Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Focusing on the phenomenon of terrorism in the age of ISIS/ISIL,

Terrorism and Counterterrorism investigates this form of political
violence in an international and American context and in light of
new and historical trends. In this comprehensive and highly read-
able text, renowned expert Brigitte Nacos clearly defines terrorism’s
diverse causes, actors, and strategies; outlines anti- and counterterror-
ist responses; and highlights terrorism’s relationship with the public
and media. Terrorism and Counterterrorism introduces students to the
field’s main debates and helps them critically assess our understanding
of, and our strategies for, addressing this complex and enduring issue.

New to the Sixth Edition:

•• Additions to terrorist developments since 2016, including the rise
and decline of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
•• A significant expansion of the analysis of intelligence gathering and
the growth of the U.S. intelligence community in the post-9/11 era.
•• Discussion of increasing activities of extremist groups in the so-called
alt-right and the Antifa movement in the U.S. and abroad.
•• More explanations for the making of terrorists, including rational choice
theory and new research revealing childhood trauma as a risk factor.
•• An enlarged chapter on women and children in terrorism to include
suicide missions as family projects.
•• A new section on human rights violations in counterterrorism.

Brigitte L. Nacos teaches political science at Columbia University and

was a longtime U.S. correspondent for newspapers in Germany.
Terrorism and
Counterterrorism
Sixth Edition

Brigitte L. Nacos
Sixth edition published 2019
by Routledge
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First edition published by Pearson Education, Inc. 2005
Fifth edition published by Routledge 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nacos, Brigitte Lebens, author.
Title: Terrorism and counterterrorism / Brigitte L. Nacos.
Description: Sixth edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018046368| ISBN 9781138317628 (hardback) | ISBN
9781138317635 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780429455100 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Terrorism. | Terrorism—Prevention.
Classification: LCC HV6431 .N34 2019 | DDC 363.325—dc23
LC record available at [Link]

ISBN: 9781138317628 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781138317635 (pbk)
ISBN: 9780429455100 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Brief Contents

List of Illustrations xii

Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
About the Author xviii

  1 Introduction: The Terrorist Threat 1

PART I
Terrorism 15

  2 The Perennial Debate: What Is Terrorism? 17

  3 Terrorism in the Global Context 45

  4 Terrorism in the American Context 72

  5 Religious Terrorism: Political Violence in

the Name of God 105

  6 The Making of Terrorists: Causes, Conditions,

Influences 135

  7 Women, Children, and Terrorism 155

  8 Common Threads: Goals, Targets, and Tactics 174

  9 Organizational Structures and the Financing

of Terror 205
vi  Brief Contents
PART II
Counterterrorism 233

10 Terrorism and America’s Post-9/11 National

Security Strategy 235

11 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power in

Counterterrorism 252

12 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights 281

13 The Crucial Role of Intelligence 308

PART III 
Terrorism in the News Media and on the Internet 329

14 Terrorist Propaganda and the Mainstream Media 331

15 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace 356

16 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats 377

Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents since the

Late 1970s 386
Bibliography 402
Index 414
Detailed Contents

List of Illustrations xii

Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
About the Author xviii

  1 Introduction: The Terrorist Threat 1

Terrorism Trends over the Last Decades  7

PART I
Terrorism 15

  2 The Perennial Debate: What Is Terrorism? 17

The Meaning of Terrorism over Time  20
The Definitional Potpourri  22
Downplaying and Emphasizing the “T”-Word  32
State Terror(ism)  35
The Meaning of Terrorism in this Volume  37
Is Terrorism Ever Justified?  37
Terrorism Studies, a Field in Search of Theory and
Methodology  39

  3 Terrorism in the Global Context 45

Different Types of Groups  46
The Roots of Modern Terrorism  47
The Post-World War II Wave  49
1968: The Advent of Modern-Day Terrorism  52
Groups that Transcend the Average Life Span
of Terrorist Groups  54
viii  Detailed Contents
The Decline of Left-Wing Terrorism  57
The Rise of Catastrophic Terrorism  60
Unrestrained Terrorism and Counterterrorism
after the Cold War  61
The Disintegration of the Communist Bloc  62
Modernization, Globalization, and the Proliferation
of Religious Violence  64

  4 Terrorism in the American Context 72

Right-Wing Terrorism  73
The Ku Klux Klan  74
Christian Identity and Neo-Nazi Groups  78
The Patriot and Militia Movement  82
The Sovereign Citizens Movement  85
Left-Wing Terrorism  87
The First Anarchists in the United States  87
Modern-Day Anarchists as Part of the
Antifa Movement  89
The Weather Underground  90
The Black Panther Party  91
The Symbionese Liberation Army  92
Single-Issue Terrorism  93
Antiabortion Violence  94
The Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts  96
The Jewish Defense League  97
Puerto Rican Nationalist Groups  98
Ideological Waves  99

  5 Religious Terrorism: Political Violence in the

Name of God 105
Defending the Faith in “Cosmic Wars”  111
The Proliferation of Religious Violence  113
Alienation, Humiliation, and Fear  114
The Jihadi Movement and Political Violence  117
Muslims 118
Islamists 118
Salafis and Wahhabis  119
Jihadis 120
Jihadi Ideology  121
Homegrown Jihadis in the West—Including the
United States  126
 Detailed Contents  ix
  6 The Making of Terrorists: Causes, Conditions,
Influences 135
Terrorism as a Result of Rational Choice  139
Terrorism as a Result of Personal Traits and
Experiences 141
Terrorism as a Result of Social Interaction  143
Differences between Leaders and Followers  145
The Lone Wolf Phenomenon  146
The Lack of a Universal Terrorist Profile  148
The Stages Leading to Terrorism  148
The Roots of Terrorism: No Simple Answers  151

  7 Women, Children, and Terrorism 155

For the Sake of Love  162
Demonstration of Gender Equality  162
Can Real Women Become Terrorists?  164
Tactical Advantages of Female Terrorists  165
The Making of Child Terrorists  168

  8 Common Threads: Goals, Targets, and Tactics 174

Do Terrorists Achieve Their Goals?  175
The Selection of Targets  176
Terrorist Methods: From Primitive Bombs
to WMD  179
Most Common Methods of Terrorist
Attacks 180
Most Likely CBRN Weapons in the Hands
of Terrorists  199

  9 Organizational Structures and the Financing

of Terror 205
ISIS: Organized Like a Police State  212
How Terrorist Groups Decline or End  215
Terrorist Groups’ Big Helpers: State Sponsors  217
The Case of Saudi Arabia  221
Failed and Failing States and “Brown Areas”  223
Involuntary Host Countries  224
Financing Terrorism  225
Narco-Terrorism or Narco-Funded Terrorism?  229
x  Detailed Contents
PART II
Counterterrorism 233

10 Terrorism and America’s Post-9/11 National

Security Strategy 235
President Bush’s National Security Strategy  240
I. Making the World Safer and Better  240
II. Preemption before Threats Become Imminent  241
III. Unilateral Use of Force  242
President Obama’s National Security Strategy  243
President Trump's National Security Strategy  245
America’s Controversial “Drone War”  246

11 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power in

Counterterrorism 252
Military Hard Power  255
Military Retaliation/Reprisal  256
Military Preemption  259
Commando Raids  261
Assassinations 262
Hostage Rescue Missions  264
Nonmilitary Hard Power: Economic Sanctions  266
Drying Up Financial Resources  267
Soft Power and Counterterrorism  268
Deterrence 268
Diplomacy 269
Talking to Terrorist Groups  271
Public Diplomacy  274
Conciliation and Peace  275

12 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights 281

U.S. Anti- and Counterterrorism Laws  285
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?  290
The Rights of “Enemy Combatants”  294
Torture: Leaders and Followers  298
Obama on Torture and Rendition  302
The Drone War and Human Rights Violations  303

13 The Crucial Role of Intelligence 308

The U.S. Intelligence Community  311
Post-9/11 Changes  316
 Detailed Contents  xi
Domestic Intelligence in Post-9/11 America  318
Congress and the Lack of Effective Oversight  322
International Cooperation Needed  323
Preparedness for Man-Made and Natural Disasters  325

PART III
Terrorism in the News Media and on the Internet 329

14 Terrorist Propaganda and the Mainstream Media 331

Publicity: The Universal Terrorist Goal  336
An Alternative View: Contemporary Terrorists Do
Not Need Publicity  337
Terrorism and the Triangle of Communication  339
Media-Related Goals  340
The Attention-Getting Goal  340
The Recognition Goal  343
The Respectability/Legitimacy Goal  345
Bedfellows in a Marriage of Convenience  347
Media and Terrorist Contagion  348
Defending the Media  350
Treason or Public Service?  352

15 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace 356

Social Media as an Ideal Alternative to Mainstream
News Media  363
Radicalization, Recruitment, and Incitement  364
Preaching Hate and Violence  366
Self-Reporting of Violence  368
Planning and Executing Terrorist Operations  369
Retrieving Valuable Information  372
Raising Funds  373

16 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats 377

Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents since the

Late 1970s 386
Bibliography 402
Index 414
Illustrations

Figures
  1.1 Trends in International Terrorist Incidents
and Casualties 8
13.1 Organization of the Department of
Homeland Security 320
14.1 Terrorists and the Triangle of Communication 340
14.2 Volume of Terrorism News and Public Opinion
on Terrorist Threat 342

Tables
  1.1 Trends in Terrorist Incidents and Victims 9
  1.2 Ten Countries with the Most Terrorist Attacks
in 2017 10
  4.1 Major Motives for Hate Crimes in 2017 and 2016 101
  5.1 Nonstate Entities Committing Most Terrorist
Attacks in 2016 114
  5.2 Post-9/11 Deadly Terrorism inside the United
States by Jihadists 129
  6.1 Causes of Terrorism/Formation of Terrorist Groups 151
  8.1 Period with Most Deadly Vehicle Ramming
Attacks 195
  9.1 U.S. State Department: List of State Sponsors
of Terrorism (June 2018) 220
  9.2 Needs of Terrorists and Motives of State Sponsors 220
10.1 Drone Strikes in Yemen (up to mid-2018) 247
10.2 Drone Strikes in Pakistan (up to mid-2018) 247
13.1 Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community 318
 Illustrations  xiii
14.1 Mainstream Media Reporting on ISIS before and
after Foley Beheading: Articles about or
Mentioning ISIS 332
14.2 Mainstream Media Reporting on ISIS before and
after Foley Beheading: Number of Articles with
Islamic State, ISIS, or ISIL in Headline 332
14.3 News Coverage January 1, 2014–December 31,
2014: Articles about or Mentioning
Particular Issues 343
Preface

More than two decades ago, when I put together the syllabus for the
very first terrorism course I taught, it was difficult to find good articles
and chapters—forget textbooks—that covered the whole range of what
I considered important aspects of transnational and domestic terrorism
and counterterrorism. After September 11, 2001, there was a flood of new
publications that dealt mostly or exclusively with: 9/11; the perpetrators of
that horrific event; the motives of bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and like-minded
individuals and groups; the implications for American domestic and for-
eign policy; and the impact on U.S. foreign policy and/or international
relations, and so on.
Fine textbooks by single authors are often written for readers with
special interests, for example, students in criminal justice courses or
members of the emergency response community; others cover all conceiv-
able topics in too short sections; and still others are exclusively devoted
to transnational terrorism. Even the best among edited volumes seem
less suited to serve as basic texts than as valuable supplements to a basic
textbook written by one author.
So, I decided to write a textbook about terrorism and counterterror-
ism to serve as the core reading in pertinent lecture courses or seminars.
The students in my terrorism/counterterrorism class were in the past and
are today predominantly political science majors, mostly concentrating
on the study of international relations, American government, and com-
parative politics. I have also had students who majored in sociology,
history, urban studies, and psychology. I wrote this textbook with these
undergraduate students in mind, but even graduate students who have
a good basic knowledge of the topic will find here the background and
tools with which to study terrorism and counterterrorism at an advanced
level. Teaching graduate courses on media and politics, for example, I
learned that many students did not study this area as undergraduates
but could be brought up to speed for more advanced studies by working
their way through a good textbook.
 Preface  xv

New to this edition

•• Updates throughout the volume include developments, such as
the decline of ISIS after a spectacular rise based on its control
over vast territories in Iraq, and Al Qaeda. The new edition also
discusses and puts into context the latest terrorist tactics—in par-
ticular, the many cases of lethal vehicular terrorism with copy cat
incidents in the United States and Europe.
•• Additions in Chapters 3 and 4 address the increase in violence
carried out by extremist right-wing groups and by left-extremist
parts of the Antifa movement in both the United States and
Europe.
•• The rise of children in Western Europe carrying out terrorist attacks,
suicide missions as family projects, and childhood trauma as a risk
factor are discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.
•• A new section in Chapter 12 addresses human rights violations in
counterterrorism, especially with respect to the killing of civilians
in drone strikes and in the use of torture during the interrogation
of terrorists or alleged terrorists.
•• Most of all, a rewritten Chapter 13 is devoted to the central role
of intelligence and interagency cooperation in efforts to counter
terrorism and protect the homeland.

A successful textbook is a work in progress. While the first editions

of Terrorism and Counterterrorism were well received, comments and
suggestions by instructors and students who used those volumes were
instrumental in extended revisions, additions, and changes for the much
improved second, third, and fourth editions—and now the heavily revised
fifth edition. This edition, too, is not simply an updated version of the
previous one but offers important additions and improvements.
Acknowledgments

The topics introduced and discussed in my seminars on terrorism and

the notes prepared for lecture courses on terrorism and on the media in
American politics informed the organization and the content of this vol-
ume, as did the thoughtful input by my students at Columbia University
and Barnard College during our lively but always civil class discussions.
I am very grateful to the following reviewers for their detailed com-
ments, suggestions, and constructive criticism:

•• Sean K. Anderson, Idaho State University

•• Victor Asal, SUNY Albany
•• Vincent Auger, Western Illinois University
•• Shaheen Ayubi, Rutgers University, Camden
•• Peter A. Barone, University of Bridgeport
•• Jeffrey Bosworth, Mansfield University
•• Tom Brister, Wake Forest University
•• Sabina Burton, University of Wisconsin, Platteville
•• Rachel Bzostek, California State University, Bakersfield
•• Timothy A. Capron, California State University, Sacramento
•• Lamont Colucci, Ripon College
•• Michael V. Deaver, Sierra College
•• Julian Droogan, Macquarie University, Australia
•• Larry Elowitz, Georgia College and State University
•• William Eppright, Columbia College, Orlando
•• John Fielding, Mount Wachusett Community College
•• James L. Freed, University of Maryland University College
•• Hasan Kosebalaban, University of Utah
•• Tobias J. Lanz, University of South Carolina
•• Jecek Lubecki, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
•• C. Augustus Martin, California State University, Dominguez Hills
•• Dennis W. McLean, Keiser University
•• Dean A. Minix, Northern Kentucky University
•• Tricia Mulligan, Iona College
•• Thomas R. O’Connor, North Carolina Wesleyan College
 Acknowledgments  xvii
•• William Rose, Connecticut College
•• Gabriel Rubin, Montclair State University
•• Stanley E. Spangler, Bentley College
•• George C. Thomas, Marquette University
•• Ronald Vardy, University of Houston
•• Michael Joel Voss, University of Toledo
•• Carlos Yordan, Drew University

For the sixth edition, the following reviewers provided helpful input:

•• Jeffrey Bosworth, Mansfield University

•• Julian Droogan, Macquarie University, Australia
•• Dennis W. McLean, Keiser University
•• Gabriel Rubin, Montclair State University
•• Michael Joel Voss, University of Toledo

The encouragement, guidance, and cooperation I received from Senior

Editor Jennifer Knerr at Routledge made all the work involved in a com-
prehensive book revision as pleasant as possible. Thank you!

The author posts her observations and comments about terrorism,

counterterrorism, the mass media, and current events on her blog,
reflectivepundit ([Link]). Readers are invited to
visit her blog, comment on posts, or email questions and comments.
About the Author

Brigitte L. Nacos, a longtime U.S. correspondent

for newspapers in Germany, received a Ph.D. in
political science from Columbia University, where
for more than twenty-five years she has taught
and continues to teach courses in American poli-
tics and government. Her research concentrates on
the links between the media, public opinion, and
decision-making; domestic and international ter-
rorism and counterterrorism; and, more recently,
on social movements. Besides publishing many
articles and several book chapters, she is the author
of The Press, Presidents, and Crises (Columbia University Press, 1990);
Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the World
Trade Center Bombing (Columbia University Press, 1994 and 1996);
Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism
and Counterterrorism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, 2007, 2016); (with
Oscar Torres-Reyna) Fueling Our Fears: Stereotyping, Media Coverage,
and Public Opinion of Muslim Americans (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
She is also the coauthor of From Bonn to Berlin: German Politics in
Transition (Columbia University Press, 1998) with Lewis J. Edinger, and
coeditor of Decisionmaking in a Glass House (Rowman & Littlefield,
2000) with Robert Y. Shapiro and Pierangelo Isernia. Finally, she is
coauthor with Yaeli Bloch-Elkon and Robert Y. Shapiro of Selling Fear:
Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion (University of Chicago
Press, 2011).
Apart from teaching, researching, and writing, she loves playing golf
and cooking and barbecuing for her family and friends, as well as tending
to her indoor and outdoor flowers.
1 Introduction
The Terrorist Threat

New Year’s Eve in Manhattan’s Times Square. In spite of record cold

temperatures more than 1 million people wait for hours to celebrate the
departure of the old year 2017 and the advent of the New Year 2018.
Finally, as the famous crystal ball drops with a burst of confetti and
fireworks the crowd erupts in deafening shouts of excitement and joy.
Shortly thereafter the celebrants begin to melt away from the famous
venue of this annual media event that is witnessed by many millions
across the country and around the world on TV and computer screens.
What got lost in the worldwide TV crowd were the massive security
resources in terms of manpower, equipment, and expense provided by
the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and its formidable coun-
terterrorism experts. Manhattan’s downtown had suffered three months
earlier, on Halloween Day, a truck-ramming act of terrorism. Now, sand
and garbage trucks blocked all access streets to Times Square. Spectators
had passed several layers of security checks where officers utilized metal
and radiation detection devices. There were also so-called “vapor wake”
dogs trained to sniff out explosives. Rooftop observation teams and snip-
ers looked out for possible attackers. Beat officers had seen training videos
and read bulletins on how to respond to suicide attacks. With well over
5,000 police officers deployed in the heart of New York City the Times
Square area was the most protected piece of real estate in the world.
According to NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill there were no
direct threats against the New Year’s Eve celebrations on Times Square.
“Out of an abundance of caution, you’ll see a stronger police presence
out there than we’ve seen even in recent years,” he explained neverthe-
less. Some extra security measures were added because of a seemingly
non-terrorism-related mass shooting in Las Vegas three months earlier,
where the lone gunman sprayed bullets from an upper floor window into
a crowd of concert goers killing forty-nine people and injuring hundreds.
Perhaps the counterterrorism community considered that a terrorist
might try to copycat the Las Vegas massacre.
How serious was the threat of terrorism in New York and elsewhere in
the United States of America at the time? In all of 2017 there had been three
2 Introduction
lethal terrorist attacks in the country with a total of ten fatalities that were
politically motivated and carried out by ideological extremists. The most
deadly incident was the mentioned vehicular attack on October 31, 2017
in New York City by a self-described follower of the Islamic State that
killed eight innocent persons. And there were two terrorist acts by White
Supremacists—one in Charlottesville, Virginia, and another in New York
City, both resulting in the death of one person. It is not clear whether
the shooting and killing of a guard for the Denver Transit Authority
in February 2017 was politically motivated by jihadist extremism.1
The point here is that there were few lethal terrorist attacks in the
United States in all of 2017. Compared to the more than close to 40,000
individuals killed in car accidents and the close to 13,000 dying in gun
homicides every year in the United States the number of annual terror-
ist fatalities is small even in years with major terrorist attacks. Yet, the
threat perception of the American public tends to be far greater with
respect to terrorism than car crashes or gun violence. Equally or more
important is that public officials’ risk assessments tend to be alarm-
ing. Testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on
Homeland Security in November 2017 the Acting Secretary of Homeland
Security Elaine Duke said: “Today, the magnitude of the threat we face
from terrorism is equal to, and in many ways exceeds, the 9/11 period.”
Nothing could be more disconcerting even more than sixteen years
after the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001 than referencing
9/11 in such a grim threat assessment. As one expert notes,

The 9/11 attacks have become what psychologists call an “anchor-

ing event” which, owing to its vivid and dramatic nature, is long
remembered because human memory and perceptions filter out less
dramatic or contradictory information. Moreover, the anchoring
event shapes subsequent analysis and the degree of probability that
are attributed to future events, in this case, the extent and nature of
the terrorist threat.2

The horrific attacks of 9/11 transformed for most Americans and many
people in other Western countries the perception of terrorism from
fictional scenes in disaster movies to images of real-life horror. Never
before had so many people—about 3,000—died in one terrorist opera-
tion. Never before had a terrorist coup inflicted so much grief, so much
devastation, and so much fear of further, and more lethal, attacks. It
was a most painful conclusion to the first World Trade Center bomb-
ing in 1993. The terrorism of the past had turned into something much
more catastrophic, much more threatening—into what has been called
the “new terrorism,” “superterrorism,” or “postmodern terrorism.”
Just as important, never before had one terrorist attack reshaped the
priorities and the actual policy agenda of a victimized state as drastically,
 Introduction  3
and impacted international relations as severely, as the assault on tar-
gets in New York and Washington. Not the 9/11 attacks but rather
the U.S. responses to the incident had far-reaching and lasting effects
on the global and domestic realms. This was possible, according to
one scholar, because “the myths of American Exceptionalism and
Barbarism vs. Civilization” shaped the post-9/11 narrative of the ter-
rorist threat and led to a “shared, mythologized understanding of the
significance of 9/11.”3
In response to 9/11, U.S. President George W. Bush, backed by most
members of the U.S. Congress and a vast majority of the American peo-
ple, declared war, not against a conventional enemy, a foreign country,
but rather against a violent activity—a war against terrorism. Less than
four weeks after 9/11, military actions by an American-led, international
coalition commenced in Afghanistan against the assumed masterminds of
the terror on American soil, Osama bin Laden and his close associates in
the Al Qaeda (meaning “the base”) terror organization, and against the
ruling Taliban that had harbored Al Qaeda terrorists and their Afghan
training camps for many years. According to President Bush, Afghanistan
was merely the first battleground in a long and difficult campaign against
a web of terrorist cells and organizations scattered around the globe and
against states actively supporting terrorist activities. Furthermore, the
president, in a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002, and the White
House in a comprehensive follow-up “National Strategy to Combat
Weapons of Mass Destruction,” formulated a new doctrine of preventive
wars that justified preemptive military actions against “emerging threats
before they are fully formed.”4 By citing evidence of existing weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and the threat that the country’s ruler,
Saddam Hussein, might place such weapons into the hands of terrorists,
the Bush administration followed the new doctrine when it decided to
invade the country and force a regime change.5
Even before the dust had settled around the totally destroyed World
Trade Center and the partially demolished Pentagon, people in the United
States and abroad began to recognize that this terrorist assault pushed
the United States and much of the world into a crisis that seemed just
as dangerous as, or perhaps more explosive than, the Cold War conflict
between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies
in the decades following the end of World War II. In some quarters, the
end of the Cold War had fueled expectations of an era of greater inter-
national understanding and cooperation and a “peace dividend” that
would better the economic conditions in the underdeveloped world and
bring improvements in the industrialized nations. But during the 1990s,
such dreams did not come true. Instead, there was a troubling wave of
conflicts in many parts of the world.
Instant commentary in the media compared the events of 9/11 with the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sixty years earlier, claiming that both
4 Introduction
incidents had been as unexpected as bolts of lightning from a blue sky.
Indeed, two months before the kamikaze flights crashed into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, a former counterterrorism specialist in the
U.S. Department of State wrote in an op-ed article in the New York Times,

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popu-
lar entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about ter-
rorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat
to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and
lethal . . . Nothing of these beliefs are based on facts.6

But others had warned for years that the United States and other
Western countries should brace for catastrophic terrorism that would
result in mass disruption and mass destruction.7 For example, Walter
Laqueur, a leading terrorism expert who had characterized terrorism in
the past as an irritant rather than a major threat, came to a different judg-
ment at the end of the 1990s, when he concluded,

Terrorism has been with us for centuries, and it has always attracted
inordinate attention because of its dramatic character and its sudden,
often wholly unexpected occurrence. It has been a tragedy for the
victims, but seen in historical perspective it seldom has been more
than a nuisance . . . This is no longer true today, and may be even
less so in the future. Yesterday’s nuisance has become one of the
gravest dangers facing mankind.8

Several horrific incidents in the 1990s and certainly the events of 9/11
proved the pessimists right and ended the threat debate. One could argue
that the age of catastrophic terrorism began in December 1988 with the
downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, caused by a
terrorist bomb that killed a total of 270 civilians on board (most of them
Americans) and on the ground (all of them Scots). This was, at the time,
the single most devastating act of terrorism in terms of the number of
victims. Actually, nearly as many Americans were killed when extremists
of the Lebanese Hezbollah drove an explosive-laden truck into the U.S.
Marine barracks near Beirut Airport in 1983. But while the victims were
deployed as peacekeepers and thus were not combatants in the sense of
fighting a war, they nevertheless were not civilians like the passengers and
crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and the people who died on the ground
in Lockerbie. As I will explain in the next chapter, whether civilians or
members of the military are targets and victims figures prominently in
the discussions of what kinds of violent acts constitute terrorism. The
fate of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 along with the Oklahoma City bomb-
ing in 1995 that caused the deaths of 168 persons represented turning
points in the lethality of terrorism. Until these events, the widely held
 Introduction  5
supposition was that “terrorists want a lot of people watching and a
lot of people listening and not a lot of people dead.”9 But after Pan Am
Flight 103 and the terror in Oklahoma City, this assumption was no
longer valid. Another terrorist incident fueled fears of even more deadly
terrorist strikes and changed intentions on the part of terrorists: In 1995,
members of a Japanese doomsday cult named Aum Shinrikyo (mean-
ing “supreme truth”) released poison gas in the Tokyo subway system,
killing twelve persons and sickening thousands of commuters. As dev-
astating as the consequences were, experts concluded that the release of
the nerve gas sarin could have killed far more people had members of the
Aum cult handled the poison differently. Pointing to the Japanese group’s
ability to develop nerve gas and to acquire toxic materials and know-how
from sources in Australia, the United States, Russia, and elsewhere, U.S.
Senator Sam Nunn concluded that the Japanese case signaled the begin-
ning of “a new era” in terrorism. He warned that WMD could spread
indiscriminately and fall into the hands of terrorists.10
For Americans, the threat of a major bioterrorist catastrophe hit close
to home three weeks after the terror of 9/11, when letters containing
anthrax spores were delivered to several media organizations and mem-
bers of the U.S. Congress. Although in this case “only” five persons died
and a dozen or so fell sick as a result of inhaling the finely powdered
biological agent, an anthrax attack designed to kill as many people as
possible could have easily caused a much more lethal catastrophe. Even
before the anthrax case frightened the American public, New York Times
reporters Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad published
a book in which they called germ weapons “the poor man’s atom bomb”
and warned that

the threat of germ weapons is real and rising, driven by scientific

discoveries and political upheavals around the world. As Aum
Shinrikyo’s failed efforts [to inflict far more harm than planned] sug-
gest, the crucial ingredient in a successful biological attack is not
advanced laboratory equipment or virulent microbes alone, but
knowledge. Such expertise is increasingly available.11

Several months after 9/11, high officials in the U.S. administration

warned that terrorists would inevitably acquire WMD. Testifying before
a Senate committee, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said ter-
rorists “would seek to obtain nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons,
and ultimately would succeed despite U.S. efforts to prevent them [from
doing so].”12 Worse yet, in June 2002 the U.S. government announced
the arrest of Abdullah Al Mujahir, an American citizen who years ear-
lier had been a Chicago street gang member named Jose Padilla. The
Brooklyn-born Muslim convert, who had allegedly trained in Al Qaeda
camps in Afghanistan, was accused of conspiring with fellow terrorists
6 Introduction
to acquire and detonate a so-called dirty bomb in Washington, DC, or
elsewhere in the United States. Although this would not trigger a nuclear
explosion and would not be as lethal as sophisticated nuclear weapons, a
dirty bomb would nevertheless release enough radioactive material over
several city blocks to harm many people and contaminate the affected
area. As it turned out, there was no evidence that Padilla had planned to
get his hands on a dirty bomb but the news of such a threat contributed
to the American people’s worries.
In the following years, there were many dozens of failed and foiled
terrorist plots by jihadists and right-extremists within the United States
but no major attacks. The Fort Hood shooting in 2009, the Boston
Marathon bombing in 2013, the San Bernardino mass shooting in 2015,
the Orlando nightclub mass shooting in 2016, and the deadly New York
City truck ramming in 2017 renewed Americans’ anxieties about the
threat of jihadist terrorism in the homeland although far more terror-
ism occurred abroad without involving Americans. In Europe, hundreds
were killed in jihadi attacks with the most deadly incidents occurring in
Madrid, Spain, in 2004; Breslan, Russia, in 2004; London, U.K., in 2005;
Paris, France, in 2015; Nice, France, in 2016; Manchester, U.K., in 2017;
London, U.K., in 2017. However, tens of thousands of civilians were
killed and maimed in very frequent attacks in the Middle East, South
Asia, and Africa. Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan were particularly hard hit.
By 2006, when the deadly sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis
expanded into a civil war, terrorism was the preferred method of attack.
Similarly, terrorist attacks increased in Afghanistan, especially after the
bulk of American and coalition forces were withdrawn. Most of all,
ISIS unleashed a reign of terrorism in both Syria and Iraq starting in
2014. All of these developments supported the notion that terrorism—
and counterterrorism—had entered into a new, most dangerous phase.
But although the faces of terrorists and their brand of violence change
over time, the calculus of terrorism remains basically the same. This ter-
rorist calculus, or scheme, is driven by a set of assumptions:

•• Groups that are too weak to fight nation-states openly in conven-

tional civil or foreign wars will realize some and perhaps all of their
objectives by striking against civilian or noncombatant targets or by
merely threatening to do so.
•• States and governments are ill prepared to react to the type of psy-
chological warfare that terrorists wage against their citizens. While
capable of fighting and winning conventional wars against other
nation-states, the military forces of even the mightiest states are not
suited to fight against elusive enemies who strike at unpredictable
times, places, and targets by equally unpredictable means.
•• Because of their openness and far-reaching civil liberties—especially
press freedom—liberal democracies are far more susceptible to terrorist
 Introduction  7
activities and propaganda than authoritarian systems. By striking
seemingly at random, terrorists transmit the false message that eve-
ryone in their target societies is a potential victim.
•• In reaction to serious acts of terror, decision-makers in constitutional
democracies are likely to overreact in efforts to prevent and counter
terrorism, at the expense of their country’s fundamental values and
civil liberties. Such overreactions will motivate citizens in democra-
cies, or at least part of them, to oppose their own governments.

The basic rationale for political violence of this sort guides unsophis-
ticated amateurs and sophisticated professionals, lone wolves and
formidable organizations, the arsonists inspired by the Earth Liberation
Front, and the 9/11 kamikaze terrorists dispatched by Al Qaeda. This
volume describes and analyzes, in the first place, the most important fac-
ets of the terrorist scheme and, second, how the governments of targeted
countries and other institutions (e.g., the news media and international
organizations) react—and how they should react—to actual terrorism
and threats thereof.

