewildering, frustrating, and dangerous forms of violence for our times. Bewildering because seemingly anyone can become a lone wolf, inspired by extremist ideology posted on the Internet, or through face-to-face contacts with supporters of various militant causes, or by even just deciding to commit a terrorist act for personal or other reasons. Frustrating because these types of terrorists often fly under the radar, making the job of law enforcement extremely difficult in terms of trying to prevent these violent acts. And dangerous because there are no constraints on their level of violence, as lone wolves only answer to themselves and can therefore act upon any scenario they dream up without worrying, as would some terrorist groups, about the reactions or repercussions of a particular type of attack.

The Boston Marathon bombing, which occurred in April 2013, was an example of lone wolves who perpetrate their violence in the
name of Islamic extremism. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar set off pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. There have been many more incidents of Islamic lone wolf terrorism these past few years, including attacks in Canada, Australia, Britain, France, and other countries around the world. In the US, an Islamic militant opened fire on a military recruiting station and a Navy Operational Support Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015, killing four Marines and fatally wounding a navy sailor, while a husband and wife team, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who had a six-month-old baby girl, launched a shooting spree at a disability center in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015, killing fourteen people and injuring more than twenty others. Shortly after the attack began, a post on a Facebook page associated with the female terrorist, Tashfeen Malik, pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Then, in June 2016, Omar Mateen burst into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and massacred forty-nine people and injured more than fifty others. Mateen also pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack.
¹

The rise of ISIS has been one of the major recent developments in the world of terrorism. After capturing large areas of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, the group declared an Islamic “caliphate” and called upon Muslims everywhere to come join the fight. The group also used social media to encourage lone wolves to strike within their home countries. ISIS has indeed proven quite savvy in their Internet blogs, tweets, and other social media tools to attract various individuals to their cause. In one respect, it is the jihadist equivalent of sending spam messages to millions of people. You only need a small percentage to take the bait to be effective.

Yet it would be wrong to assume that lone wolf terrorism is the exclusive domain of Islamic extremists. A major theme in my book is that lone wolf terrorism is a diverse phenomenon that cuts across the political and religious spectrum. Events since publication of
the hardcover in February 2013 have borne this out. In addition to lone wolf attacks by Islamic extremists, there was an attack by an anti-abortion militant on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in November 2015 that killed three people, a massacre of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015 by a white supremacist sympathizer who wanted to start a race war, and the killing of a Transportation Security Administration agent at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2013 by an anti-government militant.
²

The Internet has proven to be the game changer in the world of lone wolf terrorism. Lone wolves no longer have to feel truly “alone” as they can fantasize about being part of an extremist movement by just reading blogs, tweets, or entering into chat rooms. One of the key challenges will be to determine what the “tipping” points are that propel an otherwise nonviolent individual who may be expressing radical and extremist views or just venting on the Internet to actually follow through with an attack.

For a long time, lone wolves were ignored by policy makers, intelligence officials, and terrorism experts. Even today, despite the prevalence of lone wolf attacks throughout the world, the idea that the individual terrorist can be as dangerous as large-scale terrorist organizations is still a difficult concept for some people to accept. It is important, however, to remember that terrorist attacks are not always complex operations that require detailed planning, resources, training, and leadership directed by a group. Lone wolves, whether motivated by political, religious, or idiosyncratic reasons, have proven numerous times that they can have profound effects on governments and societies by their acts of violence. Unfortunately, we are likely to see more of these types of attacks in the coming years. It is a threat that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

Jeffrey D. Simon

Santa Monica, California

June 2016

Jeffrey D. Simon has been among the most creative thinkers in the study of terrorism. He warned about overreactions to terrorism and the problems in declaring a “war” on terrorism back in the 1980s in an article for
Foreign Policy
that became the genesis for his first book
The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism
. He was also among the first to systematically assess the threat of terrorists using biological weapons in an essay he wrote while at RAND in the 1980s. Now he has once again broken new ground in this first, comprehensive, and fascinating journey into the world of the lone wolf terrorist.

In nature, a lone wolf hunts outside of the pack. Deprived of company, relying on his own cunning and ferocity, he is a determined and dangerous predator. In popular literature, a lone wolf is the archetypal antihero—tough, self-reliant, and ruthless as required. Unconstrained by feckless politicians or cautious bureaucrats, he does what is necessary to get the job done—rescue innocent victims, save civilization. The annals of crime also record lone wolves—stalkers, serial killers, mad bombers—driven by grievance, cause, or madness.

Lone wolves recently have come to be viewed as a growing terrorist threat. Unprecedented unilateral intelligence efforts and growing cooperation among intelligence services and law-enforcement organizations worldwide have rendered the terrorists' operating environment more hostile. While still not optimal, domestic intelligence collection in the United States since 9/11 has uncovered and thwarted all but three terrorist plots inspired by al Qaeda's ideology. Those three plots were carried out by lone operators: Carlos Bledsoe,
who killed one army recruiting officer and wounded another in Little Rock, Arkansas; Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed thirteen of his fellow soldiers and wounded thirty-two others at Fort Hood, Texas
*
; and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to set off an explosive device in Times Square, New York.

There is greater confidence today that large terrorist conspiracies will be identified. Tiny conspiracies, however, remain hard to detect. Lone operators, unless they reach out to others for moral reinforcement or material support, are almost impossible to know about, and they have proved themselves capable of carrying out large-scale violence and sustaining long campaigns.