Terrorism Trends over the Last Decades

David C. Rapoport concluded that “September 11 marks the most impor-
tant date in the long and bloody history of terrorism. No other terrorist
attack used passenger planes as bombs [and] produced such staggering
casualty figures.”13 But while at the time unparalleled in scope, the terror-
ist assaults of 9/11 came on the heels of more than a quarter century of
consequential international terrorist incidents that targeted Americans,
mostly abroad but also, beginning with the first World Trade Center
bombing in 1993, at home. Although Americans were certainly not the
only victims, the United States was the target of “approximately one
third of all international terrorist attacks over the last 30 years.”14
Apart from their venues, the nationality of the targets, and their
domestic or international nature, individual acts of terrorism have
caused more deaths and injuries in the last several years of the twentieth
and the first years of the twenty-first centuries than in several of the pre-
ceding decades combined. Whereas the number of incidents with respect
to both international and domestic terrorism decreased markedly, the
total number of casualties increased significantly. Thus, as Figure 1.1
shows, in the five-year period from 1988 through 1992, a total of 2,345
international terrorist incidents were recorded that caused 4,325 casual-
ties (persons killed and injured). The number of incidents decreased by
552 during the following five years (1993 through 1997) to 1,793, but
there were 8,767 more casualties, or a total of 13,092 killed or injured
victims. Finally, the next five years (1998 through 2002) witnessed a
further decline of terrorist deeds to a total of 1,649 and yet another jump
8 Introduction
in casualties to a total of 16,807.15 These trend statistics end with the
year 2002 because of a controversy that arose after the initial release of
the numbers for 2003 by the U.S. Department of State. The 2003 num-
bers reflected a rather sharp decline in international terrorist incidents
and casualties, encouraging a State Department official to tell the press,
“You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the
fight [against terrorism].”16 But it turned out that not all relevant inter-
national incidents were counted and that the true numbers in the revised
report represented increases in both casualties and incidents. These and
other problems led to the suspicion that the numbers had been massaged
to support the claim of progress in the war against terrorism. Whereas
the State Department had prepared the “Patterns of Global Terrorism”
report for years, the newly established Terrorist Threat Integration
Center, a creature of the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and
Department of Defense, was in charge of the 2003 issue.
Up to 2002, then, the statistics showed increases in major terrorist
incidents, or what have been called “terrorist spectaculars,” and a decline
in less dramatic acts of political violence by nonstate actors. In fact, the
tendency toward fewer but more spectacular and more lethal incidents
had already begun during the 1980s. The change coincided with the
growth of what is commonly called “religious terrorism”—the use of
violence for political ends by groups whose motivations and justifications
are couched in religious convictions, terms, and symbols. However, the

Figure 1.1  Trends in International Terrorist Incidents and Casualties

Source: U.S. State Department, “Patterns of Global Terrorism”
 Introduction  9
1980s were in this respect only a prelude to the far more pronounced
developments in the post-Cold War era, when religious and pseudor-
eligious terrorism became significantly more prevalent than the secular
variety. The total number of significant incidents of domestic and inter-
national terrorism around the world increased from 74 in the 1970s to
122 in the 1980s and 157 in the 1990s. Here, too, the number of killed
and injured victims jumped from about 2,000 in the 1970s to more than
3,000 in the 1980s and to over 15,000 in the 1990s.17 All of these num-
bers were far surpassed in the first two decades of the new millennium as
Table 1.1 shows.
Following the controversy concerning the 2003 statistics, the National
Counterterrorism Center gathered and analyzed relevant statistics before
the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism (START) began to prepare the statistical annex for the State
Department’s annual “Country Reports on Terrorism.” Since open
sources, most of all news media reports, are the major sources for the
gathering of pertinent information, it is very likely that the actual num-
bers are higher. In a number of countries plagued by high incidents of
terrorism (i.e., Syria, Yemen, or Somalia), there were and are no reli-
able sources. Nevertheless, the reported numbers seem to reflect by and
large the actual trends. That seems also the case concerning the statistics
about countries with most terrorist incidents and victims. As Table 1.2
shows, in 2017—as in previous years—five countries with overwhelm-
ing Muslim majorities (Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria), one
nation with a population evenly divided between Muslims and Christians
(Nigeria), and another country with a significant Muslim minority (India)
were mostly plagued by terrorism with incidents in Syria most certainly
underreported due to civil war conditions and lack of media access.

Table 1.1  Trends in Terrorist Incidents and Victims

Year Total Attacks People Killed People Injured People Kidnapped

2007 14,415 22,720 44,103 4,980

2008 11,663 15,709 33,901 4,680
2009 10,968 15,311 32,660 10,749
2010 11,641 13,193 30,684 6,051
2011 10,283 12,533 25,903 5,554
2012 6,771 11,098 21,652 1,283
2013 9,707 17,891 32,577 2,990
2014 13,463 32,727 34,791 9,428
2015 11,774 28,328 35,320 12,189
2016 11,072 25,621 33,814 15,543
2017 8,584 18,753 19,461 8,937
Source: U.S. Department of State and START
10 Introduction
Table 1.2  Ten Countries with the Most Terrorist Attacks in 2017

Country Total Total Killed Total Injured Total Kidnapped/

Attacks Taken Hostage

Iraq 1,951 4,269 4,077 1,960

Afghanistan 1,171 4,672 5,023 835
India 860 380 601 224
Pakistan 574 851 1,827 106
Philippines 483 327 298 408
Nigeria 411 1,532 852 245
Somalia 370 1,469 1,093 286
Nepal 247 4 94 10
Egypt 169 655 481 37
Syria 141 1,096 1,055 267
Source: U.S. Department of State and START

As one would expect, acts of international and domestic terrorism

have significant impact on target societies when they are particularly
lethal. But in the past, there were also many incidents that did not result
in large numbers of casualties, or that resulted in none at all, but that
still achieved the status of terrorist spectacular because political leaders
perceived such incidents as acute crises and reacted accordingly. In early
1975, for example, members of the Baader-Meinhof group kidnapped
Peter Lorenz, a Christian Democratic candidate for mayor of West
Berlin. Four days later and after the West German government released
five jailed terrorists and paid $50,000 in ransom, Lorenz was released
unharmed. This was not the first time the authorities in the Federal
Republic of Germany had given in to terrorists’ demands. But, according
to Peter Katzenstein,

two months later the government stood firm when West German
terrorists seized eleven hostages in the West German embassy in
Stockholm. It refused to make any concessions in 1977 when terror-
ists kidnapped and eventually murdered Martin Schleyer, one of the
most prominent business leaders of the Federal Republic.18

The boldness of Lorenz’s kidnapping and the fact that, for the first
time, a politician had been targeted elevated the Lorenz case in the minds
of the West German public and government to the level of a major crisis—
even though no one had been killed or injured. As a result, the West
German authorities altered their response to terrorism, decided to make
no more concessions to terrorists, and stuck to their new policy of
toughness. The kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister
 Introduction  11
Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigade had a similar effect on the Italian
government and public. In this case, the terrorists killed their immediate vic-
tim (the well-liked Moro) and, during the kidnapping, five of his bodyguards;
the incident was quickly perceived as a major crisis. This was not simply
because of the number of casualties—after all, Europe had witnessed far
more lethal terrorism before the Moro case—but because the Red Brigade
had laid bare the vulnerability and impotence of the Italian authorities
to protect even a former head of government. As Jeffrey Simon observed,
“the subsequent crackdown on the Red Brigade by the Italian police and
security forces was not seen as repressive by the public, but as a welcome
response.”19 In the summer of 2006, when members of the Lebanese
Hezbollah crossed into Israel and abducted two Israeli soldiers, this kid-
napping triggered massive retaliation by Israel and a major military con-
flict between it and Hezbollah.
Over the last several decades, anti-American terrorism incidents have
had significant impact on American decision-makers, U.S. politics and
policies, and, just as importantly, the public at large, regardless of whether
the immediate victims of terrorism survived their ordeal. Thus, although
none of the Americans held as hostages died during the 444 days of the
Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981), this incident had tremendous effect on
Jimmy Carter’s presidency and on U.S. policies and politics during this
period and beyond. By demonstrating that the American superpower—
short of military action—was impotent, a bunch of young Iranians held
the United States hostage, as the media reminded Americans day in and
day out.
We enhance our understanding of many aspects of terrorism in gen-
eral if we know the most pertinent details of those terrorist incidents
with outstanding characteristics and effects. But younger generations do
not know about many incidents of anti-American terrorism abroad that
older Americans remember very well. Younger Americans certainly have
no personal recollection of the Iran hostage crisis or the long ordeal of
American hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. For this reason, this book’s
appendix (“Major Terrorist Incidents since the Late 1970s”) provides
readers with a number of both extensive and brief summaries of terror-
ist events in two categories: (1) major incidents that targeted Americans
and/or American interests, and (2) major international incidents without
American targets and victims.
Following this introduction, the rest of the book is divided into
three distinct sections: Part I: Terrorism, Part II: Counterterrorism, and
Part III: Terrorism in the News Media and on the Internet. Chapter 2
addresses fundamental definitions and disagreements surrounding the
terms terrorism and terrorist. This includes an often heated debate about
the question: Is terrorism never or sometimes justified? Although in the
past it was rarely as serious a threat as it is today, terrorism in one form
or another has existed in every time and was typically committed by
12 Introduction
groups who were too weak to fight for their causes in open conflicts.
Drawing on the past in the context of terrorism will often illuminate
recent and present developments, events, and issues and can help us to
make comparisons and find similarities and differences. The updated
Chapters 3 and 4 are designed to accomplish this by providing the reader
with a historical and geographic perspective on terrorism in the global
setting—in the past and up to the present time (Chapter 3)—and with
an examination of terrorism in the American setting past and present
(Chapter 4). The third chapter has a new section on new waves of right
and left extremism in the West. In the fourth chapter I added new mate-
rial on the U.S.-based antifascist or Antifa movement. Following the
updated Chapter 5 I added to theories and research results explaining the
making of terrorists using rational choice and childhood trauma expla-
nations. Chapter 7, devoted to women and children in terrorism, offers
an addition about the rise of children and teenagers recruited by ISIS
or similar groups who carried out terrorist strikes. Equally disconcert-
ing is a case of suicide bombings by whole sets of families. The updated
Chapter 8 contains a new section on the growing cases of lethal vehicular
terrorism. Chapter 9 takes a look inside terrorist organizations in terms
of their structure (e.g., the value of leaderless cells and the emergence of
global networks). I updated this chapter and added an interesting listing
of the ten richest terrorist organizations. Chapter 10, the first chapter
of Part II, Counterterrorism, deals with the centrality of counterterror-
ism to America’s post-9/11 national security strategy, the so-called Bush
Doctrine, President Obama’s national security strategy, and in a new
section President Trump’s national security strategy as they relate to ter-
rorism and counterterrorism. Besides, there are other updates covering
the first part of the Trump presidency. Chapter 11 examines hard-power
and soft-power approaches to dealing with and defeating terrorism. As
the post-9/11 years during both the Bush and Obama administrations
showed once again, military superiority rarely defeats terrorist move-
ments or mere groups. The question here then is: What are the prospects
for governments of utilizing both hard power (military and economic)
and soft power (diplomacy and public diplomacy) to weaken and defeat
terrorists? I expanded the discussion of hard and soft powers to include
the Trump administration. The following Chapter (12) on the need for
security and for upholding civil liberties has a new section on human
rights violations in counterterrorism, in particular, in the ongoing drone
war and the post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” or torture practices.
I rewrote Chapter 13, the last in Part II, so that it now focuses mostly
on the importance of intelligence in the fight against terrorism and the
protection of the homeland. To that end, I took a fresh look at the post-
9/11 reorganization of the counterterrorism community, the newly created
Department of Homeland Security, and the growth of a huge domestic
intelligence machinery. The updated Chapters 14 and 15, making up
 Introduction  13
Part III of the volume, remain devoted to “Terrorist Propaganda and the
Mainstream Media” and “Terror and Hate in Cyberspace” with a new
lead-in on the threat of cyberterrorism. I utilized some of the material on
terrorism in the news from what was Chapter 16 in the previous editions
and eliminated the chapter in order to limit the length of the volume.
Finally, the short concluding and updated Chapter 16 discusses the reality
that terrorism is here to stay and raises the question of how societies can
manage to live with the threat of terrorism.

Notes
1 The Anti-Defamation League’s statistics of murders and extremism in the
United States for 2017 lists the killing of thirty-four persons, most of them
the victims of right-wing extremists. It seems, however, that a larger number
of these attacks were crimes and not acts of terrorism. But even the higher
number pales in comparison to other violent causes of death.
2 George C. Fidas, “The Terrorist Threat: Existential or Exaggerated? A
‘Red Cell’ Perspective,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter
Intelligence 21 (2008): 521.
3 Joanne Esch, “Legitimizing the War on Terror: Political Myth in Official-
Level Rhetoric,” Political Psychology 31:3 (2010): 365.
4 Stated in a letter that accompanied the National Strategy to Combat Weapons
of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: 2002), ii. For an analysis of the doctrine
of preemptive wars, see Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” in
Demetrios James Caraley, ed., American Hegemony: Preventing War, Iraq,
and Imposing Democracy (New York: Academy of Political Science, 2004),
3–26.
5 In January 2005, the White House announced that the United States had
ended the search for WMD in Iraq without finding any evidence of banned
weapons. The 1,200 specialists of the Iraq Survey Group had spent nearly
two years searching many sites, such as laboratories, factories, and military
installations.
6 Larry C. Johnson, “The Declining Threat of Terrorism,” New York Times,
July 10, 2002, A19.
7 Especially alarming were the scenarios described by Robert Kupperman and
Jeff Kamen, Final Warning: Averting Disaster in the New Age of Terrorism
(New York: Doubleday, 1989).
8 The quote is from Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the
Arms of Mass Destruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–4.
In an earlier book, Laqueur had called terrorism “a sideshow” in comparison
to far greater problems. See Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1987).
9 Brian Jenkins is quoted in Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998), 198.
10 Christopher Drew, “Japanese Sect Tried to Buy U.S. Arms Technology, Senator
Says,” New York Times, October 31, 1995.
11 Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, Germs: Biological
Weapons and America’s Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001),
315–16.
12 According to the Washington Post. See Bill Miller and Christine Haughney,
“Nation Left Jittery by Latest Series of Terror Warnings,” Washington Post,
May 22, 2002, A1.
14 Introduction
13 David C. Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
Terrorism,” Current History (December 2001): 419.
14 Martha Crenshaw, “Why America? The Globalization of Civil War,” Current
History (December 2001): 424.
15 The incident/casualty numbers were compiled from statistical data pub-
lished by the Department of State in its yearly editions of “Patterns of Global
Terrorism.”
16 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was cited by Paul Krugman,
“Errors in Terror,” New York Times, June 25, 2004, A23.
17 The data on major terrorist incidents and the casualties they caused were
compiled using the data of the Centre for Defence and International Security
Studies (CDISS). Because the data for 1999 were not available in the data-
base and were therefore not included in the numbers for the 1990s, the real
increase in major incidents and casualties was still more pronounced. I made
some adjustments to the data compiled by the CDISS. Thus, a few entries
were eliminated because they did not fit the terrorist incident criteria. For
example, in September 1996 raids by the British police were said to have
thwarted an Irish Republican Army bombing campaign in London and netted
weapons and explosives. This incident and similar cases were scratched from
the major incident data. Also, in a few cases the casualty numbers were not
specific enough. When it was said that more than 100 persons were injured,
the most conservative number was assumed—in this case, 100.
18 Peter Katzenstein, “West Germany’s Internal Security Policy: State and
Violence in the 1970s and 1980s,” Western Societies Program, Occasional
Paper no. 28, Center for International Studies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University,
1990), 31.
19 Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience with Terrorism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 322.
Part I

Terrorism
2 The Perennial Debate
What Is Terrorism?

In post-9/11 America it has been common for public officials, the media,
and rank-and-file Americans to associate violence in public places car-
ried out by Muslim attackers as acts of terrorism but the same types of
violence by non-Muslims as crimes or hate crimes. Thus, in 2017, the
most deadly attack was carried out by a self-described jihadist who killed
eight persons in a truck-ramming incident in New York City. Rightly
so, this was immediately called terrorism. The perpetrator himself left
no doubt that his motives were political. But after a White Supremacist
stabbed a randomly selected African American man to death in New
York City and admitted to having planned to kill many more blacks,
this was reported and prosecuted as murder and “hate crime.” Similarly,
after a left-extremist man, angry about Donald Trump’s presidency,
sought out Republican members of the U.S. Congress on a baseball field
near the capital for a mass shooting that injured five persons, this, too,
was reported and treated as crime—not terrorism.
There was, however, one notable moment in 2017 that seemed to sig-
nal a possible correction of the uneven usage of the term terrorism: Two
days after a deadly car attack by a White Supremacist in Charlottesville,
Virginia, that killed a young woman, Attorney-General Jeff Sessions
declared that the “unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack” did
indeed meet “the definition of domestic terrorism.”1 While the head-
line “Was the Charlottesville Car Attack Domestic Terrorism, a Hate
Crime or Both?” in the Washington Post asked the right questions and
the article underneath reported the Attorney-General’s conclusion in this
particular case, legal experts cited in the same article did not even try to
clarify what distinguishes terrorism from ordinary crime.
The uneven usage of the term terrorism pre-dates the post-9/11 era. In
2001, before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) list of the “Ten Most Wanted
Fugitives” included three men sought for their involvement in acts of
political violence: Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of lethal attacks
on the American battleship USS Cole in the fall of 2000 and on the
American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two years earlier; Eric Robert
18 Terrorism
Rudolph, who was sought for the deadly bombing of an abortion clinic in
Alabama, the fatal explosion in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games,
and similar attacks on other facilities; and James Charles Kopp, who
was charged with the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a provider
of legal abortions. At the time, bin Laden was called a “terrorist” in the
United States—by U.S. government officials, the media, and the public.
However, with the exception of activists in the pro-choice movement,
hardly anyone characterized Rudolph and Kopp publicly as “terrorists”;
each was described as a “criminal,” “murderer,” or “extremist.” After
Slepian’s violent death, President Bill Clinton said, “I am outraged by the
murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last night in Amherst, NY.”2
Yet, neither Kopp nor Rudolph was an ordinary murderer. Both were
antiabortion extremists who killed in the name of an elusive “Army of
God” and single-issue politics as pursued by the most violent wing in the
pro-life movement. Just like bin Laden, they acted to publicize, drama-
tize, and further their political and religiously motivated and justified
political and social agenda. Why, then, did public officials, the media,
and Americans in general choose different terms to explain the same types
of deeds and the same types of perpetrators?
At first sight, one might guess that the severity of an act of violence,
the damage inflicted, and especially the number of victims influence the
language that describes the deeds and their perpetrators. After all, even
before the attacks of 9/11, bin Laden and his associates had caused the
deaths of hundreds of innocent victims, whereas Kopp had shot “just”
one person and Rudolph had killed two people while injuring more
than 100 others. But the number of killed and injured victims does not
determine whether an act of political violence is labeled “terrorism” or
“crime.” To this day, for example, the Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981)
is widely perceived as a major terrorist incident, although none of the
forty-nine Americans who were held for 444 days in the U.S. embassy in
Tehran was physically harmed, nor were the three U.S. embassy officials
who were stuck in Iran’s foreign ministry. The Lebanese men who in
1985 hijacked a TWA airliner en route from Athens to Rome, brutally
killed a young U.S. Navy diver, and held other passengers hostage were
also considered “terrorists” in the United States.
One plausible explanation is the likelihood that government officials
and reporters are more inclined to call political violence “terrorism”
when it is committed abroad and “crime” when perpetrated at home.
But this speculation does not solve the definitional puzzle either, as
a review of pertinent domestic cases reveals. Timothy McVeigh, the
man responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the death
of 168 innocent people, was considered a terrorist and still is.3 In the
past, the FBI and news organizations described homegrown arson-
ists from the radical environmental groups Earth Liberation Front
and Animal Liberation Front as “terrorists” and their deeds as “ter-
rorism,” although the perpetrators did not kill or injure people but
 The Perennial Debate  19
were content to damage buildings and research projects. Similarly,
Europeans have been more inclined to characterize political violence as
terrorism when it is committed in their own country or in their neigh-
borhood. In the past, the German government and media, for example,
tended to call politically motivated violence Terrorismus (terrorism)
when it was committed by indigenous groups, such as the Red Army
Faction and its successor groups and cells, or by organizations in other
Western European countries, such as the Basque separatist organiza-
tion Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain. But the same officials and
media organizations characterized the Abu Sayyaf separatists in the dis-
tant Philippines as militante Moslemrebellen (militant Muslim rebels),
Rebellengruppe (a rebel group), or Separatisten (separatists)—even at a
time when the Filipino group held three Germans hostage. Public offi-
cials, the news media, and the public in England called acts of violence
by the Irish Republican Army and by splinter groups thereof terrorism
but avoided the controversial “T”-word when reporting on politically
motivated violence abroad. However, the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, although occurring on another continent,
were condemned as terrorism in these and other European countries in
the days and weeks after 9/11.
All of this begs one conclusion: When public officials, the news media,
and experts in the growing field of terrorism studies (what one observer
has called “terrorology”) make definitional choices, the severity and the
venues of violent deeds are not unequivocal guides.4 Nor is the national-
ity of the victims. While research has shown that the U.S. media have
been more inclined to characterize political violence as terrorism when it
is committed against Americans rather than against other nationals, this
has not been a consistent determinant either.5 The ambiguity about what
constitutes terrorism—and what does not—deserves attention because
the choice of language determines, or at least influences, how politically
motivated violence is perceived inside and outside a targeted society: If
violent acts for political ends are described as criminal activity, the perpe-
trators are readily seen as social misfits and compared to other dangerous
criminals that every society must deal with; if, however, political violence
is labeled “terrorism,” the perpetrators are easily perceived as threats to
the political, social, and/or economic fabric of the societies they terrorize.
In the first case, the problem is simply seen as one of the criminal justice
system; in the second case, it is more likely to be seen in the larger context
of national security. As one leading terrorism scholar observed,

It is clear from surveying the literature of terrorism, as well as the

public debate, that what one calls things matters. There are few
neutral terms in politics, because political language affects the per-
ceptions of protagonists and audiences, and such effect acquires a
greater urgency in the drama of terrorism. Similarly, the meanings of
the terms change to fit a changing context.6
20 Terrorism
Even when there is agreement that the perpetrators of violence are not
ordinary criminals but are politically motivated, the definitional ambigui-
ties remain. The greatest difficulty is rooted in the tendency of different
people to perceive one and the same act as either a despicable or a justifi-
able means to political ends, as either an evil deed carried out by terrorists
or a courageous act committed by warriors or revolutionaries in pursuit
of just causes. The slogan that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s
freedom fighter” captures these contrasting value judgments. There is
no doubt that the terms terrorism and terrorist(s) have negative conno-
tations. As one terrorism expert recognized, “to call an act of political
violence terrorist is not merely to describe it but to judge it,” because
“nobody wants to be called a terrorist; terrorism is what the other side
is up to.”7 There were exceptions along the way. After the Russian revo-
lutionary Vera Zasulich shot and wounded the dictatorial governor of
St. Petersburg Fydor Trepov in 1878 she dropped her gun instead of
using it to avoid her arrest. “I am a terrorist not a murderer,” is how she
explained her actions. However, as James Forest concluded, the Zasulich
case “represents one of relatively few examples in which the term ‘terrorist’
was embraced by the perpetrators of the violence.”8
Before he was sentenced to 240 years in prison, Ramzi Yousef, the
mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, stood in a
New York courtroom and declared defiantly, “Yes, I am a terrorist, and
I’m proud of it.”9 Anarchists in the second half of the nineteenth century
did not reject the “T”-word either. On the contrary, some of them called
themselves terrorists and their violence terrorism. However, a Jewish ter-
rorist group that was active in the 1940s and known as the Stern Gang
is believed to be among the last of such groups to describe themselves as
a terrorist organization.10 Most contemporary perpetrators of political
violence reject the “T”-word. In the mid-1990s, when members of the
Peruvian Tupac Amaru group occupied the Japanese embassy in Lima
and held scores of people hostage, the then Peruvian president Alberto
Fujimori repeatedly called the hostage-holders terrorists and their actions
terrorism, while the captors inside the embassy insisted that they were
commandos of a revolutionary movement and that their violent takeover
was a military occupation. Like the Tupac Amaru leaders, most contem-
porary perpetrators of political violence understand well that the choice
of words and the invocation of metaphors affect how friends and foes
perceive them and their actions.

The Meaning of Terrorism over Time

The usage of the term terrorism has changed a great deal over time. In its
original definition in the eighteenth century, it described violent actions
by those in control of a state or, in other words, political violence “from
above,” as exercised during the Reign of Terror in the wake of the French
 The Perennial Debate  21
Revolution, when terrorism meant the mass guillotining of the aristocracy
and other real or perceived enemies of the state. During the nineteenth
century, the meaning of terrorism expanded to include violence against
those in power from those not in control of a state or government, and
thus stood also for violence “from below,” such as the assassinations of
leaders and other politicians.11 By the end of the century, mostly because
of bombings and assassinations by anarchists, terrorism was predomi-
nantly associated with antistate, antigovernment violence. In the twentieth
century, terrorism even more so came to mean political violence “from
below” both in domestic and in international settings. This latest shift
in the definitional evolvement worked in favor of governments in that
officials were quite successful in rejecting the terrorist label for their gov-
ernment’s or friendly countries’ violent actions.
Even when applied to political violence committed by groups, not all
nonstate actors are treated equally in this respect either; rather, small
groups are more often called terrorists than large groups, and the latter
are more frequently identified as guerrillas or revolutionaries. According
to Richard E. Rubenstein,

Descriptively “terrorism” suggests violent action by individuals or

small groups. Judgmentally, it implies illegitimacy. These meanings
are closely related, since there are very few situations in which assas-
sinations, bombings, kidnappings, or bank robberies seem justified.
By contrast, wars and revolutions are frequently considered not only
justified but holy.12

Similarly, Martha Crenshaw has argued,

Terrorism is not mass or collective violence but rather the direct

activity of small groups, however authentically popular these groups
may be: even if supported by a larger organization or political party,
the number of active militants who engage in terrorism is small.13

Precisely because an act of political violence is more likely to be seen as

illegitimate, as an act of terrorism, when carried out by individuals or
small factions, most groups, regardless of their true size, describe them-
selves as large organizations with significant popular support; they also
invoke metaphors of war, revolution, and liberation. These linguistic tac-
tics are reflected in the names they choose for themselves, as the follow-
ing examples demonstrate: Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, Irish
Republican Army, Red Army Brigade, Red Army Faction, Armed Islamic
Group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia. Members of such organizations call them-
selves and want to be perceived as commandos, fighters, soldiers, war-
riors, guerrillas, or revolutionaries.
22 Terrorism
The case of Richard C. Reid, a self-proclaimed disciple of Osama bin
Laden and member of the Al Qaeda organization, was a case in point.
Sentenced to life for his attempt to blow up an American airliner with
explosives hidden in his shoes, the would-be shoe bomber told Judge
William G. Young of the Federal District Court in Boston, “I am at war
with your country.” But the judge rejected vehemently the assertion that
Reid was a soldier, telling him, “You are not an enemy combatant, you
are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any army, you are a terrorist.”14

The Definitional Potpourri

Government officials are in a more advantageous position than other
political actors to confer the “T”-word on groups or withhold it and
thereby affect public perceptions, because most of the time the mass
media cover officialdom far more frequently than other sources. Indeed,
this is true not simply in authoritarian systems where the government con-
trols the media but also in liberal democracies.15 It has been argued that
during the Cold War era, government officials, terrorism experts, and
the news media in the West, especially in the United States, denounced
violent left-wing groups and movements inside and outside the United
States as terrorists because these organizations were hostile to the eco-
nomic and political arrangement in Western liberal democracies, and
that the same Western establishment supported equally or more violent
right-wing perpetrators of political violence as freedom fighters because
of their anticommunist pedigree.16 But to whatever degree this criticism
was valid, these lines of demarcation faded away once the Cold War was
over. In a 2002 review of domestic terrorism, for example, the FBI stated,

During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the

nature of the terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism
overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic threat
to the country.17

Contrary to the suggestion that “individual governments have been

swift to ratify their own definitions” of terrorism and that the continu-
ing “definitional haze” remains simply a dilemma for the international
community, individual governments have not solved this definitional
problem either; if they managed to streamline their terminology, they did
not apply their own definitions in consistent ways.18 The United States
was, for a long time, a case in point in that the executive departments
and agencies of the federal government did not adopt a standard defini-
tion. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for example,
defined terrorism as violence “for purposes of intimidation, coercion, or
ransom” without including the provision that it must be politically moti-
vated; this definition covered many ordinary crimes.19 It was only in the
 The Perennial Debate  23
aftermath of 9/11, when the press reported and a congressional commit-
tee complained about the lack of a uniform definition within the govern-
ment, that FEMA adopted the general definition of terrorism that was
used by the FBI, namely, that terrorism is the “unlawful use of force or
violence against persons and property to intimidate or coerce a govern-
ment, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of
political or social objectives.”20
As the law enforcement agency that is charged with preventing ter-
rorism and with investigating terrorist incidents once they occur, the FBI
developed the following working definitions that distinguish between
domestic and international terrorism and, not surprisingly, focus heavily
on the unlawful nature of terrorism and the violation of criminal laws by
the perpetrators of political violence:

•• Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence

by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the
United States or its territories, without foreign direction, committed
against persons or property, to intimidate or coerce a government,
the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of
political or social objectives.
•• International terrorism involves violent acts dangerous to human life
that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any
state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the
jurisdiction of the United States or any state. Acts of international
terrorism are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population,
influence the policy of the government, or affect the conduct of a
government. These acts transcend national boundaries in terms of
the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they are
intended to intimidate, or the locale in which perpetrators operate.21

The Department of State, with jurisdictions in the area of international

terrorism but not in the domestic realm, adopted a terminology that
was closest to an official U.S. government definition because it was con-
tained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d), a federal
statute, which requires the State Department to provide Congress with
annual reports on terrorist groups and countries that sponsor terrorism.
According to this statute’s and the Department of State’s definitions,

•• “Terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence

perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents, and is usually intended to influence an audience.
•• “International terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the
territory of more than one country.
•• “Terrorist group” means any group practicing, or that has significant
subgroups that practice, international terrorism.
24 Terrorism
This definition and particularly its first part delineate not only the most
important, but also the most contested, attributes assigned to terrorism.
First, the motives are political. Unlike the term crime, which implies
that perpetrators act for personal gain and satisfaction, material and
otherwise, terrorism is understood as politically motivated. There is no
disagreement on this characteristic regardless of whether the perpetra-
tors are guided by secular or religious beliefs. However, while it is not
difficult to differentiate between criminal and political motivations most
of the time, sometimes the lines are blurred—especially during ongoing
incidents. In the fall of 2002, for example, when a pair of snipers terror-
ized millions of people in Washington, DC and the surrounding areas of
Virginia and Maryland for twenty-one long days, killing ten and seriously
injuring three persons, law enforcement specialists had no clue about the
nature of these attacks, that is, whether they were criminal or terrorist
acts. Even in the face of threats that the random killings would continue
unless a large sum of money was paid, nobody was sure whether the
crime-or-terrorism mystery was completely solved. In the past, politically
motivated groups frequently committed violent crimes, such as attacks
on armored cars, bank robberies, and kidnappings for ransom, in order
to support themselves and their terror operations. As for the Washington
snipers, even after their arrest, it was not clear whether their motives were
purely criminal or were influenced by political grievances as well. After all,
as terrorism expert Jessica Stern pointed out, one of the pair, John Allen
Muhammad, “reportedly told a friend that he endorsed the September 11
attacks and disapproved of U.S. policy toward Muslim states.”22
Second, the targets are civilians or noncombatants. In declared or
undeclared wars and other military conflicts, the warring sides target
members of each other’s armed forces; terrorists intentionally and ran-
domly target civilians and what one might call innocent bystanders.
However, terrorists are also known to single out the citizens of one or
more countries or the members of particular religious, racial, or ethnic
groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, some Palestinian groups
and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah (or Party of God) targeted U.S. citi-
zens and especially Jewish Americans. Terrorists would typically force
the passengers of a hijacked plane to surrender their passports to iden-
tify Americans and, based on their names, single out those who they
believed to be Jews. Domestic terrorists as well have targeted innocent
bystanders randomly but sought out members of particular groups. Over
the July Fourth weekend of 1999, for example, a young adherent of the
White Supremacy hate group World Church of the Creator went on a
killing spree in Illinois and Indiana that left an African American basket-
ball coach and a Korean graduate student dead and six orthodox Jews
injured. There was no doubt Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the perpetrator,
encountered the victims by chance but shot them because he could iden-
tify them as black, Asian, and Jewish.
 The Perennial Debate  25

For Jihadis All Americans and/or All Westerners

Are Combatants

In May 2010, after a series of foiled and a few successful terrorist

incidents inside the United States that involved homegrown or immi-
grated Muslim plotters, the Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki
rejected the distinction between combatants and civilians. In an inter-
view with Al Jazeera, he justified the targeting of civilians along the
lines of Osama bin Laden’s often expressed position. While Awlaki,
who was killed in a U.S. drone strike, spoke in the following excerpts
about American targets, the Islamic State expanded his justification
of “legitimate” targets to both military and civilian infidels throughout
the West.

INTERVIEWER: Do you support such operations [like the foiled

Christmas Day bombing] even though they target what the media
calls “innocent civilians”?
ANWAR AL-AWLAKI:  Yes. With regard to the issue of “civilians,” this term
has become prevalent these days, but I prefer to use the terms
employed by our jurisprudents. They classify people as either
combatants or noncombatants. A combatant is someone who
bears arms—even if this is a woman. Noncombatants are people
who do not take part in the war. The American people in its entirety
takes part in the war, because they elected this administration,
and they finance this war. In the recent elections, and in the previ-
ous ones, the American people had other options, and could have
elected people who did not want war. Nevertheless, these can-
didates got nothing but a handful of votes. We should examine
this issue from the perspective of Islamic law, and this settles the
issue—is it permitted or forbidden? If the heroic mujahid brother
Umar Farouk could have targeted hundreds of soldiers, that would
have been wonderful. But we are talking about the realities of war.

For 50 years, an entire people—the Muslims in Palestine—has been

strangled, with American aid, support, and weapons. Twenty years
of siege and then occupation of Iraq, and now, the occupation of
Afghanistan. After all this, no one should even ask us about target-
ing a bunch of Americans who would have been killed in an airplane.
Our unsettled account with America includes, at the very least, one
(continued)
26 Terrorism

(continued)
million women and children. I’m not even talking about the men. Our
unsettled account with America, in women and children alone, has
exceeded one million. Those who would have been killed in the plane
are a drop in the ocean.23

ISIS: Kill Any Disbeliever

If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the
spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any
other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citi-
zens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic
State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however
it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s
verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they
have the same ruling.
Will you leave the disbeliever to sleep safely at home while the
Muslim women and children shiver with fear of the roars of the cru-
sader airplanes above their heads day and night? How can you enjoy
life and sleep while not aiding your brothers, not casting fear into the
hearts of the cross worshippers, and not responding to their strikes
with multitudes more?
So O muwahhid wherever you may be, hinder those who want to
harm your brothers and state as much as you can. The best thing you
can do is to strive to your best and kill any disbeliever, whether he be
French, American, or from any of their allies.24

It is noteworthy that the most authoritative definition used by the U.S.

government does not characterize the deliberate targets of terrorism as
“civilian” but as “noncombatant” and thus puts civilians, government
officials, and military personnel into the same category of targets and
victims as long as public officials and members of the armed forces are
not engaged in combat. If one embraces the “noncombatant” definition,
the Iranian hostage crisis (1979–1981) was a terrorist incident because
the American captives, although members of the U.S. embassy staff, were
not involved in an armed conflict. The U.S. Marines in the embassy com-
pound were there to protect the embassy. Similarly, the 2001 attack on
the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden during a refueling stop that
resulted in the death of seventeen crew members would qualify as an act
 The Perennial Debate  27
of terrorism, as was a truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks outside
Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 Americans. If one subscribes to the “civil-
ian” definition, these three incidents do not qualify as terrorism. In the
Beirut case, the supporters of the lethal truck bombing and some Muslim
clerics justified the so-called suicide bombing by rejecting the “noncom-
batant” definition; instead, they explicitly called the targets and victims
of the attack members of a hostile military. The U.S. Marines had been
dispatched to Lebanon as peacekeepers, but they did get involved in the
country’s civil strife.25 In the case of the strike against the USS Cole and
other Al Qaeda-related incidents, bin Laden and his associates did not
even bother to justify these terrorist acts as directed against U.S. military
personnel. After all, several years earlier, bin Laden had called on all
Muslims to kill Americans everywhere—civilians and members of the
armed forces.
Third, the perpetrators are nonstate actors. Neither the Department
of State’s nor the FBI’s definitions leave doubt that, in their understand-
ing, political violence is terrorism only when carried out by groups,
subgroups (State Department definition), or individuals (FBI definition)
who intentionally target noncombatants. Unlike some scholars, among
them Crenshaw and Rubenstein, U.S. government agencies and depart-
ments do not distinguish between small and large groups, but the FBI’s
definition does include political violence by individuals without the
requirement that they be members of or directed by a group. Conversely,
Bruce Hoffman seems to exclude politically motivated violence by lone
wolves when he states that “terrorism is conducted by an organization
with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure.”26
Following this definitional element, one would not categorize individu-
als such as the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh or Benjamin
Smith, the White Supremacist mentioned earlier, as terrorists. This book
reflects the view that one individual or several persons can commit ter-
rorist acts if they have political motives and goals—regardless of whether
they are members of a group. McVeigh, for example, was not a formal
member of one of the organizations in the right-wing, antigovernment
movement, but he moved in these circles and was familiar with and
embraced the extremist ideas and grievances common in this milieu.
More importantly, because they do not include governments or states
and their agents as possible perpetrators of terrorism, the United States
and other parties have been accused of applying a double standard. Thus,
Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan explained these definitional
choices with the ideological Cold War biases of Western governments,
Western terrorism experts, and the Western media, accusing them of
looking upon the West as the sole victim of terrorist activities. They
argued in particular that “the Western establishment has defined terror-
ism so as to exclude governments, which allows it to attend closely to
the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Brigades and to play down the
28 Terrorism
more severely intimidating actions of governments that they support.”27
Actually, the long-standing definition of the U.S. Department of Defense
was in this respect more useful to critics, who insisted all along on the
inclusion of states or governments in any explanation of terrorism.
The Defense Department’s terminology was broader than the definitions
embraced by the FBI and the U.S. Department of State, and not explicit
as to the characteristics of the perpetrators of terrorism. For the Defense
Department, terrorism meant

the unlawful use of—or threatened use of—force or violence against

individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or socie-
ties, often to achieve political, ideological, or religious objectives.28

However, the FBI’s and the U.S. Department of State’s more specific ver-
sions that single out nonstate actors as the perpetrators of terrorism, not
the Department of Defense’s less specific definition, have been the pre-
ferred models for other executive agencies in the U.S. administration.
There is no disagreement on one important point: Terrorism is com-
mitted in order to intimidate and terrorize a target audience. Therefore,
the target society is far more important in the terrorist calculus than the
immediate victims, in that terrorists are after a targeted public’s and gov-
ernment’s psychological mindsets in order “to make them act in a way
which the attackers desire.”29 Michael Stohl has explained terrorism as
a three-step process that consists of the “act or threat of violence, the
emotional reaction to such an act or threat, and the social effects result-
ant from the acts and reaction.”30 With this process model in mind, Stohl
concluded that “terrorists are primarily interested in the audience and
not the victims” and that the “act or threat of violence is but the first step
[in the three-part process].”31
Obviously aware of the definitional difficulties, the European
Convention to Combat Terrorism that was adopted in 1977 by the
member states of the European Union did not contain a definition of
terrorism and listed instead a number of crimes that made perpetrators
of such criminal acts liable to be extradited from one European country
to another. Agreement on the definition of terrorism was never achieved
in the larger setting of the United Nations (UN), although there were
many efforts to embrace a single definition as the precondition for a
truly international convention to have all member states agree to con-
demn and fight terrorism. The efforts to agree on one understanding of
terrorism began between World War I and World War II and continued
throughout the rest of the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries.
In 1937, the League of Nations Convention made the first attempt to
embrace an internationally accepted definition of terrorism that would
allow the unconditional condemnation of terrorism. This first effort
identified as terrorism
 The Perennial Debate  29
all criminal acts directed against a state and intended or calculated to
create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group
of persons or the general public.32

Sixty-two years later, in 1999, a resolution of the UN General Assembly

suggested that

criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the

general public, a group of persons, or particular persons for political
purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the consid-
erations of a political, philosophical, racial, ethnic, religious or other
nature that may be invoked to justify them.33

But the member states of the UN have not agreed to this or any other pro-
posal and have adopted instead a dozen conventions and protocols over
the last several decades that prohibit specific acts of terrorism, such as
hijacking, hostage-taking, attacks on diplomats, and nuclear terror. Even
after the events of September 11, 2001, renewed efforts to agree on a def-
inition of terrorism and adopt a comprehensive agreement to combat this
kind of violence failed. While the United States, the European Union, and
many other countries agreed to focus on the victims of terrorism and con-
demn the targeting of civilians, a bloc of nations led by the Organization
of the Islamic Conference insisted on the exclusion of national libera-
tion movements and resistance to foreign occupation.34 In 2002, Islamic
nations adopted an agreement that obliged them to support a definition
of terrorism that made a distinction between terrorism and legitimate
struggle against foreign occupation. The delegates declared specifically,
“We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian
people in their exercise of their inalienable right to establish their inde-
pendent state.”35
Given these difficulties, one prominent terrorism expert, Walter
Laqueur, has suggested that it is even less likely now than it was in the
past to formulate and agree upon one definition, and that therefore new
approaches are needed to solve the increasingly more complex problem.
According to Laqueur,

Today there are more varieties [of political violence] than existed
thirty years ago, and many are so different from those of the past and
from each other that the term terrorism no longer fits some of them.
In the future, new terms will probably be found for the new varieties
of terrorism.36

In the search for a value-free definition of the term terrorism, it has

been suggested that the focus must be on the acts of political violence
and not on the motives and justifications of those who commit them.
30 Terrorism
Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins, for example, has proposed that politi-
cal violence needs to be defined “by the nature of the act, not by the
identity of the perpetrators or the nature of their cause.”37 Many news
organizations have made this choice in that they use the term terror-
ism sparingly or forget about it altogether. Instead, they describe the
methods of violence as bombing, hijacking, kidnapping, and so on, and
the perpetrators as bombers, hijackers, hostage-takers, and the like. The
news media are particularly influential in shaping the public’s percep-
tion of what political violence qualifies as terrorism. A content analy-
sis of leading American newspapers found that stories about political
violence contained the terms hijacker(s), gunman(men), and guerrilla(s)
far more often than terrorist(s) and refrained from characterizing the
acts as terrorism but described them rather as hijackings, killings, bomb-
ings, explosions, attacks, blasts, shootings, seizures, and so on.38 Just
as revealing was the study’s finding that more than 94 percent of these
characterizations were chosen by the media in headlines and journalistic
descriptions, compared to less than 6 percent that were attributed to the
way that government officials, witnesses, and other sources defined acts
of political violence.
Following the events of 9/11, some news organizations came under
attack for avoiding the term terrorism in reporting about the strikes
against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The news agency
Reuters in particular prohibited its reporters and editors from using the
“T”-word even in the context of 9/11 because, as members of the man-
agement explained in memos to the staff and in interviews,

We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom

fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the
word terrorist.
We’re trying to treat everyone on a level playing field, however tragic
it’s been and however awful and cataclysmic for the American people.39

As it turned out, the news agency’s decision was not simply motivated by
the determination to appear even handed but by practical considerations
as well. One of the organization’s news executives explained, “We don’t
want to jeopardize the safety of our staff . . . in Gaza, the West Bank, and
Afghanistan.”40
Other news organizations were accused of applying a double standard
in deciding when to use and not to use the “T”-word. The Star Tribune
in Minneapolis, for example, defended its practice of avoiding the term
terrorism in reports about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and explained
that this was decided “because of the emotional and heated nature of
the dispute.” The newspaper stated furthermore, “In the case of the term
‘terrorist,’ other words—‘gunman,’ ‘separatist,’ and ‘rebel,’ for example—
may be more precise and less likely to be viewed as judgmental. Because
 The Perennial Debate  31
of that we often prefer these more specific words.” However, after 9/11
the Star Tribune did describe Al Qaeda as a terrorist network, explaining
that the term is permitted in some circumstances. In the case of Al Qaeda,
the exception was made because, as the newspaper’s assistant managing
editor explained, the network had been identified by the U.S. government
and other countries as a terrorist organization; furthermore, the argument
was that some of its members had been convicted as terrorists.41
More than two years after 9/11, Washington Post ombudsman Michael
Getler defended the newspaper’s choices with respect to the language of
terrorism in response to readers’ complaints about bias in the Post’s cov-
erage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Getler argued, “Terrorism and
terrorist can be useful words, but they are labels. Like all labels, they do
not convey much hard information. We should rely first on specific facts,
not characterization.”42 He also explained what the Post considered dif-
ferences between different organizations according to their activities and
goals as he rejected attempts to equate the “U.S. battle against Al Qaeda
with the Israeli battle against Hamas.”43 As Getler put it,

Hamas conducts terrorism but also has territorial ambitions, is a nation-

alist movement and conducts some social work. As far as we know, Al
Qaeda exists only as a terrorist network. It is composed of radicals
from several Islamic countries. The Palestinian resistance is indigenous.
Al Qaeda launched a devastating surprise attack on the United States.
Israelis and Palestinians have been at war for a long time. Palestinians
have been resisting a substantial and, to Palestinians, humiliating,
Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since they were seized in
the 1967 war. That resistance has now bred suicide bombers.44

Of the four letters to the editor that the Post published in response to
Getler’s op-ed piece, three were critical and one was supportive of Getler’s
position, a fact that underlined the vast disagreements in this debate. Most
Western news organizations avoided the “T”-word and called nonstate
actors that deliberately commit violence against civilians “militants” or
“militant groups” or the like and characterized their actions according to
the methods used—bombing, rocket attack, kidnapping. But even this did
not satisfy all critics who wanted a distinction between organizations that
besides perpetrating terrorist acts have other, even legitimate, roles and
those exclusively involved in violence. In the midst of the Israeli–Hamas
confrontation of late 2008 and early 2009, one critic wrote:

At present, American papers’ reflexive use of the words “militant

organization,” or some variation thereof, closely mirrors the U.S.
government’s political stance on Hamas, which is that it’s a “terror-
ist organization.” But the phraseology is simply too stark, given the
complexity of forces at play in this decades-old conflict.45
32 Terrorism
Downplaying and Emphasizing the “T”-Word
In an interview with the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, U.S. Secretary
of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that avoiding the term ter-
rorism in her first appearance before Congress did not mean the absence
of a terrorist threat. Rather, she explained,

“although I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-

caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates
that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy
of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”46

The term man-made disaster did not sit well with critics of the administra-
tion who noted that President Barack Obama and other administration
officials, too, avoided the term terrorism and rather spoke of violent
extremism and instead of terrorists about violent extremists. Contrary
to the Bush administration, they also spoke rarely about the “war on
terrorism” or the “global war against terrorism.” Former Vice President
Richard Cheney and other critics pointed to these linguistic changes
to question President Obama’s commitment to fighting terrorism.
Obviously, language matters in the politics of counterterrorism poli-
cies. In early January 2010, when asked by George Stephanopoulos
of ABC News for recommendations to tighten aviation security, U.S.
Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) said up front, “I think one main
thing would be to—just himself [President Obama] to use the word
terrorism more often.”47 Shortly thereafter, in his State of the Union
address, the president said pointedly, “Since the day I took office, we’ve
renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation.” In the
previous year, he had used the “T”-word sparingly but, contrary to his
critics’ claims, not avoided it altogether. However, as time went by,
the White House and others in the Obama administration as well as
European Union agencies preferred to call nonstate political violence
against civilians and noncombatants “violent extremism.” During his
campaign and presidency Donald Trump spoke often and forcefully of
“radical Islamic terrorism” and thus suggested that terrorism and Islam
are closely linked.

What is Violence?
While there is no consensus among scholars on the definition of
terrorism, it is agreed that terrorism involves acts of violence.
When it comes to defining violence, however, we find different
explanations as well.
 The Perennial Debate  33
The English Dictionary (online) defines violence as “behavior
involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone
or something.” Other definitions transcend the notion that violence
is limited to physical force and physical consequences. Philosopher
Robert L. Holmes, an expert on nonviolence, put forth the follow-
ing definition:

Physical violence, which is what we most often have in mind

when we speak about violence, is the use of physical force to
cause harm, death, or destruction, as in rape, murder, or war-
fare. But some forms of mental or psychological harm are so
severe as to warrant being called violence as well. People can
be harmed mentally and emotionally in ways that are as bad as
by physical violence.48

Sociologist Mary R. Jackman defines violence as “actions that inflict,

threaten, or cause injury. Actions may be corporal, written, or verbal.
Injuries may be corporal, psychological, material, or social.”49
Addressing harmful spoken and written words, Jackman concludes,

Verbal and written actions that derogate, defame, or humiliate

an individual or group may inflict substantial psychological,
social, or material injuries without being as conspicuous or fla-
grant as physical violence.50

While the definitions above affirm the old children’s rhyme, “sticks
and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,”
there are indications that words of hate and threat can cause physi-
cal harm besides psychological, social, and material injuries. This is
precisely what the legal scholar Mari Matsuda argues, namely, that
“violence of the word” can inflict physical injury in that “victims
of vicious hate propaganda have experienced physiological symp-
toms and emotional distress ranging from fear in the gut, rapid
pulse rate and difficulty in breathing, nightmares, post-traumatic
stress disorder, hypertension, psychosis, and suicide.”51
Add to this the fact that hate speech can encourage individu-
als and groups to resort to violent actions against the targets of
violent words. Take the example of Dylann Roof who in 2015
shot to death nine African Americans at the end of a Bible study
meeting in a Charleston, S.C., church. In his online “manifesto”
he described how posted words on White Supremacy websites
had awoken his racial awareness and convinced him to move
from mere words of violence to actual deeds. He singled out the
(continued)
34 Terrorism
(continued)
website of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a White Supre­
macy organization, as the first and deepest influence on his hatred
of African Americans.
Violence can also be carried out by acoustical devices. Long
Range Acoustic Devices are utilized by police and military units. In
the United States, these devices have been used for crowd control—
for example, in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 shooting
of Michael Brown, and during protests at the G20 Summit in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2009. Targets of acoustic blasts feel
sharp pain with the potential for long-term hearing impairment. The
military siege of Fallujah in 2004 began by “bombarding the city
with music—supposedly, with Metallica’s ‘Hells’ Bells’ and ‘Shoot
to Thrill’ among other things.”52 It does not matter whether music
or other sound bombs are deployed. Rather, as Suzanne Cusick
notes, “the use of music as a weapon is perceived to be incidental
to the use of sound’s ability to affect a person’s spatial orienta-
tion, sense of balance, and physical coordination.”53 Similarly, “no
touch torture” that was carried out in U.S.-run prison facilities dur-
ing the interrogation of terrorists or suspected terrorists included
the non-stop playing of super-loud music.
Last but not least, there is visual violence with harmful con-
sequences. Research pioneered by George Gerbner links the
prevalence of violence in television news and entertainment to the
heightened fear on the part of heavy TV watchers (more than three
hours a day) of becoming victims of violence themselves.54 Pointing
to what she calls “media violence” and “entertainment violence”
Sissela Bok, too, recognizes a direct relationship between the pre-
ponderance of violent visuals in television and motion pictures and
“emotional disturbances such as persistent nightmares, depression,
irritability, inability to concentrate, and hypervigilance at sounds or
motions that might constitute a threat.”55 Research shows also that
the multitude of violent screen images can affect heavy TV watchers
to respond with heightened aggressiveness or desensitization which
can cause some of them to commit violence or consider violence to
be the normal state of affairs.
On the day of Halloween 2017, Sayfullo Saipoy drove a truck
into pedestrians and cyclists in New York City killing eight persons.
When questioned by investigators he claimed that he was inspired
to carry out the attack after watching ISIS videos on his cellphone.
Indeed, the FBI found ninety videos on one of his phones, among
them images of ISIS fighters running over a prisoner with a tank, of
beheading scenes, and of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader.
 The Perennial Debate  35
Whether displayed on TV, computer, or smart phone screens violent
images seem to have similar effects.
After working for three months as content moderator for
Facebook in Berlin, Burcu Gueltekin Punsmann left his job. As he
explained,

I had to quit as I was particularly disturbed by what I saw as

signs of professional deformation in me: a kind of hyper vigi-
lance (especially about the risks for my family). I was dream-
ing about the job and my own perception of reality shifted in
a most concerning way. The terrible Las Vegas Shooting sud-
denly seemed entirely normal to me.56

In conclusion, then, violence can be corporal, written, verbal,

acoustical, and visual.

State Terror(ism)
By suggesting a focus on terrorism by nonstate actors, this book does
not minimize or excuse the violence perpetrated by governments and
their agents against civilians and noncombatants—more often than not
in covert ways. Acknowledging that “governments and their agents can
practice terrorism” inside their countries or abroad, Crenshaw points
out that such “use is usually carefully concealed in order to avoid public
attribution of responsibility.”57 Moreover, when committed by govern-
ments, violence against civilians and noncombatants can be and has been
in many instances equally as brutal and lethal as the actions of nonstate
actors and, in fact, far more cruel and deadly. But when governments
commit this type of violence, there are a number of appropriate pejorative
terms, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, human rights viola-
tions, genocide, atrocities—and terror. As the linguist Geoffrey Nunberg
has noted, “Unlike ‘terrorism,’ ‘terror’ can be applied to states as well
as to insurgent groups.”58 Bruce Hoffman, too, points to the distinction
between terror to characterize state violence “mostly against domestic
populations” and terrorism to describe violence by “nonstate entities.”59
Post-World War I Germany can serve as an example here. Beginning
in the 1920s, well-organized, violent groups of Adolf Hitler’s follow-
ers attacked political opponents and stirred the political instability that
brought him to power in 1933. Clearly, the terrorist tactic (i.e., politi-
cal violence against civilians by nonstate actors) was successful in this
case, as it was in the coming to power of another fascist ruler, Hitler’s
contemporary Benito Mussolini in Italy. The state of violence during the
Hitler years was primarily directed against Jews, who were the victims
36 Terrorism
of genocide, and also against other “undesirable elements,” such as com-
munists, socialists, and gypsies. During Hitler’s reign of terror, more than
10 million innocent civilians were brutally tortured and killed according
to government policies. This was unspeakable state terror, as were the
imprisonment and killing of many millions of people in the Soviet Union
during Joseph Stalin’s rule. More recently, totalitarian regimes in various
parts of the world oppressed, persecuted, tortured, and killed thousands,
hundreds of thousands, and millions of people within their borders—in
Argentina, Cambodia, Uganda, Iraq, Sudan, and many other places. No
case of nonstate political violence comes even close to the enormity of
these atrocities. To characterize this kind of political violence committed
by the power-holders in states as “terrorism” would actually minimize
the enormity of systematic political violence and mass killings of civilians
by those in control of states.
In his extensive documentation, explanation, and discussion of “death
by government,” R. J. Rummel, too, does not include state terrorism or
government terrorism as definitional concepts, but distinguishes between
genocide (the killing of people because of their ethnic, racial, religious,
and/or linguistic group membership), “politicide” (the killing of persons
because of their “politics or for political purposes”), mass murder or
massacre (the indiscriminate killing of persons), and terror (defined as
“extrajudicial execution, slaying, assassination, abduction, or disappear-
ance forever of targeted individuals”).60 More important, Rummel comes
up with a useful definition of illegitimate state violence (“democide”)
that includes genocide, politicide, mass murder, terror, and, in addition,
what each of these four categories excludes. Thus, the author explains
democide as

the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by gov-

ernment agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant
to government policy or high command (as in the Nazi gassing of
Jews) . . . It is democide if governments promoted or turned a blind
eye to these deaths even though they were murders carried out “unof-
ficially” or by private groups (as by death squads in Guatemala or El
Salvador). And these deaths also may be democide if high government
officials purposely allowed conditions to continue that were causing
mass deaths and issued no public warning (as in the Ethiopian fam-
ines of the 1970s). All extra-judicial executions or summary execu-
tions comprise democide. Even judicial executions may be democide,
as in the Soviet show trials of the late 1930s.61

So, choosing different definitions is a way to mark the distinction between

different perpetrators of deliberate political violence against civilians
and noncombatants—one when governments commit this sort of vio-
lence (democide, terror), and another when groups or individuals are the
 The Perennial Debate  37
perpetrators (terrorism). The decision to use the same word or different
terms in itself does not make value judgments and minimize or maximize
the seriousness and scope of either state or nonstate political violence.
Conceptual differentiation in this particular case offers the opportunity
of dealing separately with terrorism (the topic of this book) and state ter-
ror or democide (not the topic of this book).

The Meaning of Terrorism in this Volume

I agree with Walter Laqueur’s suggestion that new and multiple defi-
nitions are needed to get a better handle on the distinctive features of
different kinds of political violence committed by different types of
actors. For the time being, I prefer the distinction between terror and
terrorism. This, then, is my definition of terrorism in the context of this
volume:

Terrorism is political violence or the threat of violence by groups

or individuals who deliberately target civilians or noncombatants in
order to influence the behavior and actions of targeted publics and
governments.

Is Terrorism Ever Justified?

Some of the leading political theorists of our time have lined up on
sharply opposite sides in arguing against and for the notion of just ter-
rorism. Drawing on his comprehensive work on just and unjust wars
Michael Walzer rejects any suggestions that in certain cases terrorism in
the sense of political violence against civilians can be justified. Instead,
he states categorically, “every act of terrorism is a wrongful act.”62 In
order to strengthen his position, Walzer refutes the four most commonly
made arguments to justify or excuse nonstate actors’ political violence
against civilians: (1) that terrorism is a last resort which is only perpe-
trated when all other options fail; (2) that terrorism is justifiable in case
of national liberation movements fighting against mighty states; (3) that
unlike other options terrorism does work, does achieve the ends of the
perpetrators; (4) that all politics comes down to terrorism.63 Similarly,
Jürgen Habermas stated shortly after the 9/11 attacks,

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts,

regardless of the motives or situation under which they are carried out.
Nothing justifies our “making allowance for” the murder or suffering
of others for one’s own purposes. Each murder is one too many.64

Habermas pointed to the difference between violence as crime and polit-

ical tool and recognized the possibility of terrorists drawing “at least
38 Terrorism
retrospectively, a certain legitimation for their criminal actions, under-
taken to overcome a manifestly unjust situation.” But he seemed to
exclude catastrophic terrorism from the possibility of any such future
legitimation when he said, “Today, I cannot imagine a context that would
some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11
an understandable or comprehensible political act.”65
Other philosophers in Europe and the United States, such as Jacques
Derrida, Ted Honderich, and Noam Chomsky, have rejected defini-
tions and arguments that differentiate between political violence against
civilians by nonstate and state actors and between terrorism and war.
After her long conversation with Jacques Derrida, Giovanna Borradori
revealed, “In Derrida’s mind, it is impossible to draw any distinctions
regarding terrorism—between war and terrorism, state and nonstate
terrorism, terrorism and national liberation movements, national and
international terrorism.”66
Along these lines, Honderich, Chomsky, and other philosophers point
to past and present wrongs by the United States and other Western coun-
tries that killed and otherwise harmed many civilians in many parts of
the world. To rise up in efforts to correct such wrongdoing, they justify
certain types of nonstate political violence.
Honderich in particular considers liberation terrorism justified when
it is the only means to win freedom from domestic or foreign oppressors.
While his major focus is on violence in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict,
he extends his arguments in favor of justified terrorism to other groups
and settings. With respect to the 9/11 attacks, Honderich made the fol-
lowing statement:

The wrong done on September 11 is untouched by the weak idea,

having to do with our wrongful omissions, that two wrongs make
a right or that two wrongs go somewhere towards making a right.
Two wrongs do not make a right because the second victim was the
first perpetrator—or because the second victim invited that second
wrong. The attack of September 11 was wrong, rather, because there
could be no certainty or significant probability, no reasonable hope,
that it would work to secure a justifying end, but only a certainty
that it would destroy lives horribly.67

In other words, had there been a chance that the just ends of 9/11 ter-
rorism were achieved or furthered, the catastrophic strikes would be
justified. Moving terrorism into the realm of “moral legitimacy” is
strongly rejected by Walzer who argues, “Even if American policies in
the Middle East and East Asia have been wrong in many ways, they
don’t excuse the terrorist attack; they don’t even make it morally com-
prehensible. The murder of innocent people is not excusable.”68 But in
 The Perennial Debate  39
an afterthought Walzer asks the question whether terrorism could be
justified in a “supreme emergency,” a concept he discussed earlier with
respect to war and deliberate attacks on civilian populations. “It might
be [justified terrorism], but only if the oppression to which the terrorists
claimed to be responding was genocidal in character,” he answers.69 He
adds that “this kind of threat has not been present in any of the recent
cases of terrorist activity.”70

Terrorism Studies, a Field in Search of Theory and

Methodology
Terrorism and political violence studies have been criticized for their lack
of theory and methodology suited for generalizations and comparative
inquiries. The post-9/11 proliferation of terrorism experts, grants, stud-
ies, and publications “has not been accompanied by scientific quality
and has experienced limited empirical investigation.”71 However, social
movement theory, including its attention to contentious politics, could
and should be utilized and adapted to study and explain what I define as
“terrorism” and Donatella della Porta, a leading scholar in the field, calls
“clandestine political violence”—probably a less controversial term than
the “T”-word.72
Foremost social movement scholars, such as Sidney G. Tarrow, Doug
McAdam, and Charles Tilly, have in fact argued “for an integration of
social movement studies with the analysis of more violent forms of conten-
tion [including terrorism].”73 To be sure, not all terrorist groups amount
to or are part of a larger social movement but at minimum they all are
staging violent acts of contentious politics. Tilly and Tarrow point out that
“contentious politics involves many different forms and combinations of
collective action.”74 While studies of both social movements and conten-
tious politics deal overwhelmingly with peaceful collective actions, they
include increasingly various forms of violence. That is a welcome oppor-
tunity to adapt contentious politics/social movement theory and develop
theoretical frameworks for studying and explaining terrorism. While this
is not the place to write in great detail about contentious politics and social
movement theory, an explanation is needed of those theoretical compo-
nents that seem most helpful in the context of terrorism studies.
For Tarrow, “contentious politics occurs when ordinary people . . . 
join forces in confrontation with elites, authorities, and opponents.”75
Typically, contentious politics are protests against governments and their
policies. For contentious collective actions to grow into social move-
ments, such protests must be frequent and backed by organized support
groups and cultural symbols that arrive from ideology, grievances, and
objectives. Tilly and Wood list the following combination of character-
istics that elevate contentious politics to the level of social movements:
40 Terrorism
•• Sustained, organized public efforts making claims on target authorities;
•• Combinations of political actions or performances, what they call a
repertoire;
•• Public representations of WUNC (worthiness, unity, numbers, and
commitment).76

Political actions here are compared to performances that are drawn

from repertoires and staged in theaters or arenas for the benefit of those
who are watching—in our times via various media of communication.
Interestingly, terrorism scholars, too, have invoked the theater meta-
phor. According to Brian Jenkins, “terrorism is aimed at the people
watching, not the actual victims. Terrorism is theater.”77 And Gabriel
Weimann and Conrad Winn wrote perceptively that “modern terrorism
can be understood in terms of the productions requirements of theatrical
engagements.”78 No wonder, then, that Donatella della Porta suggests
that “some explanation of violence [including clandestine political vio-
lence or terrorism] can be derived from their [social movement scholars’]
research on repertoires of protest.”79 Applied to terrorism, the repertoire
perspective strengthens with the inclusion of the suggested WUNC rep-
resentations since all four types figure prominently in the explanation of
terrorism as communicative act. Social movements, whether nonviolent
or violent, require publicity and most try to stage mass-mediated events
to propagate the worthiness of their motives and strength through unity,
numbers, and commitment to their causes. The terrorist repertoire of
performances and related publicity efforts are discussed in some detail in
Chapters 14 and 15. While these repertoires of performances are central
to the framing and self-framing of social movements, including those of
the terrorist variety, two other perspectives in social movement theory—
political opportunities and mobilizing resources—are utilized to examine
expressions of political contention. In their efforts to bring theoretical
frameworks into terrorism studies, several scholars have suggested bor-
rowing from those social movement foci and linking macro-, mesa-, and
micro-levels. As della Porta explains,

They [macro-, mesa-, and micro-levels] address one of three ques-

tions: In what type of society is political violence most likely to
develop—that is, what environmental conditions foster political vio-
lence? Which groups are most likely to use violent repertoires—that
is, which characteristics of political organizations eventually lead
them to adopt the most extreme forms of political violence? Which
individuals are most likely to resort to political violence?80

To put it differently, there are three distinct levels in terrorism stud-

ies: (1) the larger environmental conditions, whether local, national, or
transnational; (2) the dynamics within groups and movements, including
 The Perennial Debate  41
organizational forms, resources, and ideology; and (3) membership, lead-
ership, gender, roles, and cohesion.
Whenever possible I will pay attention to these levels of inquiry
throughout the book.