Technological advances have increased the lethality of the lone wolf. Guns have made murder easier. Today's mass killers have access to ever-greater firepower. The invention of dynamite further enhanced the destructive power of the individual. With a single bomb, an individual can bring down an airliner, killing hundreds. Chemical and biological weapons also increase the capacity of the individual to kill in quantity. At the time of his capture, the Alphabet Bomber was working on the production of nerve gas. The anthrax letters, which terrorized the country in 2001, are believed to have been sent by a single individual. The Internet can be a source of inspiration, moral reinforcement, and practical instruction for potential killers.

America's principal current concern continues to be al Qaeda's global terrorist campaign. Under continuing pressure, al Qaeda today is more decentralized and more dependent on its affiliates and allies and on its ability to radicalize and recruit individuals to carry out terrorist attacks at home.

Approximately two-thirds of the homegrown al Qaeda–inspired terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 have involved a single individual. Only a few of these individuals actually had physical contact with al Qaeda abroad. Having traveled to training camps run by al Qaeda or its allies, these individuals received instruction and were sent back to the United States to prepare and carry out terrorist attacks. A greater number were inspired by one-way contact with al
Qaeda websites or by online correspondence with al Qaeda communicators. Some of the plotters thought they were in contact with al Qaeda operatives, but these turned out to be police undercover agents—a majority of the most advanced plots were FBI sting operations.

The term
lone wolf
would apply only to a few of these terrorist plotters. The behavior of many resembled more that of stray dogs. They sniffed at the edges of al Qaeda's extremist ideology, participated vicariously in its online jihad, exhorting each other to action, carelessly throwing down threats, boasting of their prowess as warriors, of the heroic deeds they were ready to perform, barking, showing their teeth, hesitating, then darting forward until ensnared by the law. What drives them?

When I was testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee shortly after Major Hasan's murderous attack at Fort Hood, committee chairman Joe Liebermann asked, “Some have called Major Hasan a terrorist while others have described him as a deeply troubled man. Where do you come down, Mr. Jenkins?” I responded that “the two descriptions are not mutually exclusive—terrorism is not an activity that attracts the well-adjusted.” Can we make a distinction?

To achieve consensus on a definition of terrorism in the 1970s, it was necessary to maintain sharp boundaries. Terrorism was politically motivated violence. While terrorists committed crimes in the classic sense, terrorism differed from ordinary crime in its objectives. Political content was a criterion of terrorism. Crime might produce terror, but ordinary criminals were not terrorists.

Just as we sought to draw a line between the terrorist and the ordinary criminal, we also tried to distinguish terrorists from violent lunatics. Crazies, by definition, could not be terrorists.

Some governments were prone to attach the pejorative label “terrorist” to all their political foes. But the United States achieved its independence through force of arms and recognized the right of armed rebellion. Armed rebellion is not itself terrorism, although rebels might carry out acts of terror. So might governments.

These distinctions are easy to make when considering an individual who is a member of a terrorist group, but they become much harder in the case of lone operators who lack obvious terrorist connections, whose motives can be inferred only from their choice of targets, or who may be motivated by extreme political views, sometimes of their own invention. They all consider themselves avatars of a greater cause.

Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who in 2002 opened fire on passengers at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport, was depressed and clearly hostile toward Jews, but absent evidence of membership or connection with a political cause, was he a terrorist? Under pressure from the victims' families, the authorities finally concluded that Hadayet hoped by his action to influence US policy (the necessary political content), and he therefore was labeled a terrorist.

Muharem Kurbegovic, the so-called Alphabet Bomber, carried out his campaign on behalf of the “Aliens of America,” a group that existed only in his mind. He also claimed to be the Messiah. Initially considered insane, he spent more than five years in the state institution for the criminally insane. He was later judged mentally fit to stand trial.

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, carried on a seventeen-year terrorist bombing campaign. To explain why, he wrote a thirty-five-thousand-word manifesto. He was diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia but was judged fit to stand trial.

Anders Breivik, who detonated a massive vehicle bomb in Oslo, then opened fire on a youth camp, killing seventy-seven persons in all, published a fifteen-hundred-page manifesto on the Internet. He was judged to have been legally sane and stood trial. So was Timothy McVeigh, whose bomb killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in a war of his own imagination on the federal government. Both are considered terrorists.

While distinctions, in my view, remain important, Simon—I think sensibly in this context—takes a broader view of his subject matter. To carry out extreme acts of violence without a military mandate, societal
sanction, or reinforcement by comrades requires a level of determination edging on madness. To those who must fathom the motives or respond to the threat, the distinctions may be meaningless.

As evidenced from the few examples cited, the boundaries between violent extremism and psychopathology are blurry. The boundaries of terrorism are invented, while the construct of mental disorder is being continuously revised.

There have been numerous studies of suicide terrorists, most of whom are lone operators recruited, equipped, and deployed by larger organizations. And there is a growing volume of studies of the process of radicalization and self-recruitment to terrorism. But until now, there has been no study of lone wolf terrorism. Jeffrey D. Simon's book opens the door to this new domain.

Brian Michael Jenkins,
senior advisor to the president of the RAND Corporation,
advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism,
and author of
Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?

*
As we go to press, Nidal Malik Hasan has not gone to trial and the author and publisher acknowledge that under American jurisprudence he is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The text reflects the opinion of both Brian Michael Jenkins (foreword writer) and Jeffrey D. Simon (author), after careful consideration of the known facts, that Mr. Hasan carried out the shooting for reasons he has not yet explained.