Notes
1 Mark Berman, “Was the Charlottesville Car Attack Domestic Terrorism, a
Hate Crime or Both?” Washington Post, August 14, 2017, [Link]
[Link]/search?p=stabbing+attack+New+York+city&fr=yfp-t&fp=1&to
ggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8, accessed January 15, 2018.
2 From “The Public Papers of the President, Administration of William J.
Clinton,” 1998, 2124.
3 For the most authoritative book on McVeigh, see Lou Michel and Dan
Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City
Bombing (New York: Regan Books, 2001).
4 Alex Houen, Terrorism and Modern Literature: From Joseph Conrad to
Ciaran Carson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 9.
5 A. Odasuo Alali and Kenoye Kelvin Eke, eds., Media Coverage of Terrorism:
Methods of Diffusion (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1991), 30.
6 Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1995), 7.
7 Richard E. Rubenstein, Alchemists of Revolution (New York: Basic Books,
1987), 17, 18.
8 James J. F. Forest, “Criminals and Terrorists: An Introduction to the Special
Issue,” Terrorism and Political Violence 24:2 (2012): 173.
9 The words were part of Yousef’s statement before he was sentenced by
Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy of the Federal District Court in Manhattan
on January 8, 1998. See, “Excerpts from Statements in Court,” New York
Times, January 8, 1998, B4.
10 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1998), 28–29.
11 The distinction between terrorism “from above” and “from below” is made
in Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002), ch. 1; and Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1987), ch. 1.
12 Rubenstein, 17.
13 Crenshaw, 4.
14 Shoe bomber Reid and Judge Young were quoted in Pam Belluck, “Threats and
Responses: The Shoe Plot; Unrepentant Shoe Bomber Sentenced to Life,” New
York Times, January 31, 2003, A13; and Thanassis Cambanis, “Sentenced to
Life, Reid Denounces US,” Boston Globe, January 31, 2003, A1.
15 See, for example, W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New
York: Longman, 2001); and Brigitte L. Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The
Centrality of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), especially ch. 5.
16 Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry: The Experts
and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1989).
17 “Statement for the Record of Dale L. Watson Executive Assistant Director
Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Federal Bureau of Investigation on
the Terrorist Threat Confronting the United States before the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence Washington D.C.,” February 6, 2002.
42 Terrorism
18 Houen, 7–8. Houen writes that individual governments have been “swift to
ratify their own definitions” but that the international dimensions of 9/11
kept the definitional problem alive. But disagreements over the definition of
political violence continue to exist with respect to both domestic and interna-
tional terrorism.
19 This definition was mentioned in Oliver Libaw, “Defining Terrorism: Little
Agreement on Where to Draw the Line,” [Link]/sections/world/
dailynews/[Link], October 11, 2001.
20 This new definition of terrorism in general and FEMA’s definitions of domes-
tic and international terrorism were available on FEMA’s website, [Link].
gov/hazards/terrorism/[Link], accessed January 12, 2003.
21 The definitions are contained in many FBI documents and statements; see, for
example, “Statement for the Record of Dale L. Watson.”
22 Jessica Stern, “The Protean Enemy,” Foreign Affairs (July–August 2003): 34.
23 For more extensive excerpts from the interview, see [Link]/report/
en/0/0/0/0/0/0/[Link], accessed May 25, 2010.
24 From ISIS’s online magazine Dabiq, issue 4, page 9.
25 For details on the U.S. military’s involvement in Lebanon, see David C. Martin
and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), chs. 5
and 6.
26 Hoffman, 43.
27 Herman and O’Sullivan, 214.
28 The definition is quoted by Hoffman, 38.
29 C. J. M. Drake, “The Role of Ideology in Terrorists’ Target Selection,”
Terrorism and Political Violence 10:2 (Summer 1998): 53.
30 Michael Stohl, “Characteristics of Contemporary International Terrorism,”
in Charles W. Kegley Jr., ed., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes,
Controls (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 83.
31 Ibid.
32 The definition was quoted by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime on its web-
site, [Link], accessed January 7, 2003.
33 Contained in GA Res. 51/210, “Measures to Eliminate International
Terrorism,” as excerpted by [Link].
34 For more on the failure to reach an agreement at the UN after 9/11, see
Michael Jordan, “Terrorism’s Slippery Definition Eludes UN Diplomats,”
Christian Science Monitor (February 4, 2002): 7.
35 Associated Press, “Muslim Meeting Won’t Define Terror,” New York Times,
April 3, 2002.
36 Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 6.
37 The definition is quoted by Hoffman, 33.
38 Robert G. Picard and Paul D. Adams, “Characterizations of Acts and
Perpetrators of Political Violence in Three Elite U.S. Daily Newspapers,” in
Alali and Eke, 12–21. The content analysis covered pertinent news coverage
from 1980 through 1985.
39 Cited by John O’Sullivan, “Retracting Required,” National Review, September
25, 2001, [Link]/jos/[Link], accessed January
12, 2002; and Norman Solomon, “Media Spin Revolved around the Word
‘Terrorist,’” Media Beat, October 4, 2001, [Link]/media-beat/o11004.
html, accessed January 9, 2003.
40 Cited by O’Sullivan.
41 Lou Gelfand, “Newspaper Careful in Use of Label ‘Terrorist,’” Star Tribune,
February 3, 2002, 27A. See also “‘Terrorism’ Is a Term that Requires
Consistency: Newspaper and Its Critics Both Show a Double Standard on
 The Perennial Debate  43
‘Terror,’” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 8, 2002, [Link]/
press-release/[Link], accessed January 4, 2003.
42 Michael Getler, “The Language of Terrorism,” Washington Post, September
21, 2003, B6.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Katia Bachko, “War of Words,” Columbia Journalism Review (Online),
January 8, 2009. See [Link]/campaign_desk/war_of_the_words.php,
accessed January 11, 2009.
46 “Away from the Politics of Fear,” Der Spiegel, March 16, 2010, [Link].
de/international/world/0,1518,613330,[Link], accessed May 25, 2010.
47 Ben Smith, “King: Use Word ‘Terrorism’ More,” [Link]/blogs/
bensmith/0110/King_Use_word_terrorism_more.html?showall, accessed
May 12, 2010.
48 Robert L. Holmes, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1990), 1–2.
49 Mary R. Jackson, “Violence in Social Life,” Annual Review of Sociology 28
(2002): 405.
50 Ibid., 396.
51 Mari J. Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s
Story,” Michigan Law Review 87:24 (1989): 2320, 2336.
52 Suzanne G. Cusick, “Music as Torture/Music as Weapon,” available at http://
[Link]/trans/articulo/152/music-as-torture-, accessed January
18, 2018.
53 Ibid.
54 George Gerbner et al., “The ‘Mainstreaming’ of America: Violence Profile No.
11, Journal of Communication 30:3 (Summer 1980).
55 Sissela Bok, Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment (Reading, MA:
Perseus Books, 1998), 65.
56 Burco Gueltekin Punsmann, “Three Months in Hell,” Sueddeutsche Zeitung,
January 6, 2018, [Link]
in-hell-84381, accessed March 5, 2018.
57 Crenshaw, 4.
58 Geoffrey Nunberg, “How Much Wallop Can a Simple Word Pack?” New
York Times, July 11, 2004, sec. 4, 7.
59 Hoffman, 25.
60 R. J. Rummel, Death by Government, ch. 2, [Link]/powerkills/
[Link]. Rummel’s website offers a great deal of information about
cases in which governments systematically and intentionally killed large
numbers of people inside and outside their own borders.
61 Ibid.
62 Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2004), 52.
63 Walzer, 53–60.
64 Citation taken from Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror:
Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University
Press of Chicago, 2003), 34.
65 Ibid.
66 Borradori, 153.
67 Ted Honderich, “After the Terror: A Book and Further Thoughts,” Journal of
Ethics 7 (2003): 175.
68 Walzer, 135.
69 Walzer, 54.
70 Ibid.
44 Terrorism
71 Donatella della Porta, Clandestine Political Violence (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 11.
72 As the above note shows, “clandestine political violence” is the title of her
book.
73 Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious
Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), xvii.
74 Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 27.
75 Tarrow, 6.
76 Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood, Social Movements, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm, 2009), 3–4.
77 Brian M. Jenkins, “International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare” (Santa
Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1974), 6.
78 Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn, The Theater of Terror: Mass Media and
International Terrorism (New York: Longman, 1994), 52.
79 Della Porta, 15.
80 Della Porta, 21. In her excellent book Clandestine Political Violence Donatella
della Porta developed her three-pronged model of “mechanisms in the evo-
lution of clandestine political violence” that distinguish between “Onset,”
“Persistence,” and “Exit” phases in the life of terrorist networks and move-
ments. Interestingly, she is able to utilize the same model for her study of
left-wing and right-wing terrorism in Italy and Germany during the 1970s
and 1980s; Basque ethno-nationalist terrorism in Spain during the same time
period; and religious terrorism (Al Qaeda).
3 Terrorism in the Global Context

Terrorism has been used as a weapon of the weak against militarily,

politically, and economically stronger rulers and governments for a long
time and in many parts of the world. The earliest cases of terrorism had
religious and political overtones and date back to biblical times. The
Sicariis, a distinct group, were involved in the Zealots’ struggle against
the Roman occupiers of Palestine and fellow Jews who collaborated with
the Romans. The Sicariis attacked their targets typically on holidays and
in the midst of large crowds with a “sica,” a small sword that was hid-
den beneath their coats until they were close enough to stab their victims.
Although fighting in the name of God, whom they considered their only
legitimate ruler, they had immediate political motives—most of all the
burning desire to remove the secular foreign rulers from power. However,
the terror campaign ended in AD 73, when hundreds of Zealots commit-
ted mass suicide rather than surrender to the victorious Romans.
Far more enduring than the Sicariis were the Assassins (eleventh to
thirteenth centuries), an extremist offshoot of the Ismaili branch of
Shi’ite Islam, who were active in Persia (now Iran) and Syria. Hassan-
i-Sabbah, the founder of this fiercely anti-Sunni sect, was poised to
spread his brand of Ismaili Islam throughout the Middle East and defeat
the Sunni rulers. He convinced his fanatically devoted followers that
actively fighting for their cause would assure them a place in paradise.
Recognizing that their membership was too small to fight their enemies
openly, the Assassins operated clandestinely until the assigned member
or members attacked a prominent leader—typically in front of large
crowds. They assaulted their targets with daggers and made no attempt
to escape but seemed content, even eager, to be caught and killed after
they had accomplished their lethal missions. Thus, in today’s parlance,
the Assassins practiced a form of “suicide terrorism.”
Rumor had it that the Assassins were under the influence of hashish
when they envisioned paradise, when they attacked their targets, and
when they went eagerly to their death. Indeed, because of the myth of
their wide use of hashish, the members of the sect were called hashishin
in Arabic; this name turned into “assassin” in the vocabulary of the
Christian Crusaders and eventually came to mean political murder in
46 Terrorism
many Western languages. The Assassins did not realize their religious
and political goals but were wiped out when the Mongols conquered Iran
and Syria in the middle of the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, as one ter-
rorism expert pointed out, the Assassins “demonstrated a basic principle
of contemporary terrorism: the ability of small groups to wage effective
campaigns of terror against much stronger opponents.”1
The Thugs, who organized in the eleventh century, terrorized India
for hundreds of years before the British destroyed them in the nineteenth
century. Group members targeted travelers and strangled their victims
with a silk tie before robbing them. According to rumors, the Thugs wor-
shiped the goddess Kali and killed so that they could nourish her with
the blood of their victims. But it is not clear whether the Thugs practiced
religious terrorism or were simply bandits out for material gains. One
way or the other, today the term thug characterizes a hoodlum, crook,
thief—in other words, a criminal.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, Christian sects also resorted to vio-
lence. Typically following a charismatic leader or prophet, they claimed
to fight for the purification of the Christian religion and Christian life.
Their targets were Jews and whoever they considered Christians in name
only. Following the Reformation, for example, the Anabaptists, a millen-
nial sect, emerged in Germany. Members of the group considered the city
of Muenster as the true Jerusalem and themselves as God’s chosen instru-
ments in the violent campaign against the anti-Christ—sinful Catholics
and Protestants who stood in the way of the millennium.
No doubt, then, that terrorism originated with religious and pseudor-
eligious sects and that the adherents of the major religions, among them
the Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs, resorted to
political violence in the name of God.

Different Types of Groups

Besides religious terrorism, which will be discussed in Chapter 5, several
other major types of both international and domestic terrorism emerged in
more recent times. The majority of groups that resort to political violence
fit the following categories: nationalist/separatist, left and/or revolutionary,
right and/or reactionary, antiglobalization, and extreme environmental-
ist. As the name suggests, nationalists/separatists strive for statehood or
more autonomy; good examples here are Palestinian organizations, such
as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas, or the Basque
group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). The former demand an independ-
ent Palestinian state, the latter fought for independence from Spain. Left/
revolutionary groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path in Peru wanted to
establish Communist regimes. In Venezuela, the right-wing United Self-
Defense Forces of Venezuela fought to remove the leftist government of
 Terrorism in the Global Context  47
Hugo Chavez working closely with the right-wing Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia. Antiglobalization groups, such as the Mexican Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias del Pueblo, are often also left-leaning. Others fit both the
profile of anarchists and extreme globalization foes. Thus, the self-pro-
claimed anarchists who provoked what came to be known as “The Battle
of Seattle” during the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) summit in 1999,
staged violence to express their opposition to globalization and thereby
energized the antiglobalization movement for years to come. Militant envi-
ronmental groups, such as the international organizations Earth First, Earth
Liberation Front, and Animal Liberation Front, resort to violent means in
North America and in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, in the name
of protecting the natural environment that they say is not conserved by
governments. In the process, they commit violence or ecoterrorism to help a
cause that they have been unable to further in the legitimate political arena.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is another militant eco-organization;
it operates in international waters and, according to its website,

“uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and

take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities
on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately-
balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their sur-
vival for future generations.”2

To that end, Sea Shepherd ships have particularly targeted whaling vessels.
In a story about Paul Watson, the founder and leader of Sea Shepherd,
Raffi Khatchagourian noted, “By Watson’s count, Sea Shepherd has sunk
ten whaling vessels in port. By my count, he and his crew have attempted
to scuttle two vessels and have successfully sunk two others.”3 But whether
Watson exaggerated or not, another well-known international eco-organi-
zation, Greenpeace, which lists “defending our oceans” among its missions,
distanced itself from the Sea Shepherd Society and Watson, a former mem-
ber of Greenpeace. According to Greenpeace’s website, the organization
denied Watson’s request to reveal the location of whalers because

if we helped Sea Shepherd to find the whaling fleet we’d be respon-

sible for anything they did having got that information, and history
shows that they’ve used violence in the past, in the most danger-
ous seas on Earth. For us, non-violence is a non-negotiable, precious
principle. Greenpeace will continue to act to defend the whales, but
will never attack or endanger the whalers.4

The Roots of Modern Terrorism

The origins of modern terrorism “from below”—or political violence
directed against the forces of power in society, namely, political leaders—go
48 Terrorism
back to the second half of the nineteenth century. In the first stage, radical
socialists and anarchists contributed to the theoretical underpinnings of a
philosophy of violence as a means to fight and destroy oppressive leaders
and governments. In 1849, a journal in Switzerland that was edited by
political refugees from Germany published a radical tract under the head-
line “Der Mord” (Murder), in which its author, Karl Heinzen, laid out the
rationale for terrorist action against “reactionaries” and “the mass party
of the barbarians.” Accusing the people in power of “mass murder, organ-
ized murder, or war, as it is called,” Heinzen concluded,

Even if we have to blow up half a continent or spill a sea of blood,

in order to finish off the barbarian party, we should have no scruples
about doing it. The man who would not joyfully give up his own life
for the satisfaction of putting a million barbarians into their coffins
carries no Republican heart within his breast.5

Heinzen advocated murder for political ends, or what soon thereafter

was defined as terrorism, even if that meant death for members of what
he called “the party of freedom.” Heinzen anticipated the development
of weapons that would make political violence “from below” far more
lethal and effective when he wrote, “The greatest benefactor of mankind
will be he who makes it possible for a few men to wipe out thousands.”6
One hundred and fifty years later, Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda
organization embraced the same idea when they searched for weapons of
mass destruction.
In Russia, Sergey Nechaev, Nikolai Morozov, and Pyotr Kropotkin
were among the radical leaders who justified terrorist means in their
writings and prescribed rules of conduct for the true revolutionary to fol-
low. The terms revolutionary and terrorist were used interchangeably.
Although living for most of his political life in Switzerland, Mikhail
Bakunin, who advocated his own brand of anarchism, had devoted follow-
ers in Russia. During this era, the most influential terrorist-revolutionary
organization in Russia was the Narodnaya Volga (The People’s Will)
because it made the step from radical rhetoric to actual terrorist acts,
which included the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881.
The anarchist movement was not limited to Russia but was truly
international and became associated with political violence during the
1880s and 1890s and, to a lesser extent, in the first decade of the twen-
tieth century. During that period, anarchists and social revolutionaries
were responsible for a wave of political assassinations in several coun-
tries, among them Russia, France, Spain, and Italy. The United States
was not immune either because European immigrants, among them Karl
Heinzen and John Most, advocated anarchist ideas and deeds in their
new homeland. The anarchists of this era did not strike randomly but
targeted high-ranking political figures, among them French President
 Terrorism in the Global Context  49
Sadi Carnot, Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Canovas, King Umberto of
Italy, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and U.S. Presidents James Garfield
and William McKinley. Sometimes, anarchists aborted their assassination
plans because they did not want to harm innocent bystanders. Attempts on
the lives of other prominent figures, among them the German Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck and the German Emperor William II, failed. But, as
Laqueur has pointed out, “Inasmuch as the assassins were anarchists—
and quite a few were not—they all acted on their own initiative without
the knowledge and support of the groups to which they belonged.”7
Although left-wing movements occupy a dominant place in the annals
of terrorism for the years between about 1850 and World War I, a vari-
ety of very different groups resorted to political violence during this
period—among them Irish nationalists fighting against the British, and
Armenians struggling against Turkish oppression. But the leading fig-
ures in the anarchist and social reform movements were the ones who
provided the theoretical underpinnings for political violence and thereby
have influenced terrorists of all ideological colors ever since.
Between World War I and World War II, right-wing movements in
particular embraced the “propaganda by the deed” maxim, but it was
especially the emerging fascist camps that used political violence in their
push for power. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made no secret of his
sympathy for violence, and Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propagan-
dist-in-chief, considered terror and brutality in the streets as sure means
for rather obscure groups to become widely known and win the support
of the masses. Extremists at the right and left were very similar in that
they recognized the efficacy of political violence as a tool to undermine
the legitimacy of the political systems they opposed. And although in
some instances terrorist theory preceded terrorist actions, as in the case
of the anarchists, it was the other way around in at least as many cases.
According to Walter Laqueur’s astute observation,

In short, it has been possible since time immemorial to make love and
to cook without the help of textbooks; the same applied to terrorism.
In some cases the decision to adopt a terrorist strategy was taken on
the basis of a detailed political analysis. But usually the mood came
first, and ideological rationalization only after. On occasion this led
to the emergence of a systematic strategy of terrorism and to bitter
debates between proponents and opponents. But terrorism also took
place without precise doctrine and systematic strategy.8

The Post-World War II Wave

Terrorism did not disappear with the outbreak of World War II but flared
up regularly—from the anti-British bombings in the United Kingdom
by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to political violence by both Jews
50 Terrorism
and Arabs in the British mandate of Palestine. For David Rapoport, the
“principal stimulus was a major war aim of the victorious allies in both
world wars: national self-determination. The ambivalence of colonial
powers about their own legitimacy made them ideal targets for a politics
of atrocity.”9 But it was the post-World War II era that experienced the
most powerful outburst of political violence “from below” in many parts
of the world, as people struggled for decolonization and national libera-
tion as well as for revolutionary social change.
Developments like the retreats of the British, French, Dutch, and
Americans from Aden, Cyprus, Palestine, Algeria, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and other places were often preceded and accompanied
by terrorist violence. In Latin America, the revolutionary ferment was
directed against American interference on behalf of the ruling class and
aimed at a new social order that challenged the capitalist model. In Africa
and Asia, European powers were the targets. Frantz Fanon and Regis
Debray provided the theoretical justifications for violent actions for the
sake of national liberation and fundamental social change. Using the case
of Algeria to indict the inhumanity of the Western model in general and
colonialism in particular, Fanon endorsed all-out violence not only as a
means to an end—national liberation—but also as an end in itself that
would free the liberated individuals from their marks of oppression and
empower them. In The Wretched of the Earth he wrote,

At the level of the individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees

the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and
inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.10

He also called for a new, just, and humane social and political model that
was applicable beyond the special cases of Algeria and Africa to the Third
World in general and to the struggle of minorities for self-determination
in the First World as well. As Fanon put it in the conclusion of his treatise,

Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and
our brains in a new direction. Let us create the whole man, whom
Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth.
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up
with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America
became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness, and the inhu-
manity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.
Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third
Europe?11

In Revolution in the Revolution, Debray provided the rationale for the

anti-imperialist, anticapitalist revolutionary uprisings in Latin America in
particular. Unlike Fanon, who recognized the usefulness of terrorist action,
 Terrorism in the Global Context  51
Debray did not subscribe to the efficacy of terrorism but recommended
larger-scale guerrilla warfare.
Fanon (a native of Martinique) and Debray (a Frenchman) were
outsider theorists focusing on Africa and Latin America; the Brazilian
Communist Carlos Marighella was a homegrown Latin American rev-
olutionary whose “Handbook of Urban Guerrilla Warfare” provided
hands-on instructions for violent struggle “from below.” Besides physical
fitness and absolute dedication to the cause, Marighella recommended
technical expertise, especially with respect to arms, such as machine
guns, revolvers, shotguns, mortars, and bazookas. In one passage of his
manual, he gave the following advice:

A knowledge of various types of ammunition and explosives is

another aspect to consider. Among the explosives, dynamite must be
well understood. The use of incendiary bombs, of smoke bombs, and
other types is indispensable knowledge.
To know how to make and repair arms, prepare Molotov cock-
tails, grenades, mines, homemade destructive devices, how to blow
up bridges, tear up and put out of service rails and sleepers, these are
the requisites in the technical preparation of the urban guerrilla that
can never be considered unimportant.12

In the 1960s and 1970s in particular, Fanon, Debray, and Marighella, for
their theoretical contributions, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, for his influ-
ence on and participation in Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, affected
radicals far beyond the Third World. In Western Europe and, albeit to a
lesser extent, in the United States, breakaway groups from the New Left’s
student movements decided to fight the symbols of American imperialism
and the ruling establishments in their respective countries. Whether the
Red Army Faction (RAF), better known as the Baader-Meinhof group, in
Germany; the Red Brigades in Italy; or the Weather Underground in the
United States, members of these groups considered themselves Marxist
urban guerrillas fighting a class war against the existing order and its
capitalist arrangement.
Although providing the theoretical context for their violent deeds in
frequent communications, groups like the RAF insisted that it was time
for terrorist action, not just terrorist doctrine. In “Stadtguerrilla und
Klassenkampf” (“Urban Guerrilla and Class Struggle”), the RAF stated,
“In this stage of history nobody can deny that an armed group, how-
ever small it may be, has a better chance to grow into a people’s army
than a group that limits itself to proclaim revolutionary principles.”13
The authors of the RAF’s “Das Konzept Stadtguerrilla” (“The Concept
of Urban Guerrilla”) acknowledged that the idea of the urban guerrilla
originated in Latin America and that Marighella’s primer on the subject
was used as their model.
52 Terrorism
Although the RAF initially committed violence inside West Germany,
the group became part of a “terrorist international” that was responsible
for major terrorist acts abroad beginning in the mid-1970s. However, it
was not Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, and their German comrades,
but the PLO under Yassir Arafat’s leadership that pioneered interna-
tional cooperation among terrorists by instructing radicals from abroad
in training camps in Jordan. Among these early trainees were Baader and
Meinhof, who, upon their return to Germany, established the RAF. The
German trainees and their Palestinian hosts had parted on a sour note in
the late 1960s, but by the mid-1970s members of the RAF and its offshoots
teamed with their Palestinian colleagues to carry out terrorist attacks.
German leftists, inspired by Baader and Meinhof, and Palestinian
nationalists, motivated by the PLO’s Arafat and Abu Abbas, seemed
strange bedfellows at first sight. But there was a meeting of the minds in
that the Palestinians shared the RAF’s anti-American sentiments because
of the United States’ strong support for Israel.

1968: The Advent of Modern-Day Terrorism

Many students of terrorism consider 1968 as the beginning of modern-
day terrorism because this year marked the start of a period of ever more
spectacular terrorism dramas both internationally and domestically.
According to Jeffrey D. Simon,

The significant breaking point was the launching of a sustained

campaign of airline hijackings and sabotage by Palestinian guer-
rillas that was on a scale of violence and intensity never before
seen by the international community. The Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the command of a Palestinian
physician named George Habash, dramatically publicized its strug-
gle against Israel by hijacking an El Al plane in June 1968 on a
flight from Rome to Tel Aviv and diverting it to Algeria. Then, in
December, they attacked an El Al plane at the Athens airport, kill-
ing one passenger.14

From then on, the scope of the hijacking coups grew rapidly and soon
targeted Americans and U.S. interests abroad. Nothing illustrated this
better than the quadruple hijacking of four New York-bound airplanes
in September 1970 by members of the PFLP. While security guards
aboard the El Al plane overwhelmed this group of hijackers and killed
one of them, other terrorists forced a Trans World Airways plane, a Pan
American World Airways plane, and a Swissair jet to land in a remote
area of Jordan. Hundreds of passengers, most of them Americans, others
Europeans, were held hostage. Some of the hostages were released fairly
soon, but others were detained for about three weeks. Eventually, when
 Terrorism in the Global Context  53
the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Switzerland agreed to release
Palestinian prisoners, all hostages were freed. These terrorist spectaculars
were designed to get the world to pay attention to the Palestinian cause.
Explaining this rationale, one of the Palestinians, Dr. Habash, said, “We
force people to ask what is going on.”15 Pointing to the massive publicity
in the wake of terrorist strikes, another Palestinian terrorist remarked,
“We would throw roses if it would work.”16
What was the cause that motivated these terrorists? Palestinian terror-
ism was and still is rooted in the fate of more than a million Palestinians
who fled or were displaced when the Jewish state of Israel was estab-
lished and by Israel’s territorial gains in the 1967 Six-Day War. The
result of Israel’s victory over the armies of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt was
the lasting occupation of the non-Israeli part of Palestine—the West Bank
and Gaza—and the Syrian Golan Heights. With the hope for a military
victory over Israel crushed, some Palestinians turned to international ter-
rorism in order to force governments and peoples outside the Middle
East to take notice of their plight.
By the time the Palestinian “Black September” group attacked and
brutally killed members of the Israeli Olympic team during the 1972
Olympic Games in Munich, the links between West Germany’s RAF and
its Palestinian counterparts were so close. It was therefore long assumed
that the RAF provided logistical support for the terror attack. But in
2012, a declassified police report about the Munich massacre revealed
that not the RAF but rather a Neo-Nazi cell assisted “Black September”
by providing weapons for the assault.17
In the following years, however, the RAF and Palestinians planned and
carried out numerous joint ventures, such as the terrorist attack during the
1975 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meet-
ing in Vienna; the 1976 hijacking of an El Al plane to Entebbe, Uganda;
and the 1977 hijacking of a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu, Somalia.
Some leftist groups in Europe were more inwardly oriented and less
interested in and dependent on international cooperation. One commander
of the Italian Red Brigades, for example, revealed in the early 1990s,

Put simply and clearly, at the time [when the Red Brigades were still
a factor] our approach excluded any contacts with foreign groups
except contacts for materiel or those related to solidarity among
revolutionary movements. We had one contact with a Palestinian
faction for an arms shipment which we transported to our country
and shared with three other Italian armed groups. Besides this, we
adhered to the Maoist theory of “counting on one’s own strength,”
both for weapons and for money.18

But, as the same Red Brigades commander pointed out, the RAF consid-
ered itself and acted as “the European fifth column of an ‘Anti-imperialist
54 Terrorism
Front’” that reached into the Eastern Bloc and revolutionary movements
in the Third World.19 Not surprisingly, in the 1980s, German terrorists
tried to forge a Euro-terrorist alliance, an attempt that was inspired by
the example of their Palestinian friends. According to Bruce Hoffman,

The profound influence exercised by the Palestinians over the

Germans was perhaps never clearer than in 1985, when the RAF
joined forces with the French left-wing terrorist organization, Direct
Action (in French, Action Directe, thus AD), in hopes of creating a
PLO-like umbrella “anti-imperialist front of Western European guer-
rillas” that would include Italy’s Red Brigades (RB) and the Belgium
Communist Combatant Cells (CCC) as well.20

The ambitious plan did not succeed because many terrorists in various
Western European countries were arrested or forced to flee to safe havens
in the waning years of the Cold War. It has been argued that the RAF and
related organizations could not have survived as long as they did without
Palestinian support.21 But this argument ignores or minimizes the signifi-
cant support that these groups and individuals received from the Eastern
side of the Iron Curtain.
In fact, much of the terrorism that plagued the West during the 1970s
and 1980s related in one respect or another to the Cold War confron-
tation between the two superpowers and their respective spheres of
influence. And the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, too, was fought in this
context. While communist countries were supportive of leftist groups in
Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere, some governments with friendly
ties to Moscow supported religiously motivated groups as well. For
example, the Lebanese Hezbollah, which was created in 1982 and finan-
cially sustained by the Islamic Republic of Iran, was tolerated and at
times backed by Syria, which shared Hezbollah’s anti-Israeli stance.

Groups that Transcend the Average Life Span of Terrorist

Groups
David C. Rapoport has documented four waves of distinct terrorist
movements beginning with the anarchist wave in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, with an average span of forty to forty-five years for each of these
distinct periods. He concluded that this “pattern suggests a human life
cycle pattern, where dreams that inspire fathers lose their attractiveness
for the sons.”22 Many groups had, in fact, far shorter lives than the waves
they were part of. But there have also been some groups that survived the
demise of their particular waves and the average life span of these types
of groups.
A good example is the IRA, whose roots go back to the end of the
eighteenth century. The organization was founded in 1919 to fight for
 Terrorism in the Global Context  55
Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. In 1921, when moder-
ate nationalists agreed to the establishment of an independent Irish state
in the predominantly Catholic south and to continued British control
over six counties in the north, radical nationalists opposed this solution.
They wanted all of Ireland to be independent. The result was a civil war
in which the extreme nationalists were defeated by the newly independ-
ent Irish state. Although the majority of the IRA denounced violence in
the late 1920s, remnants of the group continued to fight for Northern
Ireland’s independence. This was not the end of divisions within the IRA.
In 1969, after paramilitary Protestants brutally interfered with a peaceful
demonstration by Catholics in Northern Ireland, a militant IRA faction
broke away and took the name “Provisional IRA.” In the decades since
then, the Provisional IRA (also simply called the “IRA”) was most instru-
mental and most violent in pushing the nationalist cause in Northern
Ireland. At the same time, terrorism was also the weapon of choice of
Protestant Loyalist groups, such as the Ulster Defence Association and
the Ulster Vanguard Movement. In protest against a peace process that
resulted in the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and in the hope of ending the
violent conflict over the status of Northern Ireland once and for all, some
IRA members formed the Real IRA. In the following years, members
of this group carried out dozens of bombings and other terror attacks
in Northern Ireland, Dublin, London, Birmingham, and elsewhere. In
July 2005, the Provisional IRA declared an end to its armed struggle
and announced that the organization would work within the democratic
political process to achieve its goal. In the following three months, the
group decommissioned its arms under the supervision of an Independent
International Commission on Decommissioning. In May 2007, local gov-
ernment was restored to Northern Ireland when Ian Paisley, the leader
of the Democratic Unionists, and Martin McGuinness, the representative
of Sinn Fein, were sworn in as leader and deputy leader of the Northern
Ireland government in a power-sharing arrangement. And in February
2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Prime Minister Brian
Cowen of Ireland signed the Hillsborough Castle Agreement for handing
over control of the six counties’ police and justice system to Northern
Ireland’s government. Splinter groups, such as the Real IRA and the 32
County Sovereignty Movement, do not accept the peace agreement and
continue to opt for violence to achieve their goals.23
Another example of an enduring terror organization is the Basque
ETA, the separatist movement that was founded in 1959 when the
wave of self-determination swept around the globe. Although Basques
received a great deal of autonomy in the decades following the end
of the Franco regime and the emergence of a democratic system, the
organization continued to demand a separate Basque state. While its
commandos always operated underground, the political party Batasuna
pursued the organization’s separatist goal in the legitimate political
56 Terrorism
process until banned as undemocratic by Spain’s Supreme Court. While
not close to a majority party, Batasuna managed to win around 10 and
15 percent of the Basque vote. More recently, though, a solid majority
of Basques rejects ETA outright. According to a November 2009 sur-
vey carried out by Euskobarometro of the Universidad del Pais Vasco,
63 percent of the Basque public rejected ETA totally while merely
1 percent supported the organization totally with a range of mixed views
in between. In spite of this lack in public support and the decimation of
its leadership during a wave of arrests both in Spain and in neighboring
France—especially in 2009 and 2010—the organization continued its
lethal violence throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Since resorting to terrorism in the late 1960s, ETA attacks killed more
than 800 persons and injured many more. In the past, several cease-fire
agreements between ETA and the Madrid government did not last long
nor did unilateral truce announcements on the part of the group. Thus,
following ETA’s cease-fire message in March 2006, group members
detonated a powerful bomb in a parking garage at the Madrid airport,
killing two persons and causing the collapse of the building. In the sum-
mer of 2009, ETA celebrated its fiftieth birthday by detonating several
bombs on the popular resort island of Mallorca that is visited each sum-
mer by tens of thousands of tourists from abroad. ETA bombs exploded
in restaurants, in bars, and on streets killing two policemen and injuring
dozens of civilians. The obvious target was Spain’s all-important tour-
ism sector at a time of economic hardship.
Traditionally, Spanish ETA members sought and found safe haven
across the border in France in an area that Basque separatists consider
part of their homeland. But after French authorities suspected ETA oper-
atives to have had their hands in the killing of a French policeman in
March 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to do away
with all ETA hideouts in France and hunt down ETA terrorists on French
soil. The killing of the policeman was in reaction to the arrest of ETA’s
military leader Ibon Gogeascoechea in February by French police. By
May 2010, his successor Mikel Kabikoitz Karrera Sarobe was in French
custody as well. The Spanish–French cooperation resulted in a crippling
blow against the resilient organization.
After announcing a unilateral and permanent cease-fire in 2012, ETA
claimed two years later that it had stored part of its weaponry beyond
its membership’s reach. But what was supposed a disarmament process
was too slow for the authorities. In mid-2015, Spanish and French police
raided an ETA weapons depot and seized fire arms and explosive mate-
rial. By 2017, ETA had completely disarmed and abandoned violence
although some longtime ETA hardliners did not accept peace.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, founded in
the 1960s, was one of the best-organized, best-trained, and best-financed
terrorist organizations that controlled part of Colombia’s territory, had
 Terrorism in the Global Context  57
between 10,000 and 20,000 guerrilla fighters capable of challenging
the military, and participated in drug smuggling. Without ever coming
close to a takeover of the government, FARC leaders and foot-soldiers
eventually showed battle fatigue and a willingness to negotiate a peace
agreement. After a 2016 referendum rejected narrowly the proposed
peace treaty, the Colombian Congress approved a revised agreement. By
2017, the FARC ceased to exist as a terrorist guerrilla force and instead
established a political party—the Common Alternative Revolutionary
Force. However, while thousands of FARC fighters disarmed, a number
of factions continued their rebellion against the government and their
drug trafficking activities. In the spring of 2018, the “Oliver Sinisterra
Front,” led by a former FARC commander, killed three Ecuadorian jour-
nalists investigating a story in a border area known for the production of
coca and high crime rates.

The Decline of Left-Wing Terrorism

When the Cold War ended, many observers expected a dramatic decline
in international terrorism. In April 1992, the RAF announced that it was
laying down its arms. In a series of communiqués, the RAF admitted the
failure of its armed struggle up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and of its subse-
quent efforts to refocus its revolutionary activities in the wake of Germany’s
reunification. Even in defeat, the RAF reaffirmed its support for its past
actions and for active liberation movements around the world.24 Except for
some groups and cells in Greece, Spain, and Turkey most of the Marxist
groups that had terrorized Western Europe since the late 1960s vanished.
In Latin America, many terrorist groups along with similar groups
elsewhere disintegrated. Probably the best-known Latin American move-
ment, the Tupamaros, or National Liberation Movement, in Uruguay,
founded in 1962, became the model for urban terrorism or what pro-
ponents called “urban guerrilla warfare” across Latin America and
elsewhere. While they provided the dominant model for Marxist groups,
the Tupamaros also affected the organizational forms and terrorist meth-
ods of right-wing organizations. Aiming at overthrowing the existing
domestic order and establishing a fairer system, the mostly middle and
upper-class members of the Tupamaros established an effective terror
network across their country that fought foreign diplomats as well as
domestic police and military forces. Ultimately, however, the Tupamaros
lost their earlier public support and became the targets of an effective
counteroffensive by Uruguay’s security forces. By the 1980s, even before
the end of the Cold War, the organization, once the poster child for ter-
rorism, “totally abandoned the armed struggle, preferring instead to
re-enter democratic politics.”25
In sum, then, at the end turn of the century Marxist terrorists were no
longer the threat they had been in the preceding decades.
58 Terrorism

New Waves of Right and Left Violent Extremism

in the West
In the post-9/11 years, Europol and police authorities in EU
member states focused primarily on Jihadi extremists who were
responsible for the most lethal terrorist attacks, and secondarily
on right-wing violent extremism. More recently, there was a sig-
nificant increase in violent left-extremist groups, cells, and lone
wolves. While both right and left-wing extremists displayed char-
acteristics tied to the political realities in their particular countries,
they also exhibited similarities with and established actual links
to counterpart movements abroad. Thus, when Poland celebrated
the country’s Independence Day in November 2017, among the
60,000 White Supremacists gathering in Warsaw were individuals
and groups from across Europe. Similarly, when left-wing extrem-
ists turned the German city of Hamburg into a battlefield during
the G-20 summit in the summer of 2017, protesters came from all
over Europe.

Far-Right Violent Extremism

In January 2017 German police arrested a sixty-two-year-old
insurance salesman who subscribed to the violent ideology of the
“Reichsbuerger” movement, a carbon copy of the sovereign citi-
zens movement in the United States (see next chapter). His posts
on a Russian social media platform called for the annihilation of
Jews and Muslims. He and six comrades had plotted attacks on a
Jewish Center, a center for Muslim refugees, and on police officers.
When foiling the plot the police found an arsenal of weapons and
ammunition. The same year, a forty-nine-year-old German man,
a self-described “Reichsbuerger,” shot and killed a police officer.
The influx of refugees, most of them Muslims, in Western
Europe increased the support for right-wing parties and right
extreme hate groups. They all embraced and propagated national
pride and an aggressive defense of nativism. In Western European
countries the extreme right milieu was long populated by anti-
Semitic fanatics, Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. The words
and violent actions of White Supremacists targeted especially
Muslims, for example, in a campaign by the “Patriotic Europeans
Against the Islamization of the West,” a movement that originated
in Germany. The most extreme wings of the European versions
of the alt-right movement operated mostly in autonomous, small
cells following the leaderless resistance principle of America’s
White Supremacy/Neo-Nazi movement.
 Terrorism in the Global Context  59
More often than not, violence was carried out by lone wolves
and did not strive to target large numbers of people. Also, in the
wake of the violence, there was often no claim of responsibility.
As one expert on terrorism and extremism explained, “Many
right-wing attacks might be self-explanatory (e.g., a bomb attack
against a synagogue or a mosque motivated by anti-Semitism or
Islamophobia) and can achieve the result of terrorizing the targeted
victim group even without any communication.”26
As far-right parties in a number of European countries (e.g.,
Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, France, Germany,
Italy) score electoral successes in the second decade of the twenty-
first century and nationalist rhetoric becomes part of the public
discourse, right extremists are becoming more numerous and
more violent.
In Australia, too, right-extremist groups that mirror old and
new movements in the United States and Europe were estab-
lished. Organizations, such as Blood and Honour, Southern Cross
Hammerskins, Women for Aryan Unity, and Australian Sovereign
Citizens, attracted followers; they targeted Asians and more recently
Muslims as well. According to experts, there was “a significant
shift in Australia’s right-wing movement towards a more extreme
far-right ideology and, in some instances, violence.”27

Far-Left Violent Extremism

In July 2017, as world leaders met at the G-20 summit in Hamburg,
Germany, the event itself was overshadowed by tens of thousands
of left-extreme protesters from across Germany and Europe. While
not all of the anticapitalists in the streets resorted to violence,
thousands of masked and black-clothed Antifa (for antifascist
movement) activists and Black Bloc anarchists used Molotov cock-
tails and iron rods to torch cars, smash store windows, and attack
police in the streets as well as police helicopters in the air by signal
flares and laser beams. More than 200 officers were injured and
more than 100 protesters arrested.
Since 2015 Europol reported sharp increases in left-wing vio-
lence. Individual European countries seconded that assessment. By
2016, for example, Germany’s police was aware of 28,500 left-
wing extremists, of whom 8,500 were considered violent. Italy,
Sweden, and Greece, along with Germany, seemed to harbor most
of them.
While there were many different left-extreme individuals,
cells, and groups, the greatest threat of violence came according

(continued)
60 Terrorism
(continued)
to police and intelligence agencies from Antifa extremists and
autonomous militants with mostly local concerns. All of these
groups shared hate and a rejection of capitalism and globalism.
Their targets were most often police and other public officials.
Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, for exam-
ple, was the recipient of a letter bomb in 2017 for which the
left-extremist “Conspiracy of Fire Cell” claimed responsibility.
Antifa and autonomous radicals also targeted right-extremists for
violent clashes.
At the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, many thousands of protest-
ers marched under the banner of the antiglobalization network
ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions
and Aid to Citizens) signaling the transnational character of this
far-left movement. Whether they embraced the anarchist, Antifa, or
ATTAC label, left-extremists were increasingly active in Europe, in
North America (see next chapter), and Australia.

The Rise of Catastrophic Terrorism

Just as 1968 is considered the beginning of modern terrorism, 1995 can
be seen as the advent of catastrophic terrorism. There had been plenty
of warnings in advance. During the 1980s, some experts in the field cau-
tioned that the United States and the world should brace for the most
violent chapter in the history of terrorism. Robert Kupperman and Jeff
Kamen, for example, described eerie scenarios of major acts of terrorism
that would cause mass disruption and mass destruction. But other well-
regarded experts, Walter Laqueur among them, looked upon the terrorist
reality at that time as merely a nuisance for the United States and other
Western democracies. The events of the 1990s, starting with the first
World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing
in 1995, proved the pessimists right. But it was the 1995 nerve gas attack
on subway riders in Tokyo, which killed a dozen and wounded more than
5,000 people, that became the definitive turning point. Addressing the
fact that members of the Aum Shinrikyo sect, who were responsible for
the incident in Japan, had been able to acquire and develop highly toxic
materials, U.S. Senator Sam Nunn identified the sarin gas strike as the
onset of “a new era” in terrorism with the possibility, if not likelihood, of
terrorists deploying weapons of mass destruction and committing cata-
strophic terror.28
Why did terrorism blossom in the post-Cold War era? Four develop-
ments in particular are relevant here:
 Terrorism in the Global Context  61
1 The collapse of communism, the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
and the end of the bipolar world dismantled what one might call
a mechanism of restraint that had been part of the old balance-of-
power arrangement.
2 The dissolution of the Soviet Union into independent republics, the
disappearance of Soviet-style communism as an alternative ideol-
ogy, the changes in what had been the Eastern Bloc, and the new
geopolitical realities that cast the United States in the role of the
only remaining superpower unleashed ethnic, religious, and pseu-
doreligious fervor and led to the emergence and strengthening of
movements and groups that were willing to resort to catastrophic
terrorism for their purposes.
3 The growing opposition to certain aspects of modernity and globali-
zation was at least one factor in the emergence and radicalization of
religious and ethnic groups. These sentiments had found expression in
the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan after the retreat of the Russian
troops. To be sure, other root causes existed as well. In the case of
Iran, it was the oppressive and U.S.-supported regime of the Shah that
the revolution overthrew.
4 The advances in communication technology allowed terrorist organi-
zations to dispatch their operatives to strike in distant places and to
exploit global communication nets and media for intragroup com-
munications and for the dissemination of their propaganda.

While I will address the first three developments here, the fourth point
concerning the drastic changes in the communication and media land-
scape will be covered extensively in Chapters 14 and 15.

Unrestrained Terrorism and Counterterrorism after the Cold War

In the early 1980s, journalist Claire Sterling pointed to state sponsors
of anti-American and anti-Western terrorism involving Soviet states in
Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.29 Details
about the insidious roles of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,
and other states in the Soviet orbit were only revealed after the collapse
of the Soviet Empire. But in a strange way, these relationships between
state supporters and terrorist groups provided also a safety valve against
catastrophic terrorism: The Soviet Union and its client states did not
want unrestrained terrorism that could have risked retaliation and per-
haps a superpower confrontation. Similarly, the United States supported
organizations that fought against socialist regimes with terrorist tactics,
such as the Contras in Nicaragua or the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA).
This bipolar geopolitical order limited also the likelihood of dispro-
portionate counterterrorist strikes by major Western target states, most
62 Terrorism
of all the United States. During the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis,
when dozens of American citizens were held hostage in the U.S. embassy
in Tehran with the blessing of the Iranian authorities, President Jimmy
Carter and his advisors discussed possible punitive military strikes against
Iran, if only to demonstrate American power and determination. But
once the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, even Carter’s hawkish
National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, abandoned his push for
military actions because of fears that these measures “would simply give
additional opportunities to the Soviets in their drive toward the Persian
Gulf and the Indian Ocean.”30 And although Iran was seen in the West as
a far more flagrant sponsor of anti-American terrorism than Libya dur-
ing the 1980s, the Reagan administration chose Libya to demonstrate the
United States’ counterterrorist muscle—certainly in recognition that the
North African country was far less important in Moscow’s geopolitical
design than was Iran. To this end, the Reagan administration launched a
massive diplomatic and public relations campaign that branded Libya as
the “chief culprit” among the sponsors of anti-American terrorism.31 In
April 1986, Washington was able to blame Libya for the terrorist bomb-
ing of a disco in Berlin that was known to Libyan agents as the favorite
hangout for American GIs. The Reagan administration retaliated with
air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi—but only after tipping off the Soviet
government in advance so that it could warn its advisors in Libya.
After the end of the Cold War, no such checks were in place. The
expected “New World Order” became more of a “New World Disorder”
with respect to terrorism. And counterterrorist considerations were no
longer harnessed as they were during the bipolar realities of the Cold
War period. This was clear after the terror attacks of September 11,
2001, when the United States launched extensive military actions against
Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and even more so when Iraq
was invaded by U.S.-led forces. President George W. Bush and his advi-
sors did not have the balance-of-power/spheres-of-interest concerns of
earlier presidents, namely Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

The Disintegration of the Communist Bloc

The dissolution of the communist bloc laid bare the deep-seated animosi-
ties in the territories it had spanned. The breakup of the Soviet Union
into more than a dozen independent countries did not end once and for
all the historic ethnic conflicts within and between these states. But it
was the rapid rise of Islamic militancy and radical teachings in the over-
whelmingly Muslim Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan that destabilized the whole
region. Trained by Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and finan-
cially supported by governments and wealthy individuals in the Middle
East, Islamic radicals used terrorist methods to fight for the spread and
 Terrorism in the Global Context  63
dominance of Islam. As one expert described these developments that
came after seven decades of Soviet rule,

The penetration of radical Islamic ideologies from Afghanistan,

Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey; the financing of mosques and
Islamic schools (madrassahs) by Iran and Saudi Arabia; and charities
that give money to Islamic schools and mosques have contributed to
the de-russification and Islamization of Central Asians.32

Similar developments took place in the Russian Federation itself, where

roughly one in six citizens was not a Russian, and in the ethnically and
religiously diverse Balkans. The Russian–Chechen conflict was and
still is a case in point. In the Chechen struggle for independence, the
weaker party resorted to terrorism against Russians inside and outside
the Chechen territory. For many observers, this was in response to the
brutality with which the Russian military prosecuted the war against
Chechen rebels. By taking over and occupying hospitals and other pub-
lic facilities, the Chechens staged dramatic hostage situations. Chechen
leaders threatened repeatedly that they would target the Moscow subway
system and nuclear power plants in Russia. Shortly before he was assassi-
nated in 1996, Andrei Dudayev, a Chechen separatist leader, threatened
even Western Europe with terrorism because, as he explained, Europeans
supported Russia’s aggression against Chechnya.
With the end of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts broke out in the
Balkans as well, most of all in Yugoslavia. And just as Muslim Chechen
separatists were supported by Muslim fighters from abroad, the Muslim
regions of the Balkans witnessed an influx of Muslim militants with
expertise in terrorism. This was most obvious in Bosnia, where Iranian
Revolutionary Guards and equally militant groups from a host of Arab
countries fought on the side of Bosnian Muslims during the bloody civil
war of the early 1990s. When the Dayton Peace Accord was signed, these
Muslim fighters did not leave the region as required by the agreement.
Instead, terrorism became an additional threat to American and other
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) soldiers trying to keep
peace among the various factions. To be sure, Muslims from abroad
were not the first to promote terrorism at that time. In fact, Serbs were
the first party to actually perpetrate an act of international terrorism
in the Bosnian conflict, when they seized United Nations peacekeep-
ers as hostages in 1995 in order to prevent further NATO strikes. But
the bloody clash between Muslims and Serbs and, as Bosnian Muslims
felt, the West’s indifference to the genocide perpetrated against them
stirred anti-Western and anti-American sentiments far beyond the
Muslim communities in Bosnia. Sefir Halilovich, then commander of
the Bosnian Army, threatened at one point that terrorists would put
“European capitals ablaze” unless the West came to the aid of Bosnian
64 Terrorism
Muslims.33 His anger was shared by fellow Muslims all over Europe as
well as in Asia and Africa.
A large number of the fighters who helped their Muslim brethren in
Bosnia were veterans of the war in Afghanistan during most of the 1980s,
when they had fought side by side with Afghans against the Soviet mili-
tary after the latter invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Financed by oil-rich
Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, the Arab mujahideen had forged
a close relationship with representatives of the U.S. government, who
supported them with sophisticated weapons. One of these Arab fighters
was Osama bin Laden, the offspring of a wealthy Saudi family, who had
found his calling in Afghanistan and in the jihad against the Soviet intrud-
ers. Once the Soviet forces had withdrawn, Washington had achieved
its goal and was no longer interested in Afghanistan and unwilling to
contribute to the reconstruction of the country. Realizing that they had
been Washington’s pawn in the Cold War, the one-time allies—many
mujahideens, Osama bin Laden among them—turned their ire against
the United States.

Modernization, Globalization, and the Proliferation

of Religious Violence
In the fall of 1999, a few hundred self-proclaimed anarchists disrupted a
summit meeting of the WTO in Seattle by detonating M-80 firecrackers
and vandalizing brand-name stores like Starbucks, Nike, and Old Navy.
Subsequent meetings of the WTO, the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and other international organizations were plagued
by more serious antiglobalization violence. American and European
left-leaning environmentalists and opponents of Western-style indus-
trial modernization, postmodern developments, and U.S.-dominated
globalization and consumerism were and are the driving forces in the
antiglobalization movement. But the opposition to these developments
has proven strongest amongst all kinds of religious fundamentalists.
In his book Jihad vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber examines the resent-
ment against the reach of mass production, mass consumption, mass
entertainment, and mass information that transcends national borders.
He characterizes the extreme reactions to these developments as “jihad.”34
But jihad (holy war) does not simply stand here for what fundamentalist
Muslims say and do to counter the McWorld universe and Hollywood-
dominated entertainment. Rather, in this context, jihad is a metaphor
for the extreme reactions of distinct groups that see their traditional reli-
gious, ethnic, political, and economic values under attack. To be sure, the
religious zealots of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda network would qualify
on the jihad side, but so would right-wing and left-wing extremists in the
United States and elsewhere in the West. Mark Juergensmeyer, an expert
on religious violence, comes to similar conclusions when he writes,
 Terrorism in the Global Context  65
Activists such as bin Laden might be regarded as guerrilla antiglo-
balists . . . The era of globalization and postmodernity creates a
context in which authority is undercut and local forces have been
unleashed. I do not mean to imply that only globalization causes
religious violence. But it may be one reason why so many instances of
religious violence in such diverse places around the world are occur-
ring at the present time.35

Furthermore, Juergensmeyer points out that the “perception of an inter-

national conspiracy and an oppressive economic ‘new world order’ has
been explicitly mentioned by Osama bin Laden, the Aum Shinrikyo, and
Christian militia groups [in the United States].”36 But while antiglobaliza-
tion sentiments fueled the hate of all kinds of religious and ethnic groups,
the events of 9/11 and subsequent attacks drew most attention to Muslim
extremists who claimed to strike in the name of God and their religion.
Nobody justified violence in reaction to U.S. dominance in and exploita-
tion of Arab and Muslim countries as well as U.S. support for oppressive
regimes in the Middle East as categorically and frequently as Osama bin
Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda. In his 1996 fatwa, he wrote about the
predicament of Muslims in general and of Saudi Arabia in particular:

From here, today we begin the work, talking and discussing the ways
of correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general,
and the land of the two Holy Places in particular. We wish to study
the means that we could follow to return the situation to its nor-
mal path. And to return to the people their own rights, particularly
after the large damages and the great aggression on the life and the
religion of the people. An injustice that had affected every section
and group of the people, the civilians, military and security men,
government officials and merchants, the young and the old people as
well as school and university students. Hundreds of thousands of the
unemployed graduates, who became the widest sections of society,
were also affected.37

Addressing the situation of Saudi Arabians, he complained,

More than three hundred forty billions of Riyal [are] owed by the
[Saudi] government to the people in addition to the daily accumulated
interest, let alone the foreign debt. People wonder whether we are the
largest oil exporting country?! They even believe that this situation is
a curse put on them by Allah for not objecting to the oppressive and
illegitimate behavior and measures of the ruling regime.38

He blamed the “American crusader forces” for a great deal of the cata-
strophic policies “imposed on the country [Saudi Arabia], especially in
66 Terrorism
the field of [the] oil industry where production is restricted or expanded
and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy
of the country [Saudi Arabia].”39
Years before the terror in New York and Washington, DC, politi-
cal scientist Samuel Huntington predicted that the greatest dangers in
the post-Cold War era would arise from conflicts between nations and
groups of different civilizations, of different cultural backgrounds.40
Several weeks after the events of 9/11, while rejecting the notion that these
attacks signaled such a collision, Huntington was sure that “bin Laden
wants it to be a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.”41 Bin
Laden’s statements validated this conclusion all along. In his 1998 dec-
laration of war against “Jews and Crusaders,” he listed the wrongdoings
of the “Crusader–Zionist alliance” and reminded all Muslims that the
“jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries”
and that “nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy
who is attacking religion and life.” He then called on all Muslims “to kill
the Americans and their allies—civilians and military . . . in any country
in which it is possible to do.” In October 2001, when the U.S. military
commenced strikes against Al Qaeda camps and Taliban strongholds in
Afghanistan, bin Laden declared,

The events have divided the whole world into two sides. The side
of believers and the side of infidels, may God keep you away from
them. Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious.
The winds of faith have come. The winds of change have come
to eradicate oppression from the island of Muhammad, peace be
upon him.42

Since Muslims did not rise in a massive united front to fight the Christian
and Jewish infidels in the holy war that bin Laden had declared, the Al
Qaeda leader and his supporters did not realize their most ambitious
objective. On the contrary, they lost their safe haven, headquarters,
training facilities, and weapon arsenals in Afghanistan. In this respect,
bin Laden and his comrades in arms underestimated, perhaps, the resolve
of the United States and the willingness of other governments to cooper-
ate with Washington. But one must also doubt that the Al Qaeda leader-
ship expected to provoke the existential clash of civilizations simply as
a result of the 9/11 operation and the anticipated military response. It
is far more likely that the plan was to move with each additional terror
attack closer toward a confrontation between “the side of believers” and
“the side of infidels.”
After bin Laden’s death and the further decline of Al Qaeda Central
the Islamic State embraced Al Qaeda’s ideology. Upon declaring himself
the Caliph of the Caliphate Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, also
called Amirul-Mu’minin (Leader of the Faithful), said,
 Terrorism in the Global Context  67
O Ummah of Islam, indeed the world today has been divided into
two camps and two trenches, with no third camp present: The camp
of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy –
the camp of the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the
camp of the Jews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest
of the nations and religions of kufr, all being led by America and
Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews.43

Certainly, the events of 9/11, subsequent major terrorist attacks in the

West, and even more so ISIS-linked strikes in Europe, North America,
and Australia increased the tensions between Muslim minorities and
Christian majorities in many Western countries. Although they had sin-
gled out Muslim immigrants in the past because of their different cul-
tural and religious preferences, the xenophobic right in France, Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere became
far more popular when people feared that Muslims within their bor-
ders would commit violence. In this atmosphere, populist leaders made
Muslims the scapegoats for all kinds of ills in their societies.
As new antiterrorism laws and profiling criteria in Western democra-
cies targeted Muslims and Arabs in particular, the gap between Muslim
minorities and non-Muslim majorities widened. Although far from mov-
ing toward the cataclysmic clash of civilizations that Huntington had
warned of and bin Laden had wished for, there was certainly increased
hostility between “infidels” and “believers” in many Western countries.
David Rapoport has suggested that the current wave of religious ter-
rorism got its most important impulses from the Islamic revolution of
1979 in Iran and, a decade later, from the defeat of the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan. His point does not contradict the influence of antiglo-
balization and clash-of-civilization sentiments on the rise of religious
terrorism—especially of the Muslim variety. The Iranian revolution, too,
was at least partially a reaction to American and Western influence and
support of the regime of the Shah. Moreover, the developments in Iran
and later in Afghanistan “gave evidence that religion now provided more
hope than the prevailing revolutionary ethos did.”44 In both cases, for-
midable terror organizations emerged that had ties to the fundamentalist
Muslim regimes in Iran and Afghanistan: Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.
Founded in 1982 by Lebanese followers of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini,
members of Hezbollah were trained in the Bekaa Valley by Iranian
Revolutionary Guards and otherwise supported by the government
in Tehran. This relationship was an important step forward for Iran,
because, as Adam Shatz concluded, “Hezbollah provided a means” for
Iran of “spread[ing] the Islamic revolution to the Arab world” and “gain-
ing a foothold in Middle East politics.”45 But besides fighting Israel and
the foreign military presence and influence in Lebanon, Hezbollah did not
have a grander anti-Western and antiglobalization design. Hezbollah’s
68 Terrorism
focus was on Lebanon and the Israeli–Palestinian problem—not on a
united Muslim front against the West.
As noted earlier, bin Laden, his associates, and his supporters were not
just opposed to Western-driven and U.S.-dominated globalization; they
also despised the regimes in the region that cooperated with the United
States and the West. Indeed, bin Laden expressed as much contempt for
Saudi Arabia’s rulers as for the U.S. government. When he returned from
Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia in 1990, he was offended by the presence
and influence of Westerners in his homeland. After the Saudi rulers and
other governments in the region supported the U.S.-led military coali-
tion against Iraq in the early 1990s, he was particularly disturbed by the
lasting presence of the U.S. military on the Arabian Peninsula. Bin Laden
turned so vehemently against Saudi Arabia’s government because of this
issue that he lost his citizenship.
After losing his Saudi passport bin Laden found a new base of oper-
ation in Sudan, also an Islamic republic. Here the group established
businesses and plotted violent actions against the United States and the
Saudi rulers. Under pressure from the United States, the Saudis, and other
countries in the region, the Sudanese government asked Al Qaeda to leave
the country. In the spring of 1996, accompanied by family members and
supporters, bin Laden flew to Afghanistan, where he found agreeable
surroundings. According to Simon Reeve,

He had chosen Afghanistan, where he knew he could rely on the

support of his old comrades [with whom he had fought against the
Soviet invaders of Afghanistan in the 1980s]. Many of them had
now reorganized into the fundamentalist Islamic militia known to
the West as the Taliban, which was imposing harsh Sharia law in
the country: forcing men into mosques at gunpoint five times a day,
banning music and alcohol, and preventing women from working.46

In this environment, cut off from what he considered the evils of

Western influence, bin Laden and his associates refined their doctrine
and trained “holy warriors” for the envisioned clash with the infidel
West. To advance this goal, Al Qaeda, like other terrorist organizations,
embraced modernity and globalization by using the latest communica-
tion technologies. The Islamic State or ISIS took this publicity concept
further than any other jihadist and non-jihadist group as will be detailed
in Chapters 14 and 15.
In the past, a neat distinction between international and domestic
terrorism was a useful tool for examining the complexities of the ter-
rorist phenomenon. But this differentiation is less meaningful today—if
only because the news about indigenous terrorism transcends national
borders. Take the Oklahoma City bombing, which at first sight seemed
utterly domestic in nature because Americans, Timothy McVeigh and his
 Terrorism in the Global Context  69
accomplice Terry Nichols, struck in the American heartland against fel-
low Americans. Both men shared the ideas of White Supremacy/Christian
identity hate groups in the United States, which are seemingly an indig-
enous phenomenon. But the leaders of these groups and their followers
embrace international conspiracy theories and cultivate ties to similar
hate organizations abroad. Ingo Hasselbach, the founder of a Neo-Nazi
party in eastern Germany who eventually quit the hate group scene,
revealed the following after the Oklahoma City bombing,

Virtually all of our propaganda and training manuals came from the
right-wing extremist groups in Nebraska and California . . . We also
received illegal materials from our friends in Nebraska . . . like a U.S.
Army manual called Explosives and Demolitions, which has since
been copied and circulated (still with the top-secret stamp across the
title page) to thousands of right-wing extremists all over Europe.47

But although the boundaries between international and domestic ter-

rorism are blurred, different realities exist in different domestic set-
tings as the following chapter about terrorism in the American context
illustrates.

Notes
1 Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience with Terrorism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 27.
2 For the Sea Shepherd’s mission statement, see [Link]/who-we-
are/, accessed June 1, 2010.
3 Raffi Khatchagourian, “Neptune’s Navy: Paul Watson’s Wild Crusade to
Save the Oceans,” New Yorker, November 5, 2007, [Link]/
reporting/2007/11/05/071105fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all,
accessed June 1, 2010.
4 The full Greenpeace statement is available at [Link]/international/
en/about/history/paul-watson/, accessed June 5, 2010.
5 Heinzen’s treatise is reprinted in Walter Laqueur and Yonah Alexander, The
Terrorism Reader: The Essential Source Book on Political Violence Both Past
and Present (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 59.
6 Ibid.
7 Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002), 14.
8 Ibid., 77.
9 David C. Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
Terrorism,” Current History (December 2001): 420.
10 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfeld,
1963), 94.
11 Ibid., 313.
12 From excerpts of Carlos Marighella, “Handbook of Urban Guerrilla Warfare,”
in Laqueur and Alexander, 163.
13 For “Stadtguerrilla und Klassenkampf” and other RAF documents, see www.
[Link].
14 Simon, 97–8.
70 Terrorism
15 Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product
of Rational Choice,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), 18.
16 Donna M. Schlagheck, International Terrorism (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books, 1988), 69.
17 Gunter Latsch und Klaus Wiegrefe, “Files Reveal Neo-Nazis Helped Palestinian
Terrorists,” Der Spiegel, June 18, 2012, [Link]/international/germany/
files-show-neo-nazis-helped-palestinian-terrorists-in-munich-1972-massacre-
[Link], accessed April 12, 2018.
18 Xavier Raufer, “The Red Brigades: Farewell to Arms,” Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism 16:4 (1993): 315–25.
19 Ibid., 323.
20 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1998), 83.
21 Ibid., cites David Schiller, a German-Israeli counterterrorism analyst, who
argued that “without assistance provided by the Palestinians to their German
counterparts the latter could not have survived.”
22 David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11,” 2,
[Link]/ap0801/[Link].
23 Although denied by these groups, there seems some evidence that the 32
County Sovereignty Movement is the political arm of the Real IRA just as
Sinn Fein is the political arm of the IRA.
24 The communiqués of April and June 1992 are reprinted in the appendix of
Dennis A. Pluchinsky, “Germany’s Red Army Faction: An Obituary,” Studies
in Conflict and Terrorism 16:2 (1993): 135–57.
25 Peter Calvert, “Terrorism in Uruguay,” in Martha Crenshaw and John Pimlott,
eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, vol. 2 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
1997), 454.
26 Daniel Koehler, “Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in Europe: Current
Developments and Issues for the Future,” Prism 6:2 (July 2016), http://
[Link]/Publications/PRISM/PRISM-Volume-6-no-2/Article/839011/
right-wing-extremism-and-terrorism-in-europe-current-developments-and-
issues-fo/, accessed February 1, 2018.
27 “Right-Wing Extremism on the rise,” SBS News, June 2, 2017, [Link].
au/news/right-wing-extremism-on-rise, accessed January 30, 2018.
28 Senator Nunn made the remarks during a Senate hearing. See Christopher
Drew, “Japanese Sect Tried to Buy U.S. Arms Technology,” New York Times,
October 31, 1995, 5.
29 Claire Sterling, The Terror Network (New York: Berkeley, 1982).
30 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1983), 489.
31 Ronald H. Hinckley, People, Polls, and Policy Makers: American Public
Opinion and National Security (New York: Lexington Books, 1992).
32 Rohan Gunaratna, “Central Asian Republics,” in Frank Shanty and Raymond
Picquet, eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, 1996–2002 (Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 357–61.
33 Magnus Ranstorp and Gus Xhudo, “A Threat to Europe? Middle East Ties
with the Balkans and Their Impact upon Terrorist Activity throughout the
Region,” Terrorism and Political Violence 6:2 (1994): 210.
34 Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996).
35 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000), xii.
36 Ibid.
 Terrorism in the Global Context  71
37 Unless otherwise indicated, quotes from and references to bin Laden’s com-
munications are from his 1996 “Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War” and
his 1998 “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” The documents are available on
a number of websites, among them [Link].
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
41 “Q&A: A Head-On Collision of Alien Cultures,” New York Times, October
20, 2001, A13.
42 “Text: bin Laden Statement,” www/[Link]/waronterror/story/0,1361,
565069,00html, accessed April 7, 2002.
43 According to the first issue of ISIS’s online magazine Dabiq, [Link]
[Link]/files/09-2014/isis-isil-islamic-state-magazine-Issue-1-the-
[Link], accessed July 22, 2015.
44 Rapoport, 421.
45 Adam Shatz, “In Search of Hezbollah,” New York Review of Books, April 29,
2004, 41.
46 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1999), 186.
47 Ingo Hasselbach, “Extremism: A Global Network,” New York Times, April
26, 1995.
4 Terrorism in the American
Context

On October 27, 2018, forty-six-year-old Robert Bowers entered the Tree

of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and immediately aimed
his assault rifle at parishioners who had gathered for Saturday service.
After killing eleven persons the shooter engaged with police and even-
tually surrendered. While receiving medical treatment he told a SWAT
officer, “All these Jews have to die!” The deadliest attack on a Jewish
community in U.S. history was planned and carried out by a homegrown
terrorist with a history of hateful anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant posts
in White Nationalist social media. Before he entered the synagogue he
posted a message that ended with, “I can’t sit by and watch my people
be slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Obviously, these words
referred to a debate among White Nationalists over the pros and cons
of violent and nonviolent tactics in their “struggle” for White Christian
supremacy. Bowers decided to make a horrific “statement” in favor of
violence at a time when White Nationalism and anti-Semitic attacks were
already on the rise.
The United States has experienced different types of domestic terror-
ism, most of it being of either the right-wing or the left-wing variety. In
addition, there has been a hodgepodge of other kinds of terrorism in
the United States that has not fallen into either of these categories, for
example, political violence by exile groups aiming for regime change in
or national independence for their native countries (e.g., Cuban anti-
Castro militants or Croatian nationalists). This chapter provides an
overview of the various types of terrorist activities inside the United
States in the past and the present involving groups and individuals
who have resorted to violence themselves or who have encouraged
others to commit such acts, if only by dispersing messages of hate.
Because of the rise of political violence in the name of God in the latter
part of the twentieth and the early twenty-first century the following
Chapter 5 is fully devoted to “religious terrorism” with special atten-
tion to the jihadi variety that grew worldwide into the greatest and
most lethal threat.
 Terrorism in the American Context   73
Right-Wing Terrorism
“Right wing” here refers to an ideology that is further right, and far
more extreme, than mainstream conservatism. Although groups that
are commonly lumped into this category have differed in their belief
systems, they share some common characteristics—namely, oppo-
sition to progress and to changes in political, economic, and social
arrangements. The contemporary right wing believes that the U.S.
constitutional system no longer reflects the design of the Founding
Fathers, that the federal government has taken too many rights away
from the states, and that the United Nations (UN) and other inter-
national entities control U.S. politics. Not all of these groups are
racist, as Martin Durham has pointed out, but most oppose equal
religious, ethnic, racial, and gender rights, which in their view upset
the old social, political, economic, and moral order of the white-
male-supremacy era.1 In the first decade of the twenty-first century,
right-wing extremism rose significantly in the United States. According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), at the end of 2009 there
were 932 known right-wing groups that promoted hate in words and
deeds against entire classes of people—over 50 percent more than in
2000.2 Following Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election
of November 4, 2008, the Aryan Nations’ main website displayed a
tombstone with the inscription: “United States of America. Born: July 4,
1776. Died: Nov 4, 2008. Suicide.”
This notice of the demise of the United States on the day the nation
elected the first African American president in its history was followed
by rhetorical attacks on minorities and a call to arms for the coming civil
war as the following excerpts show:

Whitey is sick and tired of being the scapegoat for all the crimes of
racial violence in the United States.
Whitey is buying guns and ammunition at a record pace . . . no-
stop [sic] since the Marxist Communist Obama entered illegally (not
a U.S. confirmed citizen) into the White House, and WHITEY is
awakening to the Jews and their financial rip-off of the U.S. Treasury
(U.S. taxpayers) and the giving of such, to the JEW banks, lending
financial houses, and to the Jews themselves without having to dis-
close where and how such money went where!!
Civil war is already on this nation’s Southwestern border and
pushing up into Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, as well into por-
tions of Texas. The United States will not see CIVIL WAR happen
at once across the country, but instead a gradual increase from
area to area.
Stay focused at all times. Be prepared at all times!
74 Terrorism
The Aryan Nations’ main site was taken down in 2010 but related web-
sites continued to display similar racist and threatening texts and images
throughout President Obama’s two terms—among them those propagan-
dizing the Aryan Nations’ agenda.3 While the number of right-extremist
groups declined to less than 800 by the end of 2014, this development
may have been “somewhat deceiving” since according to one account
“more than half of the decline in hate groups was of Ku Klux Klan chap-
ters, and many of those have apparently gone underground, ending pub-
lic communications, rather than disbanding.”4
By the end of 2017, the number of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups had
declined to a mere 72. But other groups flourished. The number of Neo-
Nazi groups, for example, grew by 22 percent from 99 in 2016 to 121
in 2017.5
These types of groups were in the past and remain today very similar
and fit easily under the larger umbrella of right-extremist movements in
the United States; there are, however, some differences in terms of their
history, longevity, and core beliefs.

The Ku Klux Klan

In the history of indigenous political violence in the United States, the
KKK has the distinction of being the most enduring organization—albeit
with periods of dormancy. Founded in 1865 to resist the consequences
of the Civil War and in particular the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery and thus
slave labor, the KKK targeted black freedmen and whites supportive of
African Americans’ rights. Wearing white robes and masks, members of
the KKK terrorized by beating and lynching their targets under the cover
of night with the goal of upholding White Supremacy in the defeated
South. There is no doubt that the original Klan (as well as its successors
in the twentieth century) was a terrorist organization under the defini-
tion put forth in Chapter 2: Klan groups and individual members were
nonstate actors who committed violence against civilians for political
(and economic) ends. Within a few years, the Klan perpetrated thousands
of violent acts. In reaction, the federal government adopted laws that
made “nightriding” a crime and allowed the president to deploy troops
to end civil disturbances and even suspend habeas corpus for a time. As a
result, President Ulysses S. Grant moved troops into the South, and many
Klansmen were arrested. But by 1872, when the first KKK dissolved vol-
untarily, southern states began legislating measures that assured white
dominance and racial segregation. Even though segregation was achieved
and maintained by official policies in the South, white lynch mobs con-
tinued to kill many blacks.
The second KKK emerged after the release of D. W. Griffith’s motion
picture Birth of a Nation, which glorified the first Klan and the southern
 Terrorism in the American Context   75
power structure and racial discrimination it stood for. At the peak of the
second Klan period in the mid-1920s, the organization had a total mem-
bership of 3–4 million. This forceful revival came about for other reasons
as well: (1) The perennial fear of southern whites that blacks could
finally achieve equality and challenge White Supremacy once again—
sentiments that were fueled by Birth of a Nation; (2) the uneasiness of
northern whites over black migration from the South to the North; and
(3) Protestant objections to immigration because many of the newcomers
were Catholics and Jews—groups that were hated by the Klan as well.
Moreover, newcomers were typically willing to work for lower wages
than the existing workforce and thus threatened the economic status quo
of the latter. All of these factors drove people in all parts of the country
into the arms of the Klan. By casting themselves as the protectors of
patriotism and moral values, the Klan recruited a large number of fun-
damentalist preachers—often by promising that the Klan would boost
attendance in their churches.
In the 1920s, the KKK foreshadowed the organizational structure of
more recent and contemporary terrorist organizations in that it worked
both within the legitimate political process and at the same time had
members who engaged in illegal political violence. As a powerful interest
group, the Klan influenced politics and policies on the local, state, and
federal levels and was especially successful in affecting election outcomes.
A day after the 1924 election, the New York Times reported under the
headline “Victories by Klan Feature Election: Order Elects Senators in
Oklahoma and Colorado, Governors in Kansas, Indiana, Colorado” that
“the candidates endorsed by the masked organization have apparently
scored sweeping victories in Indiana, Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma,
and later returns may add Montana to the list.”6 Moreover, the Klan
had its hand in splitting “the Democratic presidential convention, mainly
because the Catholic Al Smith was a strong contender.”7 During the
1924 campaign, Smith, the governor of New York, attacked the Klan
and President Calvin Coolidge, the Republican candidate, for keeping
mum about the organization. Reporting on one of Smith’s speeches, the
Times wrote,

The Governor vigorously assailed the Ku Klux Klan, not only char-
acterizing it as an unpatriotic and un-American organization, cre-
ated for the dissemination of hate and religious bigotry, but accusing
the Republican Party of using it for political capital and President
Coolidge of countenancing a policy of silence toward it.8

While the KKK made strides in working within the political system, the
organization did nothing to stop the violence committed by its members
in the southern states, where “Klansmen tarred and feathered, tortured,
and lynched blacks suspected of being involved with white women.
76 Terrorism
Prosperous African Americans and immigrants who jeopardized white
economic power found their businesses burned and their possessions
stolen.”9 But as the press reported extensively on the Klan’s terrorism and
states adopted “antimasking” laws, the opposition to the KKK strength-
ened. By the end of the 1920s, the organization was only a shadow of its
peak in 1924–1925 in that its membership declined from a record high
of 3–4 million to about 40,000.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s milestone rulings in favor of desegregation in
the 1950s (especially Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and the activ-
ism of a strong civil rights movement in the early 1960s were met by yet
another revival of the KKK in the 1960s and a wave of political violence
against African Americans and whites who insisted on desegregation, the
free exercise of voting rights by blacks, and the end of all discrimination.
As James Ridgeway observed, the election of John F. Kennedy, the first
Catholic president, “revived the Klan’s old papist hatred, but that soon
gave way to a new sense of desperation and dread as Greyhound buses
filled with white and black kamikaze college students calling themselves
Freedom Riders descended upon the South.”10 The result was a reign of
terror by Klansmen against Freedom Riders and against southern blacks
and Jews. According to one account, “[The Klan] burned and bombed
houses and churches and synagogues. The Klan acted with relative
impunity. Its torchlight ceremonies and cross-burnings, attended by men
camouflaged in robes and hoods, gave it a powerful image.”11 Christopher
Hewitt found that from 1955, when this wave of violence began, to
1971, when it subsided, a total of 588 incidents were reported, with the
peak in a three-year period from 1963 through 1965.12 According to
opinion polls, only a tiny minority of Southerners had a positive view
of the Klan at the time, but the hate organization’s messages and deeds
played nevertheless into white Southerners’ support for segregation and
opposition to change. As Kenneth S. Stern concluded,

By encouraging that shared perception of the white populace, and by

scapegoating groups that seemed to threaten “the way things were,”
the Klan became an alternative social structure that gave many
people a feeling of power.13

Following the brutal murder of civil rights advocates in the South, the
FBI began to crack down on the Klan and eventually reduced this sort
of violence significantly. Infiltrated by FBI agents and informers, the
Klan either abandoned violence or risked swift indictments. In this
situation, Klan leaders split into factions, including one that insisted
on violent tactics and another in favor of a “mediagenic call to non-
violence.”14 But those who presented themselves and their organiza-
tion as nonviolent and legitimate players did not shed the tradition of
hate. Instead, underneath the more benign public image, the hard-core
 Terrorism in the American Context   77
racism of the Klan remained intact. One of the leaders who typified
the change from an openly racist demeanor to a less threatening public
face was David Duke. Before he formed his own KKK organization in
the 1970s, Duke wrote,

The plain truth is our race is losing. We’re losing our schools to Black
savagery, losing our hard-earned pay to Black welfare, losing our
lives to No-Win-Red treason and Black crime, losing our culture to
Jewish and Black degeneracy, and we are losing our most precious
possession, our white racial heritage, to race-mixing.15

While recognizing the value of the soft sell as Grand Wizard of the Klan
and, even more so, as a member of the Louisiana state legislature, Duke’s
message never changed during his years as Klan leader and as founder of
his own hate organizations. In 2003, for example, the website of Duke’s
latest organizational vehicle, the European–American Unity and Rights
Organization (EURO), carried the following message: “Unless European-
Americans organize and act soon, America will become a ‘Third World’
country—that is, European-Americans will become outnumbered and
totally vulnerable to the political control of Blacks and other non-
Whites.”16 While a bit more carefully worded, the message was typical
of those in White Supremacy circles at the end of the twentieth and the
beginning of the twenty-first centuries, as were calls for “affirmative
action” on behalf of the white race and the constant drumbeat against
an alleged Jewish conspiracy for “supremacy” in the United States and
the world.
Although the Klan declined dramatically by the late 1980s and early
1990s, it did not completely disappear. In fact, new, aggressive KKK
groups were founded during this period. For example, according to the
Anti-Defamation League, the Church of the American Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan was formed in 1995 by Jeff Berry of Butler, Indiana, whose
organization followed

the traditional Klan model, with its crudely racist literature, its use of
vile epithets at public rallies and its combative stance. At an October
1998 rally in Jasper, Texas, Berry told the crowd, “We hate Jews. We
hate niggers . . . I’m a Yankee and I have never heard of thank you in
the nigger vocabulary . . . We don’t like you niggers . . . Tell me one
thing your race has accomplished.”17

In 2001, the SPLC identified 110 Klan groups across the country in
its list of hate organizations.18 But the declining trends since the begin-
ning of the decade was reversed in 2008, when Klan groups increased
significantly to 186 from 155 in 2007.19 Like other racist groups, Klan
organizations were poised to mobilize their membership and recruit new
78 Terrorism
members in the wake of President Obama’s election. This is what the
Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan posted on
its website: “America has been lost today and officially died November
4, 2008. To express protest, all members are requested to wear black
Armbands on January 20th and 21st, 2009, and if any of you do pos-
sess yankee flags, please fly them upside down. Fly the confederate flag.”
And there was also the invitation to “join the kkk [sic] today.”20 By the
end of 2017, there were only 72 official Klan chapters. As the SPLC
noted following the earlier decline,

Several Klan groups, notably the Fraternal White Knights of the Ku

Klux Klan and the Knight Riders of the Ku Klux Klan, disappeared
completely. It appeared that most of the groups simply faded as their
leaders and members got older, but it is also very possible that many
simply stopped announcing where their chapters were. A case in
point: Both the Traditionalist American Knights and the Mississippi
White Knights, which in 2013 each listed several klaverns, only listed
their headquarters chapters last year. At least two Klan groups had
earlier announced that they were no longer making their chapter lists
public. As with other groups, exposure of membership in the Klan
has cost at least some members their jobs, families or friends.21

The KKK was and remains only one among several so-called radical right-
wing movements in the United States. Jeffrey Kaplan identified the KKK,
Christian Identity groups, Neo-Nazi organizations, single-issue groups—
what he labeled “reconstructed traditions,” “idiosyncratic sectarians,”
and “the inchoate hope seeking a means of fulfillment (or less elegantly,
the young toughs or knuckle draggers of the movement)”—as major com-
ponents of the radical right wing. In fact, these groupings had, and still
have, far more similarities than differences.22 All of them subscribe to one
or another aspect of the so-called Christian Identity movement, especially
its insistence on the supremacy of the white race. Publicly, most of these
groups do not promote political violence, but by stirring the hate of their
followers and sympathizers against members of other races, religions, and
nationalities, indirectly they have encouraged terrorist acts.

Christian Identity and Neo-Nazi Groups

Christian Identity originated in nineteenth-century Great Britain as
“British Israelism” and over the years developed the most elaborate the-
ory of White Supremacy. At the heart of Christian Identity’s original
gospel is the claim that white Christians are the true Israelites of the Old
Testament and therefore God’s chosen people. When Christian Identity
made its way to the United States in the 1940s, it developed an even
more divisive and hateful pseudoreligious twist. British Identity teachings
 Terrorism in the American Context   79
were clearly anti-Semitic, but American adherents added a distinct racist
element. As James Ridgeway described it, modern American Christian
Identity teaches in particular that

nonwhite races are “pre-Adamic”—that is, part of the creation fin-

ished before God created Adam and Eve. In this wisdom, they say,
God fashioned the subhuman nonwhites and sent them to live out-
side the Garden of Eden before the Fall. When Eve broke God’s origi-
nal commandment, she was implanted with two seeds. From Adam’s
seed sprang Abel and the white race. From the serpent Satan’s seed
came the lazy, wicked Cain. Angered, God cast Adam, Eve, and the
serpent out of the Garden of Eden and decreed eternal racial conflict.
Cain killed Abel, then ran off into the jungle to join the pre-Adamic
nonwhites. It is almost too neatly done: Identity theology provides
both a religious base for racism and anti-Semitism, and an ideologi-
cal rationale for violence against minorities and their white allies.23

For many years, the Church of Jesus Christ/Aryan Nations and its founder
and head, Richard Butler—Pastor Butler to his followers—were the cent-
ers of Christian Identity activity. Every year, adherents of Butler’s gospel
of hate as well as leaders and members of like-minded groups descended
on the Aryan Nations’ compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho, to participate
in survivalist training and indoctrination reinforcement. According to
Kaplan, Butler’s “Church” was also instrumental in the establishment of
the Aryan Brotherhood movement among white prisoners.24 There were
close contacts with members of the KKK, Neo-Nazi groups, and skin-
heads. Writing about the Aryan Nations, the Anti-Defamation League
characterized the hate organization as the “once most infamous Neo-
Nazi group in the United States”—a testament to the shared prejudices
of these groupings.25 As he advanced in age, Butler’s influence declined,
especially after he lost the Idaho compound in 2001 following legal
action by the victims of an assault by Butler’s guards. After his death in
2004, some of his followers tried to revitalize the Aryan Nations, oth-
ers established their own groups, such as the new Church of the Sons
of Yahweh. According to one observer of the radical right, “Factional
infighting . . . increased the risk of violence and even terrorism.”26 In
2009, former Butler associates tried to enlist support for the reestablish-
ment of a Butler-like group in Idaho and promised to revive their idol’s
annual national conventions.27 Although fragmenting further without
Butler and his “Church” as rallying mechanisms, Christian Identity ideas
remained alive and well in many of the most extreme right-wing hate
movements with violent tendencies.
For many years, a number of right-extremists switched from one
organization to another or founded their own group. Take, for example,
Tom Metzger, who was active in the KKK, ordained as a minister in
80 Terrorism
the Christian Identity milieu, and in 1983 founded his own organiza-
tion, White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Even after a jury returned a $12.5
million judgment against him and his son for inciting the murder of an
African immigrant by skinheads in 1990, Metzger continued to preach
hate of nonwhites in ways that were especially tailored to appeal to skin-
heads and prison inmates. Commenting on other racists’ reactions to the
events of 9/11, Metzger wrote in 2002,

“Recently the crazy idea of meeting and marching with non-white

mid easterners [sic] has been promoted by some right-wing racists.
Understanding their gripes is one thing. Tying our cause to theirs is
stupid and dangerous. Moslems are no less an enemy than the Jews.”28

Robert Mathews, who founded The Order in the early 1980s as an off-
shoot of Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations, was also closely aligned with
the Neo-Nazi organization National Alliance and its founder, William
Pierce. Mathews’s group was the most violent of the right-wing variety
in the 1980s. In 1984, members of the group killed Denver talk show
host Alan Berg, who had been very critical of White Supremacists on the
air. Later that year, Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with police in
the state of Washington. Even when it was assumed that The Order was
defunct, the group remained attractive as a right-wing model. In 1998,
law enforcement authorities discovered a plot to bomb the offices of the
Anti-Defamation League by a group that called itself The New Order and
modeled itself after Mathews’s original The Order.
William Pierce, once a physics professor, was a member of the
American Nazi Party before he founded his own organization, the
National Alliance, in 1974, and formulated an ideology as hateful as
that of his idol, Adolf Hitler. But it was especially his novel The Turner
Diaries (published under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald) that
influenced a whole generation of extremists in radical right-wing circles,
from Christian Identity adherents to Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, militia, and
survivalist activists. The book describes a civil war in the United States in
which white Aryans fight what the author and other right-wing extrem-
ists call the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), killing blacks and
Jews indiscriminately. The dramatic highlights are the ruthless destruc-
tion of American cities to pave the way for the dream come true of a
white United States and a white world. Pierce died in 2002, but in spite
of bitter infighting over his succession, the National Alliance continued
its operations. Even before Pierce’s death, Kaplan wrote that the founder
of the National Alliance “will be best remembered” as the author of
“The Turner Diaries and perhaps its successor Hunter.”29 These books
continue to be popular among right-wing extremists. The Turner Diaries
served as a blueprint for Timothy McVeigh as he planned the bombing
of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
 Terrorism in the American Context   81
According to Kaplan’s categories of radical right-wing groupings, the
Church of the Creator, also called World Church of the Creator, fits
what he calls “idiosyncratic sectarians.” Although denying the existence
of God and hostile to literally all religions, Creator had all the appear-
ances of a religious sect. The teachings of this group resembled the hateful
White Supremacy ideas of the Christian Identity movement. Led by a
young lawyer, Matthew Hale, who called himself Reverend and Pontifax
Maximus, the group utilized the Internet as a propaganda organ and
vehicle for recruitment.
Although the group did not openly call for violence against other
races, some of its members became terrorists. Thus, over the July Fourth
weekend in 1999, twenty-one-year-old Benjamin Nathaniel Smith went
on a killing spree, murdering two men and injuring nine others. As vic-
tims he sought out a group of Orthodox Jews, an African American,
and an Asian graduate student. As it turned out, Smith had been indoc-
trinated in the World Church of the Creator. Asked whether he felt
sorry for the victims of Smith’s shooting spree, the group’s leader, Hale,
answered that he did not and added, “We can have compassion for ani-
mals, but animals aren’t a threat to us. The blacks and the non-whites are
taking this country right from under us. We are becoming a niggerfied,
Jewified, Mongolfied country, and it’s disgusting. We have to stop it.”30
In these four short sentences, Hale, who has a law degree but was denied
admittance to the Illinois bar because of his racist views, summarized the
essence of his and other White Supremacists’ pseudoreligious agenda.
Smith expressed the same prejudices before he acted on his hateful senti-
ments. During an interview with a PBS station in Indiana, Smith said,
“The Jews and the blacks and all the mud races are trying to destroy our
people, and that is why we hate them.”31 Hale was convicted of trying to
solicit the murder of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. The Chicago judge
had ordered Hale’s World Church of the Creator to change its name
because of a trademark violation. Hale’s bodyguard, who was supposed
to kill Judge Lefkow, turned out to be an undercover FBI informer. In
April 2005, Hale was sentenced to forty years in prison.

Right-Extremists Glorify Most Notorious Terrorists

On June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old Dylann Storm Roof
killed nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopalian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The young
white man had entered the church, was welcomed by parishion-
ers, and sat quietly next to his eventual victims during their regular
Bible study. Once the meeting concluded, Roof got up, drew his
(continued)
82 Terrorism
(continued)
revolver, and shot his victims cold-blooded one by one. According
to a survivor, he said, “You rape our women and you’re taking
over our country. And you have to go.” The manifesto left behind
by Roof revealed that he was guided by racial hate as expressed
by White Supremacy organizations and Neo-Nazi groups on social
media and on websites. Police investigators found furthermore that
the killer had been in contact with other White Supremacists online
before he undertook his terrorist attack.
Two years later, in August 2017, well-armed Neo-Nazis, White
Supremacists, and militia groups assembled in Charlottesville,
Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally conceived by leaders in search
of a joint White Supremacy/Neo-Nazi movement that they promoted
as alternative right or “Alt-Right.” During a shouting match between
rally participants and counter-demonstrators one White Supremacist
screamed in the direction of African Americans, “Dylann Roof was
a hero . . . Go back to Africa!”
Similarly, more than two decades after Timothy McVeigh carried
out the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing that killed 168 children and
adults, the perpetrator of the most lethal act of terrorism before 9/11
became a hero in the right-extremist milieu. One well-known con-
tributor to the vicious Neo-Nazi website “Daily Stormer” suggested
in 2017 crowdfunding for the purpose of building a monument for
McVeigh.32 This sort of admiration for the Oklahoma City bomber
inspired several of McVeigh fans to commit violence themselves.
Thus, in May 2017, Jeremy Christian slashed the throats and killed
two men because they tried to protect two Muslim women from
Christian’s harassment on a commuter train in Oregon. “May
all the Gods bless Timothy McVeigh—a true patriot,” Christian
wrote in a Facebook post before the attack.33 Plots by several other
McVeigh fans were foiled.

The Patriot and Militia Movement

The Patriot Movement emerged after the end of the Cold War as another
version of perennial right-wing conspiracy theories made its rounds
through reactionary circles. The prospect of a “new world order” that
President George W. Bush and others lauded as the beginning of a peace-
ful era of international cooperation was seen by “true patriots” as proof
of Americans losing control of their own affairs. Newly formed para-
military groups were motivated by and spread conspiracy theories that
reported the sighting of UN or Russian tanks and helicopters and of UN
 Terrorism in the American Context   83
storm troopers or American GIs under UN command. In response, citizen
militias prepared themselves to defend the U.S. Constitution against what
they perceived to be no longer a sovereign federal government. The move-
ment took off in response to the apparent liberal policies of President Bill
Clinton that allegedly threatened the Second Amendment’s right to bear
arms guarantee and other civil liberties. Violent clashes of federal agents
with a White Supremacist family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and with the
Branch Davidian sect at Waco, Texas, strengthened the movement fur-
ther. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the movement gained
national attention because the perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, had
moved in the militia/patriot milieu as he conceived of and planned the
catastrophic bombing. But after gaining a great deal of publicity in the
wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the movement weakened some-
what in the late 1990s and during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The election of Barack Obama, a Democrat and the first African
American president in U.S. history, triggered a revival of patriot and mili-
tia groups as well as other types of right-extremists—all on the same page
in their insistence on the original content and intent of the Constitution
and their right and obligation to protect the constitutional rights of their
communities from the evils of the federal government and those of “infe-
rior” race, ethnicity, and non-Christian religious beliefs. Add to this a
strong discontent and anger over the impact of a major economic crisis,
the changing demographics of the nation, and a perceived do-nothing
attitude of the ruling political elite. A gathering of extreme right-wing
representatives on Jekyll Island in Georgia a few months after Obama’s
inauguration “warned of ‘increasing national instability,’ worried about a
coming ‘New World Order,’ denounced secret schemes to merge Canada,
Mexico and the United States, and furiously attacked the new president’s
‘socialized’ policies and failure to end illegal immigration.”34 According
to one observer of the extreme-right scene, “this remarkable gathering
appears to have played a key role in launching the current resurgence
of militias and the larger antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement.”35 Other
conspiracy theories claimed that the federal government had established
an elaborate surveillance network to spy on citizens and a multitude of
concentration camps inside U.S. borders for the coming imprisonment
of dissidents—especially leading members within the Patriot Movement.
When affected by such conspiracy theories, some persons resorted to
violence. A 2009 intelligence assessment of the Department of Homeland
Security mentioned the killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, in April of that year. The gunman’s actions were reportedly
guided by his racist ideology and his belief in antigovernment conspiracy
theories about alleged gun confiscation, citizen detention camps, and a
Jewish-controlled “one world government.”36
The extreme-right’s list of “un-American” threats to individual free-
dom has always targeted the federal government and its agents, Jews and
84 Terrorism
Jewish organizations, racial minorities, immigrants, abortion providers,
and gays and lesbians.
Traditionally, the news media describe violence by right-wing extrem-
ists as hate crimes rather than terrorism but it would be more precise
to use the “T”-word in these cases since right-extremists have clearly
defined political grievances that they consider as motives and justifica-
tion for violent deeds. For example, antiabortion fanatics attacked and
frequently killed and maimed abortion providers because they opposed
legalized abortion and failed in their efforts to have the Roe v. Wade
ruling overturned; anti-immigration extremists targeted immigrants
because they believe that the government does not secure U.S. borders
and fails to enact effective (anti) immigration reforms; and antitax mili-
tants struck against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) because they
oppose government-imposed taxes.
Apropos antitax violence or, yes, antitax terrorism, in the last twenty
years, there have been at least four cases in which antigovernment extrem-
ists of the right-wing variety plotted violent attacks against the IRS and
its agents. In one case, five men set fire to an IRS office in Colorado
Springs. The incident on May 3, 1997, caused $2.5 million in damages
and injured one firefighter. The most spectacular attack occurred on
February 18, 2010, when Joseph Andrew Stack crashed his Piper Dakota
into the IRS office building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS
employee. In a so-called manifesto that he posted on his website, the
perpetrator described his long-running disputes with the IRS as motive
for his suicide mission. He ended his note with the sentences: “The com-
munist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to
his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to
each according to his greed.” This was reason enough for some conserva-
tive voices to label Stack a leftist terrorist. While nobody knows for sure
what Stack’s ideological preferences were, his rage against the IRS and
government in general was very much in tune with right-extreme antitax
and antigovernment extremists—although not incompatible with left-
extreme anarchists either.
It is striking that Americans, at least since 9/11, have been preoccu-
pied with terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda and like-minded groups
or individuals and far less aware of political violence perpetrated by
members of the right-extremist movement or those influenced by their
widely publicized ideology of hate. From 2008 through 2017 domestic
extremists were responsible for 384 killings, of which 274 or 71 per-
cent were carried out by right-extremists of one kind or the other—of
late characterized as members of the Alt-Right movement. In some years
right-extremists and in other years jihadis caused the largest number of
fatalities. Thus, in 2016 jihadists were responsible for 69 percent of all
terrorism victims; in 2017, a range of Alt-Right extremists caused 59 per-
cent of all fatalities. Whereas terrorists inspired by ISIS, Al Qaeda, and
 Terrorism in the American Context   85
like-minded groups tend to stage a few spectacular attacks with a large
number of victims, such as the Orlando nightclub and the San Bernardino
mass shootings, right-extremists tend to carry out more attacks, typically
causing a smaller number of fatalities.37
Black Nationalists were responsible for 11 percent of the deaths
caused by domestic terrorists in 2017 and 15 percent in 2016. Among
the most deadly attacks were the 2016 killings of eight police offic-
ers in Dallas, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.38 The twenty-first
century witnessed a proliferation of Black Nationalism. Between 2000
and 2016 the number of Black Nationalist groups increased from 48 to
193. The most dramatic expansion occurred on the heels of several inci-
dents in which police officers shot and killed young African American
males. As the SPLC concluded, “Although not necessarily violent them-
selves, groups such as the Nation of Islam (NOI), New Black Panther
Party (NBPP), New Black Panther Nation (NBPN), and the Five-Percent
Nation attract violent individuals whom they indoctrinate and push
toward extremism.”39

The Sovereign Citizens Movement

In our time, those who identify with the sovereign citizens movement
and in fact consider themselves as sovereign citizens constitute the most
extremist antigovernment faction in the United States. Adherents reside
typically in the South and Middle West, but they do not consider them-
selves citizens of the United States of America but rather “sovereign”
from any authority of the U.S. government. As a result, they refuse, for
example, to pay taxes, get licenses issued by motor vehicle offices, answer
to law enforcement and court orders or inquiries, or apply for social
security cards.
According to the FBI, self-declared “sovereign citizens,” whether
groups, cells, or lone wolves, have perpetrated all kinds of illegal actions,
among them:

•• Murder and physical assault;

•• Threats against judges, law enforcement professionals, and govern-
ment personnel;
•• Impersonation of police officers and diplomats;
•• Use of fake currency, passports, license plates, and driver’s licenses;
•• Engineering of various white-collar scams, including mortgage fraud
and so-called “redemption” schemes.40

The sovereign citizens movement originated in the 1970s and 1980s

in the Middle West of the country embracing the antigovernment pre-
cepts of Posse Comitatus fanatics. Originally racist and anti-Semitic,
the loosely connected local sovereign citizens of today include African
86 Terrorism
Americans who seem unfamiliar with the White Supremacy credo of the
original sovereigns.
In June 2015, the Police Chief magazine, the official publication of
the International Association of Chiefs of Police, published an article on
the growing sovereign citizens movement noting in a side bar that most
self-proclaimed citizens are peaceful. The lead paragraph described the
following incident that ended indeed peacefully,

In August 2012, a police officer in Las Vegas stopped a truck for paper
license plates that read simply, “Department of Transportation.”
During the contact, the woman driving stated repeatedly, “I am not
under contract with you” and would not provide a driver’s license,
vehicle registration, or proof of insurance. As the officer politely
pressed for the documentation required for her to drive legally in
Nevada, the woman called someone on the phone and requested spe-
cific directions from a male voice at the other end. Through records
checks, the officer learned that the truck was in fact properly regis-
tered and the woman was properly licensed, but she refused to give
those items to the officer. The stop ended peacefully when the officer
ticketed the woman for not surrendering her documentation, but
encounters with sovereign citizens do not always end so well.41

The article’s author mentioned, too, that some sovereign citizens are very
dangerous, noting that their online forums refer to their rights to defend
their views with violence in encounters with the police. “The tragic murders
of two Saint John Parish Louisiana Deputies in August 2012 and two West
Memphis, Arkansas, Police Officers in May 2010 give testimony to the dan-
gers some sovereigns pose,” the author, a captain in the Nevada Department
of Public Safety/Nevada Highway Patrol, warned his colleagues. “Since the
year 2000, at least six officers have been killed by known sovereigns.”42
In a 2014 survey of 382 law enforcement agencies, antigovernment
extremism was identified as a major terrorist threat. According to the
survey report, “An officer from a large metropolitan area said that ‘mili-
tias, neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens’ are the biggest threat we face in
regard to extremism.” Another respondent

“explained that he ranked the right-wing threat higher because ‘it is

an emerging threat that we don’t have as good of a grip on, even with
our intelligence unit, as we do with the Al Shabab/Al Qaeda issue,
which we have been dealing with for some time.’”43

Mostly, sovereign citizens commit paper terrorism and their most potent
attack mode is the filing of liens against the property of individuals they
want to hurt financially. According to one report, “The removal of a lien is
a complicated process that often takes the work of attorneys, and a year or
 Terrorism in the American Context   87
more before it is successfully discharged, and can ruin someone’s credit in
the interim. Some victims have gone bankrupt as a result of these actions.”44
Sovereign citizens also file what comes down to bogus suits against public
officials whose actions they oppose. For example, in a typical case of paper
terrorism an employee in Idaho’s transportation department was sued for
$6 million when he refused to reinstate the license for an uninsured vehi-
cle. The same person sued a prosecutor and county clerk for $1.4 million.45

Left-Wing Terrorism
Just as certain aspects of right-wing ideologies and causes changed over
time, the belief systems of left-wing groups did as well. But they have
always stood for fundamental changes in the existing political, economic,
and social arrangements—whether in a monarchy or a democracy—by
violent means, if needed. In more recent times, these groups have resorted
to violence in opposition to globalization, which they consider another
form of exploiting less developed countries—economic imperialism. Like
the mainstream left, the extremists insist on de facto, not only legal,
equality (e.g., race, ethnic, and gender equality)—by affirmative action, if
needed. The left-wing groups in the United States that turned to terrorism
in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War and the civil rights
struggles were inspired by Marxist ideology, but at the beginning of the
twenty-first century, these kinds of “extreme-left” terrorist groups did
not exist in the United States. However, there was a revival and strength-
ening of a far-left, antifascist or Antifa movement in response to Donald
Trump’s candidacy for the U.S. presidency and his victory.

The First Anarchists in the United States

On September 6, 1901, while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in
Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley was shot by an assassin
and so severely wounded that he died soon thereafter. The perpetrator
was caught at the scene of the attack and identified as Leon Czolgosz of
Cleveland, a self-described anarchist and disciple of Emma Goldman,
whose writings and speeches were well known in anarchist circles
and who Czolgosz had met once. Although Goldman was arrested in
Chicago as a suspected accomplice, she was soon released and never
charged. However, John Most, the founder of the anarchist newspaper
Freiheit, was charged and convicted for publishing an anarchist article
and thereby committing “an act endangering the peace and outraging
public decency.”46 The article was a reprint of Karl Heinzen’s fifty-
year-old essay “Murder,” which justified terrorism and had appeared
in the September 7 issue of the Freiheit—just one day after Czolgosz
shot the president. Although the defense claimed that no copy had been
sold, the judge ruled against Most and stated in his opinion,
88 Terrorism
It is in the power of words that is the potent force to commit crimes
and offenses in certain cases. No more striking illustration of the
criminal power of words could be given, if we are to believe the mur-
derer of our President, than that event presents. The assassin declares
that he was instigated and stimulated to consummate his foul deed
by the teachings of Emma Goldman.
It is impossible to read the whole article [authored by Heinzen]
without assuming that his doctrine claims that all rulers are enemies
of mankind, and are to be hunted and destroyed through “blood and
iron, poison and dynamite.”
It [the article] shows a deliberate intent to inculcate and promul-
gate the doctrine of the article. This we hold to be a criminal act.47

This was a remarkable ruling in that it made a direct connection between

inflammatory words and illegal actions. Years before McKinley’s vio-
lent death, Most and Goldman had coauthored an article that gave a
nod of approval to violence; they wrote, “It cannot and it shall not be
denied that most Anarchists feel convinced that ‘violence’ is not any more
reprehensible toward carrying out their designs than it is when used by
an oppressed people to obtain freedom.”48 However, after McKinley’s
death, Goldman insisted that “Anarchy did not teach men to do the act
for which Czolgosz is under arrest.”49
In the decades preceding McKinley’s assassination, labor union
members were involved in violent clashes with plant managers over
wages and working conditions. In many of these bitter conflicts, mine
operators and foremen were killed by workers and workers were mur-
dered by company-hired guards and soldiers. The Molly Maguires,
allegedly an Irish terrorist group, fought employers during bitter
disputes in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. At times, anarchists got
involved in this kind of violence. In 1892, for example, Alexander
Berkman, a young anarchist, attempted to kill Henry C. Frick of the
Carnegie Company because of Frick’s position on striking workers.
Berkman’s deed divided the anarchist movement in that “[John] Most,
in Freiheit, denounced him, while Emma Goldman in the Anarchist
came to his defense.”50
Although anarchists were far from popular before President McKinley’s
death, they became the targets of public outrage, threats, and violence
afterward. In this climate, “Mobs forced dozens of anarchists to flee their
homes and tried to wreck, in one case successfully, the offices of anar-
chist publications. Without warrants the police arrested scores, perhaps
hundreds.”51 The “war on anarchists” continued for years. During this
period, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the establishment of a fed-
eral detective agency that became the forerunner of the FBI. Roosevelt
pressed for increasingly tough measures in the fight against the anarchist
danger. Addressing both chambers of Congress in 1908, he said,
 Terrorism in the American Context   89
When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other ques-
tion sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity,
the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality
than any other. No immigrant is allowed to our shores if he is an
anarchist, and no paper published here or abroad should be permit-
ted circulation in this country if it propagates anarchist propaganda.52

Given these strong sentiments, anarchists were suspected and accused of

violent deeds they had not committed. Thus, in 1910, when dynamite
exploded in the building of the Los Angeles Times, killing twenty-one
unorganized workers, newspaper owner Harrison Otis published an edi-
torial that blamed “anarchist scum” for the act of terrorism.53 Eventually,
John McNamara, a labor union official, and his brother James were
indicted, tried, and sentenced for the bombing of the Times.
In the United States, as Jeffrey D. Simon concluded, “The anarchist
movement failed to achieve its goal of uprisings and revolution.”54

Modern-Day Anarchists as Part of the Antifa Movement

In the summer of 2017, White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis marched in
Charlottesville, Virginia, to demonstrate publicly unity in the extreme
Alt-Right movement; they shouted provoking slogans. However, even the
most offensive racist (“Go back to Africa”) and anti-Semitic (“Jews will
not replace us!”) shouts were overshadowed by violent clashes between
those White nationalists carrying fire arms and a cadre of Antifa leftists
who used sticks, chemical sprays, and balloons filled with paint or ink
as weapons.
After the police declared the rally “an unlawful assembly” and both
sides dispersed, twenty-year-old right-extremist James Alex Fields Jr.
from Ohio drove his Dodge Challenger at high speed into a crowd of
counter-protesters in an obvious case of car-ramming. As he reversed his
car, more pedestrians were hit. Thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer, who
like other Charlottesville residents wanted to express her opposition to
the rally, was killed; nineteen persons suffered injuries.
Few Americans who saw TV reports about the violent scenes in
Charlottesville knew about the Antifa movement’s American roots.
Like typically small, autonomous, antifascist groups around the world
the U.S. adherents believe that fascism must be fought before it defeats
democracy. They are convinced that small, determined groups of activ-
ists could have easily prevented the growth of the Mussolini and Hitler
movements and parties early on. From the late 1980s through the early
2000s, local antifascist groups fought White Supremacist and Neo-Nazis
under the banner of Anti-Racist Action (ARA). Typically, group mem-
bers would interrupt White Power Rock or other events staged by racist/
White Supremacist organizations.
90 Terrorism
But, as Mark Bray, a student of the Antifa movement notes, the death of
William Pierce, founder and leader of the National Alliance organization,
and the imprisonment of Matt Hale, the leader of the World Church of the
Creator, contributed to the ARA’s passing “through a relative lull from the
middle of the 2000s up until perhaps the start of the Trump campaign.”55
During the campaign, ARA and AFA (antifascist action) activists inter-
rupted Trump’s campaign rallies. A Trump speech planned at the University
of Illinois in Chicago had to be canceled because antifascists successfully
promoted the infiltration of the audience with the result of fist fights and
shouting matches between the pro- and anti-Trump sides. Violent black
blocs, typical for anarchist activists, caused injuries and property damages
during the celebrations surrounding President Trump’s inauguration.
Many antifascists are anarchists, and others are radical leftists
advocating for local justice, often on the side of what they perceive as
disadvantaged minorities. Most of them are nonviolent but others seek
violent encounters.

The Weather Underground

It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that leftists in the United States
once again embraced terrorist methods to further their political ends.
Just like the groups in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, mostly young
Americans organized, as they explained, to bring about revolution and
the defeat of imperialism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies, the original anarchists and social reformers in the United States
were long on terrorist theory and short on actual violence, and to the
extent that terrorism was traced to anarchism, the perpetrators were
typically individuals not directly associated with organized groups. In
sharp contrast, the self-declared revolutionary groups of the 1960s and
1970s practiced what they preached. The Weathermen, later renamed
the Weather Underground to signify the prominent roles of women in
the organization, was the best known among the white terrorist groups
of this era. An offshoot of the radical new left organization Students for
a Democratic Society, the founders took their name and the title of their
first manifesto, “You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way
the wind blows,” from the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song. Their radicalism
was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War and to racial and social
inequality in the United States. Shortly after organizing themselves in
early 1969, the Weathermen began a campaign of agitation in Chicago
during what they called “Days of Rage,” causing riots and clashes with
the police. By 1970, disappointed that they had been unsuccessful in
winning over the working class to their cause, the core of the group went
underground as a revolutionary vanguard and began a terrorist cam-
paign against public and private institutional cornerstones of the existing
political and economic order. The Pentagon and other military symbols,
 Terrorism in the American Context   91
police facilities, banks, and multinational corporations were the particu-
lar targets. In the 1974 manifesto “Prairie Fire,” the last communication
by the group, the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for nine-
teen major acts of terrorism and warned of more violence. Missing from
the detailed list was an explosion in a Greenwich Village townhouse in
March 1970 in which three members of the group blew themselves up as
they were constructing a bomb.
Soon thereafter, the Weather Underground broke apart; some members
joined or established new groups, and others surrendered after a time to the
authorities and were tried and sentenced. Unlike their European soul mates,
the Weather Underground never managed to terrorize the whole coun-
try by spreading massive fear and anxiety. Concluding that the Weather
Underground was a failure, Ehud Sprinzak noted that the group had “never
more than four hundred members and followers, and most of the time its
inexperienced leaders and recruits worried not about the revolution but
about their hideouts, survival logistics, and internal group relations.”56
In “Prairie Fire,” the Weather Underground expressed its admiration
for black revolutionary groups, noting that the

“Black Liberation Army—fighting for three years under ruth-

less attack by the state—the fighters in prison, and recently the
Symbionese Liberation Army are leading forces in the development
of the armed struggle and political consciousness, respected by our-
selves and other revolutionaries.”57

Eventually, some members of the Weather Underground plotted joint

terrorism ventures with the Black Liberation Army and similar groups.
In the fall of 1981, a group of heavily armed men and women in dark ski
masks ambushed a Brink’s armored car in a shopping mall in Rockland
County, New York, near New York City, killing one of the guards and
injuring two others. Two police officers were killed when state troop-
ers and detectives stopped the perpetrators’ cars at a hastily established
roadblock. The perpetrators were identified as members of the Weather
Underground, the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Front, and
the Republic of New Africa, a separatist group with the goal of establish-
ing an independent black state in the American South. Contrary to the
fears of observers at the time, this incident was not a sign of renewed
strength in leftist terrorist circles but an act of desperation.

The Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was founded in the fall of 1966
by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California, as an organ-
ization that was to protect the black community from police brutality.
But the party’s platform contained more ambitious goals and left-wing
92 Terrorism
ideological fervor. In a speech in Oakland, Bobby Seale revealed the ten
points of the Black Panther Party’s platform, which demanded above
all the freedom to determine the destiny of the black community, full
employment, housing fit for human beings, education “which teaches
us our true history and our role in the present day American society,”
exemption from military service for all black men, and the release of
all black men from federal, state, county, and city jails and penitentia-
ries.58 The Black Panthers were not racist but condemned the oppression
of both blacks and whites by the capitalists and their corporate power
structure. To this end, they cooperated with the Weathermen for a short
period. For white radicals, the “Black Panthers, who armed themselves
heavily and fought the police fiercely, provided an attractive model to
follow.”59 But, as Sprinzak noted, white radicals felt guilty because they
were not treated as brutally as their black counterparts by the police.60
The Panthers’ tough rhetoric and perhaps their uniforms, black leather
jackets and black berets, attracted young black men to their ranks. Their
membership was never higher than a few thousand, but the organiza-
tion had chapters in inner cities across the country and published its own
newspaper. But the group’s militancy also attracted criminal elements that
made it easier for law enforcement to justify the brutal treatment of the
Panthers in general. In 1969 alone, twenty-seven members of the organi-
zation were killed in clashes with the police and more than 700 members
were arrested. On December 4, 1969, when the organization was no longer
a factor because most of its leaders were either in prison or in exile, Fred
Hampton, the twenty-one-year-old chairman of the Panthers in Illinois,
and Mark Clark, a twenty-two-year-old member, were killed during a
police raid on their apartment in Chicago. Five months later, a federal
grand jury in Chicago decided that “the police had grossly exaggerated
Black Panthers’ resistance” and that “the police had riddled the Panthers’
apartment with at least 82 shots, while only one shot was apparently fired
from inside.”61 In reaction to and in memory of Hampton and Clark’s
violent deaths, surviving Panthers formed the December 4 Movement, but
it disappeared nearly as quickly as it had emerged.
Although involved in violent actions but often the target of unpro-
voked police violence, the Black Panther Party did not understand itself
as a terrorist organization. As the full name indicated, the Panthers per-
ceived themselves as the black community’s defense against an overly
aggressive police force, a rationale vindicated by incidents like the deadly
raid on Hampton and Clark’s apartment.

The Symbionese Liberation Army

Founded in 1972 in Oakland, California, by community activists and
graduate students, most of them with comfortable family backgrounds,
the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) emphasized from the outset its
 Terrorism in the American Context   93
interracial character and also the black and minority leadership of the
group. In its 1973 manifesto, the organization explained its revolution-
ary character:

We of the Symbionese Federation and the S.L.A. DO NOT under the

rights of human beings submit to the murder, oppression and exploi-
tation of our children and people and do under the rights granted
to the people under The Declaration of Independence of The United
States, do now by the rights of our children and people and by Force
of Arms and with every drop of our blood, Declare Revolutionary
War against the Fascist Capitalist Class, and all their agents of mur-
der, oppression and exploitation. We support by Force of Arms the
just struggle of all oppressed people for self-determination and inde-
pendence within the United States and The World.62

With its first violent action, the murder of Dr. Marcus Foster, the super-
intendent of Oakland’s public school system, the SLA alienated black
community activists, who were furious that Foster, one of the few African
Americans in a high public office, had been targeted. But it was the 1974
kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter of press tycoon William
Randolph Hearst, that drew national, even worldwide, attention to the
SLA. The group exploited the sudden wave of publicity to present itself
as a modern-day Robin Hood, in that it insisted on the establishment
of a free food program in return for the release of the kidnap victim.
Strangely, however, after Patricia Hearst’s father agreed to put up a total
of $4 million to feed the poor, his daughter decided to stay with her kid-
nappers and participated in a bank robbery. Although the SLA claimed
that Hearst acted out of free will, once captured and indicted, Patricia
Hearst insisted that she had been brainwashed.
There is no doubt that criminal elements were among the hard-core
members of this group, among them its leader, Donald DeFreeze. Five
members of the group, including DeFreeze, died in a 1974 shoot-out with
police in Los Angeles; others fought on for a short while before becoming
fugitives. But eventually all of the surviving SLA members were caught.

Single-Issue Terrorism
Embracing specific agendas, groups with vastly different motivations
pursue a range of goals fitting their overall belief systems. Single-issue
or special-interest groups, on the other hand, are narrowly focused on
one particular political point or a package of closely related issues. And
here, too, groups and individuals tend to fit either the conservative/
right or the liberal/left side of the political spectrum, as the examples
of conservative antiabortion extremists and the liberal pro-environment
extremists demonstrate.
94 Terrorism
Antiabortion Violence
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the U.S.
Constitution grants women the right to abortion. In the wake of the con-
troversial decision, antiabortion or pro-life organizations emerged with
the explicit goal of overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and legalized
abortion. The overwhelming number of pro-life activists and the groups
they joined were and are distinctly nonviolent and willing to work within
the legitimate political process. However, some individuals and factions
were not content with bringing legal actions to the courts, lobbying
members of Congress, organizing demonstrations, harassing abortion
providers and seekers, and staging acts of civil disobedience; instead,
they called for and/or committed violence—against abortion clinics and
their personnel. In the early 1990s, two physicians who worked in abor-
tion clinics in Pensacola, Florida, were shot by followers of extremist
antiabortion groups, namely, Rescue America and Defense Action. But
clinics and personnel in other parts of the United States were also tar-
geted by bombings and assassinations. These violent actions intimidated
many physicians sufficiently that they stopped working in abortion clin-
ics. Those who carried on were not even safe away from their workplaces.
Thus, in 1998, Dr. Barnett A. Slepian was shot and killed in the kitchen
of his private residence in Amherst in western New York State by James
C. Kopp, a longtime antiabortion radical. After his arrest Kopp claimed
that he targeted Dr. Slepian in his home in order not to harm innocent
bystanders. Sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison, Kopp alleg-
edly told fellow-antiabortion extremists that he would do the same upon
his release if abortions were still performed at the time.63
A statistical summary that was published three months before the
April 2010 killing of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita,
Kansas, revealed the following:

Since 1993, eight clinic workers—including four doctors, two clinic

employees, a clinic escort, and a security guard—have been mur-
dered in the United States. Seventeen attempted murders have also
occurred since 1991. In fact, opponents of choice have directed more
than 6,100 reported acts of violence against abortion providers since
1977, including bombings, arsons, death threats, kidnappings, and
assaults, as well as more than 156,000 reported acts of disruption,
including bomb threats and harassing calls.64

Mere threats to attack abortion clinics and kill abortion doctors can
have devastating effects on the psyche of clinic personnel. Perhaps this
was best understood after September 11, 2001, when the attacks on
New York and Washington were followed up with a serious anthrax
scare after news organizations and members of Congress received letters
 Terrorism in the American Context   95
containing anthrax powder. Well before this scare, abortion clinics had
received hundreds of anthrax threats and letters claiming to contain the
lethal material. Although no anthrax was found in any of the mailings,
the mere threat frightened the recipients.
The self-proclaimed Army of God, one of the most extreme antiabor-
tion groups, did not hide its violent agenda, as the following excerpt from
its Manual reveals:

Beginning officially with the passage of the Freedom of Choice Act—

we, the remnant of God-fearing men and women of the United States
of Amerika [sic], do officially declare war on the entire child-killing
industry. After praying, fasting, and making continual supplication
to God for your pagan, heathen, infidel souls, we then peacefully,
passively presented our bodies in front of your death camps, beg-
ging you to stop the mass murder of infants. Yet you hardened your
already blackened, jaded hearts. We quietly accepted the result-
ing imprisonment and suffering of our passive resistance. Yet you
mocked God and continued the holocaust.
No longer! All of the options have expired. Our Most Dread
Sovereign Lord God requires that whoever sheds man’s blood, by
man shall his blood be shed. Not out of hatred for you, but out
of love for the persons you exterminate, we are forced to take
arms against you. Our life [sic] for yours—a simple equation.
Dreadful. Sad. Reality, nonetheless. You shall not be tortured by
our hands. Vengeance belongs to God only. However, execution is
rarely gentle.65

A number of White Supremacy and antigovernment groups have tradi-

tionally condemned abortion, at least as far as the procedure concerned
Aryan women. Some individuals from this milieu have committed anti-
abortion terror as well. According to law enforcement officials, Eric
Robert Rudolph, a White Supremacist and survivalist, is such an individ-
ual. After detonating a bomb at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996
and a gay nightclub in the region, he bombed two abortion clinics. When
he was finally arrested in the spring of 2003, many people in and around
Murphy, North Carolina, where he had hidden for years, expressed
strong support for the man whose terrorist blasts had killed two and
injured 111 persons. A mother of four said, “Rudolph’s a Christian and I
am Christian and he dedicated his life to fighting abortion. Those are our
values. These are our woods. I don’t see what he did as a terrorist act.”66
The same was true for antiabortion extremist Scott Roeder, who killed
Dr. George Tiller, as his victim served as usher in his church. The killer
was associated not only with extreme antiabortion groups but also with
the right-extreme antigovernment “freemen” movement.
96 Terrorism
The Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts
On the left side of the political spectrum, the American versions of the
Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)
have also advocated political violence to draw attention to their causes—
the preservation of all animal life and the protection of the environment
against exploitation by “the capitalist society [that] is destroying all life
on this planet.”67 In the United States, the ALF was established in the late
1970s along the lines of the British ALF model. Growing increasingly
more action oriented, the ALF has claimed responsibility for attacks on
and destruction of fur companies, mink farms, animal research laborato-
ries, and restaurants. The ELF, established in the United States in 1994,
also took its cue from the ELF in Great Britain, an extremist offshoot
of the Earth First! environmental group, which had left the mainstream
environmental movement to engage in highly visible protests and a civil
disobedience campaign. According to the FBI, which has characterized
the activities of ELF and ALF in North America as ecoterrorism,

The ELF advocates “monkeywrenching,” a euphemism for acts

of sabotage and property destruction against industries and other
entities perceived to be damaging to the natural environment.
“Monkeywrenching” includes tree spiking, arson, sabotage of logging
or construction equipment, and other types of property destruction.68

The ELF has also damaged or destroyed large numbers of sport utility
vehicles in order to dramatize its supporters’ opposition to “gas-guzzling”
automobiles and their negative impact on the environment.
The followers of ALF and ELF do not formally become members of
these organizations and do not pay dues; they organize in small, autono-
mous, underground cells that plan and execute violent acts to achieve
social and political change. The ALF and ELF work closely together and
may have overlapping followers. The FBI estimated that from 1996 to
early 2002, followers of ALF and ELF were responsible for more than
600 acts of ecoterrorism causing damages of more than $43 million.
These numbers do not reflect the consequences of threats against indi-
viduals and groups of people working in particular areas of the private
sector. During a Washington Post online forum on ecoterrorism with FBI
Special Agent James F. Jarboe, one participant described the tactics of
ecoterrorists this way:

I work for an industry that has been targeted by ecoterrorism—and

in the past have been personally threatened by an animal rights activ-
ist who said he knew my address and was planning to come into my
home one evening and slash my face to ribbons with a razor blade.
Perhaps some of the people viewing this discussion don’t feel that
ecoterrorism is very real—but I can assure them that I was terrified
 Terrorism in the American Context   97
and was very grateful that the FBI took the threat seriously. The
group targeting me (they got my name off of a website) have been
known to blow up boats, break into homes and offices and shut
down computer systems. To me, that’s terrorism.69

In spite of the growing aggressiveness of ecoterrorists in recent years,

they have not killed or injured human beings. However, their rhetoric
has become increasingly militant and threatening. The ELF website pro-
claimed in early 2003 that “the only way, at this point in time, to stop
that continued destruction of life [on this planet] is to by any means
necessary take the profit motive out of killing.”70 Placed above this text
was an advertisement for ELF’s free “Guide to Setting Fires with Electric
Timers,” which contained do-it-yourself material about “devices, fuel
requirements, timers, security, and more.” Visitors to the site were invited
to print or download the manual. A similar ALF do-it-yourself guide
(“Arson-Around with Auntie ALF: Your Guide for Putting the Heat on
Animal Abusers Everywhere”) was available on both the ELF and the
ALF websites. “Auntie ALF, Uncle ELF and the Anti-Copyright gang”
advised readers explicitly not to injure or kill “animals, human or other-
wise” when resorting to arson, but by describing in detail the preparation
of incendiary devices, these guidelines read like invitations to join ALF’s
and ELF’s arson activists.71
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a large above-
ground organization with 750,000 members, has not resorted to
violence but seems comfortable with the violent approaches of ALF and
ELF. Indeed, one PETA official seemed to endorse violence when he
stated, “I think it would be a great thing if, you know, all these fast
food outlets and these slaughterhouses, and the banks that fund them
exploded tomorrow.”72

The Jewish Defense League

“JDL [Jewish Defense League] upholds the principle of Barzel—iron—
the need to both move to help Jews everywhere and to change the Jewish
image through sacrifice and all necessary means—even strength, force,
and violence.”73 This sentence, contained in “The Five Principles of the
Jewish Defense League,” reveals the organization’s endorsement of vio-
lence in the service of a cause first articulated by Rabbi Meir Kahane. In
1968, Kahane founded the JDL in New York for the purpose of protect-
ing Jews in what he characterized as a hostile, anti-Semitic environment
in the United States. The next year, after more than two dozen helmeted
JDL members, clubs in their hands, appeared as “protectors” in front
of a New York synagogue because James Forman, a radical African
American, planned to present the congregation with reparation demands,
one rabbi called them “Batmen” and “no different from whites, carrying
98 Terrorism
robes and hoods, standing in front of burning crosses.”74 For many years,
the JDL staged protests against and took over the offices of mainstream
Jewish organizations. But its violent activities, mostly bombings, were
directed against Arabs and Soviet nationals in New York, Washington,
and other parts of the country. Although Kahane moved to Israel in the
early 1970s, the JDL remained active in the United States. According to
the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, “Kahane consistently preached a
radical form of Jewish nationalism which reflected racism, violence and
political extremism.”75
Preaching in favor of a territorially greater Israel, Meir Kahane estab-
lished a new, JDL-like organization, Kach (Thus), in Israel. After he was
killed by an Arab extremist during one of his appearances in New York
in November 1990, his son Binyahim Kahane founded Kahane Chai
(Kahane Lives) to carry on the legacy of his father. Because of their vio-
lence against Palestinians, both Kach and Kahane Chai were included on
the U.S. Department of State’s list of terrorist organizations. The most
lethal act of terrorism by a follower of Meir Kahane and a member of
Kach was carried out in 1994, when Brooklyn-born Dr. Baruch Goldstein
killed twenty-nine Palestinians as they prayed at a Hebron, Israel, mosque
before he was overwhelmed and killed by survivors of his terrorist attack.

Puerto Rican Nationalist Groups

On November 2, 1950, the New York Times published a front-page story
about an assassination attempt on President Harry Truman by Puerto
Rican nationalists the previous day.76 One of the Puerto Ricans, Grisello
Torresola, was killed during a shoot-out with White House police offic-
ers that left one policeman dead and two others injured. The second
would-be assassin, Oscar Collazo, was eventually sentenced to death,
but President Truman commuted the death sentence to imprisonment
for life. On March 2, 1954, a small group of Puerto Rican nationalists
fired shots from the visitors’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives
onto the floor of the chamber, injuring five members before they were
arrested. Rafael Miranda, Andres Cordero, and Irvin Flores were sen-
tenced to seventy-five-year prison terms; the only female member of the
team, Lolita Lebron, received a fifty-year sentence. Neither the assassina-
tion attempt on President Truman nor the attack on U.S. representatives
alarmed decision- and opinion-makers inside and outside of government.
This was reflected in an editorial in the New York Times that called the
terrorists “fanatics,” compared them to “the Nihilist assassins of Czarist
Russia,” and assured a nervous public that “we have to consider a deed
of that sort as an aberration.”77
Although the two attacks in the U.S. capital were the first acts of
terrorism by Puerto Rican extremists on the American mainland, the
movement had committed many acts of violence on the Caribbean
island in the preceding years. Following a respite after the Washington
 Terrorism in the American Context   99
incidents, several new groups were established in the late 1960s and early
1970s, some of them by Latinos of Puerto Rican descent born in Chicago
and New York, others by Puerto Ricans born on the island. Some of
these groups operated exclusively on the U.S. mainland; others struck in
Puerto Rico and on the mainland. Founded in 1974 by William Morales
and Rosado Ayala, both born in Chicago, the organization Armed Forces
for National Liberation (FALN) put itself on the map of public aware-
ness in January 1975 when it bombed the historic Fraunces Tavern in
downtown Manhattan, killing four and injuring forty-four persons. In a
communiqué that was found in a telephone booth near the site, the group
claimed responsibility for the attack on the restaurant and “reactionary
corporate executives inside.” The message stated, furthermore,

The Yanki [sic] government is trying to terrorize and kill our people
to intimidate us from seeking our rightful independence from colo-
nialism. They do this in the same way they did it in Viet Nam [sic],
Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, the Congo, and in many other
places including the United States itself . . . You have unleashed a
storm from which you Yankis [sic] cannot escape.78

In the following weeks, months, and years, the FALN was responsible
for several dozen bombings across the United States that killed six people
and injured many more. The organization was also responsible for strikes
against military and mostly civilian facilities in Puerto Rico.
A major terrorist attack claimed by Los Macheteros (The Cane Cutters,
or “machete wielders”), another extremist group, occurred in 1981 and
destroyed several U.S. military planes at an Air Force base in Puerto Rico.
In a follow-up, members of the group attacked American sailors in San
Juan, killing one and injuring three of the soldiers. But the group oper-
ated on the U.S. mainland as well. In 1983, Los Macheteros pulled off
a robbery at a Wells Fargo terminal in Hartford, Connecticut, which
netted the group more than $7 million. But what at first sight seemed a
successful coup turned into the group’s most costly misstep: The robbery
provided the FBI with enough evidence to trace and arrest key members
of the group. Two years thereafter, law enforcement caught up with sev-
eral FALN members as well.
A core of radical Puerto Rican nationalists continued to fight violently
for the island’s independence. Thus, of the five cases that the FBI catego-
rized as domestic terrorism in 1998, three occurred in Puerto Rico: The
bombings of an aqueduct project in Arecibo and of two banks in Rio
Piedras and Santa Isabel.

Ideological Waves
Whereas left-wing political violence by groups and individuals dominated
the domestic scene of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, and right-wing
100 Terrorism
terrorism posed the greatest problem in this respect in the 1990s, during
these periods other brands of terrorism existed side by side with the two
predominant varieties. Looking back at some four decades of fighting
domestic terrorism at the end of the twentieth century, the FBI concluded,

Waves of domestic terrorist activity are not absolute or all encom-

passing. During the 1970s and early 1980s, at the heights of the vio-
lent antiwar/left-wing activism, there were dozens of terrorist attacks
carried out by Jewish extremist groups (such as the Jewish Defense
League and the United Jewish Underground) and other extrem-
ist ethnic groups (such as the Justice Commandos of the Armenian
Genocide). There were also sporadic incidents involving special
interest groups supporting nuclear disarmament and other causes.
During the 1990s, when antigovernment right-wing groups became
a primary counterterrorism focus, left-wing extremist Puerto Rican
separatists continued to conduct the majority of successful terrorist
attacks in the United States—primarily on the island of Puerto Rico.
Today, right-wing terrorists—most notably loosely affiliated
extremists—continue to represent a formidable challenge to law
enforcement agencies around the country, even as animal rights and
environmental extremism takes on a higher profile.79

During the 1970s, left-wing terrorism was rampant in the United States.
According to the FBI, in 1972 alone there were “more than nineteen hun-
dred domestic bombings; targets included the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon,
a Boston courthouse, and a crowded Wall Street lunch haunt.”80
During the twenty years from 1980 to 1999, left-wing terrorists were
responsible for over 40 percent of all domestic terrorist incidents inside
the United States and for plots to commit terrorism that were foiled by
law enforcement. In close to 30 percent of these cases, right-wing terror-
ists were identified as perpetrators or plotters; in more than 20 percent,
special-interest terrorists; and in close to 5 percent, lone wolves like the
Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. The perpetrators or plotters in the rest
of the cases were not identified.
The perpetrators’ ideological markers were different in the years following
the 9/11 attacks in that most political violence was perpetrated by single-
issue extremists on the right or left of the political spectrum. Moreover,
there were increasingly attacks by Muslim extremists who followed the calls
of terrorist organizations abroad, such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
As noted earlier, compared to many other countries, however, the
number of actual terrorist incidents in the United States has been fairly
low. While this is comforting at first sight, there are many violent inci-
dents that have the characteristics of terrorism but are categorized as
“hate crimes” by the FBI and local police departments. The FBI’s annual
statistics of hate crimes include typically several thousand. In 2017, for
 Terrorism in the American Context   101
Table 4.1  Major Motives for Hate Crimes in 2017 and 2016

2017 2016

Total hate crimes 7,175 6,121

Anti-black/anti-African American 2,013 1,739
Anti-Jewish 938 684
Anti-white 741 720
Anti-Hispanic/anti-Latino 427 344
Anti-Muslim/anti-Arab 375 358
Anti-Native American 251 154
Anti-Asian 131 113
Source: FBI

example, there were 7,175 hate crimes, a 17 percent increase over the
previous year, with 8,828 victims, and carried out by 6,370 known
offenders with the following main motives (see also Table 4.1):

•• Racial/ethnic bias: 58.1 percent;

•• Religious prejudice: 22.0 percent;
•• Sexual orientation: 15.9 percent;
•• Gender identity bias: 1.7 percent.

Since the biases that motivate this sort of violence are fueled by politi-
cal and social issues and policy preferences, many, if not most, of these
deeds are as much acts of terrorism as the antiabortion terrorism or
ecoterrorism.
Again, since this chapter did not deal with actual terrorist attacks and
foiled terrorist plots inside the United States by homegrown or immi-
grated Muslims or Muslim converts, the topic will be addressed in the
last section of Chapter 5.

Notes
1 Martin Durham, “The American Far Right and 9/11,” Terrorism and Political
Violence 15:2 (Summer 2003): 97.
2 The statistics were taken from Mark Potok, “Rage on the Right.” The arti-
cle is available on the SPLC’s website at [Link]/get-informed/
intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right, accessed
July 3, 2010.
3 See, for example, [Link]/zog/[Link], accessed
May 23, 2010.
4 Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Year in Hate and Extremism,” www.
[Link]/Year-in-Hate-and-Extremism, accessed July 22, 2015.
5 Heidi Beirich and Susy Buchanan, “2017: The Year in Hate,” Intelligence
Report, February 11, 2018, [Link]/fighting-hate/intelligence-
report/2018/2017-year-hate-and-extremism#kkk, accessed April 22, 2018.
102 Terrorism
6 “Victory by Klan Feature Election,” New York Times, November 5, 1924
(retrieved from ProQuest Historical News).
7 Allison J. Gough, “Ku Klux Klan Terror,” in Martha Crenshaw and John
Pimlott, eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
1997), 527–29.
8 “Smith Denounces Coolidge’s Silence on Ku Klux Klan,” New York Times,
October 19, 1924 (retrieved from ProQuest Historical News).
9 Gough, 527.
10 James Ridgeway, Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, Nazi
Skin Heads, and the Rise of a New White Culture (New York: Thunder
Mouth Press, 1995), 68.
11 Kenneth S. Stern, A Force upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement
and the Politics of Hate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 43.
12 Christopher Hewitt, “The Political Context of Terrorism in America: Ignoring
Extremists or Pandering to Them?” Terrorism and Political Violence 12:3–4
(2000): 323–44.
13 Stern, 44.
14 Jeffrey Kaplan, “Right Wing Violence in North America,” Terrorism and
Political Violence 7:1 (1995): 44–95.
15 Duke was quoted by Ridgeway, 146.
16 From the website of the EURO, [Link], accessed March
10, 2003.
17 “ADL Backgrounder: Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,”
[Link]/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp, accessed March 17,
2003.
18 [Link]/centerinfo/[Link], accessed March 14, 2003.
19 David Holthouse, “The Year in Hate: Number of Hate Groups Tops 900,”
[Link]
[Link], accessed October 22, 2010.
20 Posted on the group’s website: [Link]/[Link],
accessed May 4, 2009.
21 Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.”
22 Kaplan, 46.
23 Ridgeway, 54.
24 Kaplan, 53.
25 “Breakup of Aryan Nations Leads to the Formation of Successor Groups,”
[Link], accessed March 17, 2003.
26 Ibid.
27 “Aryan Nations Reappears in North Idaho,” [Link]/news/localnews/
stories/ktvbnapr2509-aryan_nations.[Link], accessed May 4, 2009.
28 Cited by the Anti-Defamation League, “Tom Metzger/White Aryan Resistance:
Update,” August 1, 2002, [Link]/learn/ext%5Fus/metzger%[Link],
accessed March 18, 2003.
29 Kaplan, 58.
30 Ibid.
31 Smith was quoted in Richard Roeper, “Hatemongers ‘Church’ Unites Paranoid
Losers,” Chicago-Sun Times, July 7, 1999.
32 Bill Morlin, “McVeigh Worship: The New Extremist Trend,” Southern
Poverty Law Center “Hate Watch,” June 27, 2017, [Link]/
hatewatch/2017/06/27/mcveigh-worship-new-extremist-trend, accessed April
24, 2018.
33 Ibid.
34 Heidi Beirich, “Midwifing the Militias,” Southern Poverty Law Center’s
Intelligence Report (Spring 2010), [Link]/get-informed/intelligence-
 Terrorism in the American Context   103
report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias, accessed June
1, 2010.
35 Ibid.
36 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current
Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and
Recruitment,” April 7, 2009, [Link]/irp/eprint/[Link], accessed
June 2, 2010.
37 ADL Center for Extremism, “Murder and Extremism in the United States in
2017,” [Link]/resources/reports/murder-and-extremism-in-the-united-
states-in-2017, accessed May 15, 2018.
38 Ibid.
39 Daryl Johnson, “Return of the Violent Black Nationalist,” Intelligence Report,
August 8, 2017, [Link]/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/
return-violent-black-nationalist, accessed May 14, 2018.
40 [Link]/news/stories/2010/april/sovereigncitizens_041310, accessed
July 2, 2015.
41 Thom Jackson, “Officer Safety Corner: Sovereign Citizens on Traffic Stops,”
Police Chief Magazine, June 2015, [Link]/magazine/
[Link]?fuseaction=display&article_id=2862&issue_id=22013, accessed
July 8, 2015.
42 Ibid.
43 Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, “The Growing Right-Wing Terror
Threat,” New York Times, June 16, 2015, [Link]/2015/06/16/
opinion/[Link], accessed July 8, 2015.
44 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Paper Terrorism,” Intelligence Report, August
8, 2017, [Link]/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/paper-
terrorism, accessed May 16, 2018.
45 Ibid.
46 Quote is taken from “Anarchy at the Turn of the Century,” University
Libraries, Pan-American Exposition Exhibit Group, University of Buffalo,
[Link] accessed
March 27, 2003.
47 Ibid.
48 John Most and Emma Goldman, “Anarchy Defended by Anarchists,”
Metropolitan Magazine 4:3 (October 1896).
49 “Emma Goldman Is Arrested in Chicago,” New York Times, September 11,
1901 (retrieved from ProQuest Historical News).
50 Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002).
51 Richard Bach Jensen, “The United States, International Policing and the War
against Anarchist Terrorism, 1900–1914,” Terrorism and Political Violence
13:1 (Spring 2001): 15–46.
52 Ibid., 32.
53 The quote is from Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience
with Terrorism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 41.
54 Ibid., 38.
55 Mark Bray, ANTIFA: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Brooklyn, NY: Melville
House, 2017), 104.
56 Ehud Sprinzak, “Extreme Left Terrorism in a Democracy,” in Walter Reich,
ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of
Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 77.
57 “Prairie Fire—Political Statement of the Weather Underground,” in Walter
Laqueur and Yonah Alexander, eds., The Terrorism Reader (New York:
Penguin, 1987), 173.
104 Terrorism
58 The quote is from the “Ten-Point Party Platform of the Black Panther Party,”
[Link]/hueynewton, accessed May 12, 2003.
59 Sprinzak, 77.
60 Ibid.
61 Reported by Fred P. Graham, “U.S. Jury Assails Police in Chicago on Panther
Raid,” New York Times, May 15, 1970, 1, 14.
62 The quote is from “Symbionese Liberation Army Manifesto (1973),” in
Frank Shanty and Raymond Picquet, eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism:
Documents (Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2003), 960.
63 [Link]/[Link], accessed September 30, 2015.
64 The statistics were assembled by NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation
and are available at [Link]/assets/files/Abortion-Access-
[Link], accessed July 10, 2010.
65 From “The Army of God Manual, Classic Third Edition,” [Link].
com/[Link], accessed April 3, 2003.
66 The woman, Crystal Davis, was quoted in Jeffrey Gettleman with David M.
Halbfinger, “Suspect in ‘96 Olympic Bombing and 3 Other Attacks Is Caught,”
New York Times, June 1, 2003, 1.
67 According to the ELF website, [Link].
68 From the statement of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief,
Counterterrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, “The Threat of
Eco-Terrorism,” before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on
Forest and Forest Health, February 12, 2002.
69 [Link]: Live Online, [Link], accessed April
5, 2003.
70 [Link], accessed April 5, 2003.
71 Abroad, extremists among the animal rights and environmental movements
went further than their American counterparts. Thus, Volker van der Graaf,
an activist on behalf of animal rights and environmental protection, assas-
sinated the Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in May 2002 during the
national election campaign in Holland. During his trial, van der Graaf said
that he had targeted Fortuyn because of the politician’s dangerous ideas, espe-
cially with respect to animals, the environment, immigrants, Muslims, and
asylum seekers.
72 Bruce Friedrich, a PETA official, was cited by Michael Spector, “The Extremist:
The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America,” New
Yorker, April 14, 2003, 52.
73 Posted on the JDL’s website, [Link], accessed September 27, 2004; my
emphasis.
74 “Defense League Scored by Rabbi,” New York Times, May 18, 1969, 81.
75 “About the Jewish Defense League,” [Link], accessed September 26,
2004.
76 Anthony Leviero, “President Resting,” New York Times, November 2, 1950,
1.
77 “Madness in Washington,” New York Times, March 2, 1954, 24.
78 The excerpts are from “Text of Note Found Near the Blast,” New York Times,
January 25, 1975, 10.
79 From the FBI report, “Terrorism in the United States 1999,” [Link]/
publications/terror/[Link].
80 “Briefly Noted,” The New Yorker, June 8, 2015, [Link]/
magazine/2015/06/08/briefly-noted-our-souls-at-night, accessed July 5, 2015.
5 Religious Terrorism
Political Violence in the Name of God

October 31, 2017 was a warm, sunny Halloween day along the
American East coast. In Lower Manhattan tourists and natives enjoyed
the picturesque Hudson River Park. In nearby Stuyvesant High School,
one of the city’s best public schools, students got ready to be dismissed
for the day. Outside, some parents waited for their children to drive
them home. Suddenly, shortly after 3:00 p.m., a pick-up truck drove
at high speed onto the park’s bike path mowing down several cyclists
and pedestrians in a horrific truck-ramming attack. Eight persons were
killed, eleven others injured. After a one-mile killing spree the truck
collided with a school bus. Sayfullo Saipov (age twenty-nine) left the
truck shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great!) and brandishing what
turned out to be pellet and paintball guns. Inside the truck, police found
an ISIS flag and nearby a note in Arabic with the slogans, “No God
but God and Muhammad is his Prophet” and “Islamic Supplication. It
will endure.”
After being shot by a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer
Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan with permanent residency in the United
States, said from his hospital bed that he was proud of what he had done
and asked whether he could display the ISIS flag in his hospital room.
Who was this young man determined to kill in the name of Allah and
ISIS—and obviously willing to die? His acquaintances and neighbors
described him as aggressive, short-tempered, angry, and unfriendly.
Working as a truck driver and later on as an Uber driver he had a
multitude of traffic violations. Yet, as one acquaintance noted follow-
ing the truck ramming, “He did not seem like a terrorist, but I did not
know him from the inside.”1 He seemed not overly religious when he
lived first in Ohio and then in Florida. But after moving to Paterson,
New Jersey, he prayed regularly at a mosque near his residence—
especially in the months preceding the attack. An Uzbek acquaintance
remembered that they argued about religion and that Saipov’s views
were radical.
Obviously, ISIS’s e-propaganda was instrumental in Saipov’s trans-
formation into a religious zealot. The investigator concluded that he
106 Terrorism
“self-radicalized” by consuming ISIS propaganda. Saipov himself told
police and FBI agents that his deadly attack was inspired by ISIS vid-
eos that he had watched. On his cellphones investigators found some
ninety videos with several thousand mostly gruesome images—ISIS fight-
ers decapitating, burning, or car-crashing infidels. There were also video
downloads of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s speeches and instruc-
tions on how to build bombs. John Miller, Deputy NYPD Commissioner,
noted that Saipov’s lethal attack followed “almost exactly to a T” the
Islamic State’s calls on social media for followers in the West to kill infi-
dels by “simple” means, for example, car ramming.
As the title of this chapter suggests, religious terrorism, just like secular
terrorism, has political ends. Secular terrorists are motivated by political
ideologies (e.g., Neo-Nazi groups by Hitler’s racist White Supremacist
views; left-wing groups like the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades of
the past by Marxist ideas) or widely accepted principles, such as the right
to self-determination or to equality. Religious terrorists are motivated by
their strong desire to live according to their religion’s teachings and fol-
low God’s will, but they also have political grievances and goals. Thus,
whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, members
of other religions, or devoted to religious sects (e.g., the Japanese Aum
Shinrikyo), extremists commit violence for both religious and political
ends. Mark Sedgwick has pointed out,

Just as religious terrorism turns out to have important political ele-

ments, “secular” terrorism also has important religious elements.
Many nationalists have spoken of their cause as “sacred,” and it is
not hard to conceive of a leftist speaking of the “cause of the opposed
masses.” A Russian terrorist of the first wave [of terrorism] wrote
of terrorism as “uniting the two sublimities of human nature, the
martyr and the hero.”2

But although secular terrorists may invoke religious rhetoric and

imagery, they are solidly grounded in worldly justifications. Religious or
pseudoreligious terrorists share the belief that their deeds are what God
wants them to do, even what God commands them to do. According to
Magnus Ranstorp, “Despite having vastly different origins, doctrines,
institutions, and practices, these religious extremists are united in their
justification for employing sacred violence either in efforts to defend,
extend or revenge their own communities or for millenarian or mes-
sianic reasons.”3
The following three case studies demonstrate how strongly many reli-
gious terrorists believe that divine guidance gives them the strength to
commit violence for what they consider to be just causes on earth and
in heaven.
 Religious Terrorism  107

Case Study
Christians and Sacred Terrorism
On July 29, 1994, Paul Hill, an antiabortion activist, waited in front
of an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida, for Dr. John Bayard
Britton and his bodyguard James Herman Barrett, a retired Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel, to arrive. As their car entered the parking lot, Hill
first shot Barrett and, after reloading his shotgun, aimed at Britton.
He killed both men. When he was arrested by police officers a few
minutes later, he proclaimed loudly, “I know one thing, no innocent
babies are going to be killed in this clinic today.”4 Well known in radi-
cal antiabortion circles, Hill did not act impulsively, but planned his
lethal attack carefully and, so he felt, under the guidance and as an
instrument of God. From his prison cell, he later described his prepa-
ration and justification:

I was not standing for my own ideas, but God’s truths—the

same truths that have stopped blood baths and similar atrocities
throughout history. Who was I to stand in God’s way? He now
held the door open and promised great blessing for obedience.
Was I not to step through it?
When Monday arrived, I knew I had to decide. When I went
from mentally debating whether to act, in general, to planning a
particular act, I felt some relief. Romans 14:23b says “and what-
ever is not from faith is sin.” If I had not acted when I did, it would
have been a direct and unconscionable sin of disobedience. One
of the first things I told my wife, after the shooting was, “I didn’t
have any choice!” That cry came from the depths of my soul. I
was certain, and still am, that God called me to obey His revealed
will at that particular time.

This conviction did not weaken during his time in prison. In Hill’s own
words,

The inner joy and peace that have flooded my soul since I have
cast off the state’s tyranny makes my 6 × 9 cell a triumphant and
newly liberated kingdom. I shudder at the thought of ever return-
ing to the bondage currently enforced by the state.
(continued)
108 Terrorism

(continued)

But Hill also hoped for worldly rewards, namely, that his deed would
radicalize the pro-life movement. As he put it, “using the force neces-
sary to defend the unborn gives credibility, urgency, and direction to
the pro-life movement which it has lacked, and which it needs in order
to prevail.” He thought that his deed “would also help people to decide
whether to join the battle on the side of those defending abortionists,
or the side of those defending the unborn.”5 Before he was executed
by injection in September 2003, Hill said with a smile on his face, “I
expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to the glory.”
But again, he also thought of immediate goals right here on earth,
when he said, “I think it [killing the man he called ‘the abortionist’
and his bodyguard] was a good thing and instead of people being
shocked at what I did, I think more people should act as I acted.”6 For
Hill, a former minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church, his had been a “defensive action” on
behalf of the unborn in that he prevented his victim from ever killing
defenseless babies again.
His supporters shared his conviction. The day Hill was executed,
one antiabortion extremist declared, “Paul Hill should be honored
today. The abortionists should be executed and the judges that rule
it’s okay to kill children should be run out of Dodge.”7 On its website,
the extreme antiabortion “Army of God” continues to praise Paul Hill
as an “American hero.”

Case Study
Muslims and Sacred Terrorism
On January 7, 2015, two heavily armed brothers, Said and Chérif
Kouachi, stormed into the Paris headquarters of the satirical mag-
azine Charlie Hebdo and shot to death one by one eleven staffers,
calling out several of their victims’ names and shouting again and
again, “Alluhu Akbar!” (Allah is the greatest). As they fled the scene,
they screamed, “We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad! We
have killed Charlie Hebdo.” They claimed to have acted in the
name of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula whose leaders had
 Religious Terrorism  109

put Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier on their

“most wanted” hit list calling jihadists to punish the evil doer and
his collaborators who had published caricatures of the Prophet
repeatedly.
While hiding from the police in an old print plant, Chérif Kouachi
talked to a French radio reporter. Here is the transcript of the
conversation:

CHERIF KOUACHI:  I just want to tell you that we are defenders of the
Prophet. I, Chérif Kouachi, was sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen.
I was over there. I was financed by Imam Anwar al-Awlaki.
JOURNALIST:  OK. How long ago, roughly?
KOUACHI:  A long time ago. Before he was killed.
JOURNALIST:  OK, so you came back to France recently.
KOUACHI:  No, a long time ago. I had to know how I could do things
properly.
JOURNALIST:  Are you just there with your brother?
KOUACHI:  That’s not your problem.
JOURNALIST:  Do you have other people there with you?
KOUACHI:  That’s not your problem.
JOURNALIST:  Do you intend to kill again in the name of Allah? Or not?
KOUACHI:  Have we killed other people in the last few days when you
were looking for us? Go on. Tell me.
JOURNALIST:  You killed journalists.
KOUACHI:  Wait. Did we kill civilians when you were looking for us in
the last two days?
JOURNALIST:  Have you killed anyone this morning?
KOUACHI:  We are not killers. We are defenders of the Prophet. We
are not like you. We defend the Prophet. There, there is no prob-
lem. We can kill. But we don’t kill women. It is you that kill the
children of Muslims in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria. That’s not us.
We have a code of honour, us, in Islam.
JOURNALIST:  But you took vengeance . . .
KOUACHI:  That’s right. We took vengeance. That’s it. You said it all.
We took vengeance.8

Soon thereafter, the brothers were killed by police bullets as they

tried to leave their hideout. Obviously, they considered themselves
martyrs for the glory of Allah and the Prophet Mohammad.
110 Terrorism

Case Study
Jews and Sacred Terrorism
In the early morning of February 25, 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a
well-known resident of the Jewish settlement Kiryat Arba near the
West Bank town of Hebron and an active member of the religious
right-wing organization Kach, went to the shrine at the Tomb of the
Patriarchs in Hebron/al Khali. Built over the site where Abraham, Sara,
and other revered religious figures are buried, the shrine provided
Jews and Muslims separate worship halls. This morning, Goldstein
went right to the Muslim side, pulled an assault rifle from under his
coat, and fired 111 shots, killing twenty-nine Muslim worshipers and
injuring many more before he himself was beaten to death.
Although Goldstein did not leave an explanatory note, the political
realities in the mid-1990s and the teachings of his late spiritual men-
tor Rabbi Meir Kahane explained his immediate political and higher
religious motives. Like others of the so-called messianic right in Israel,
Goldstein was upset about political developments: the Oslo Peace
Agreement negotiated by Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and
PLO leader Yassir Arafat, the freeze on further Jewish settlements
in the occupied territories, and the growing attacks by Palestinian
extremists on Jewish settlements. As Ehud Sprinzak explained,

Goldstein suffered a severe crisis in the months before the Hebron

massacre. Not only was the future of Judea and Samaria put in
great doubt, but the neighboring Palestinians became increas-
ingly aggressive and violent. As the community’s emergency
physician and the doctor responsible for first aid to Jewish vic-
tims of terrorism, Goldstein was exposed to the consequences of
these circumstances more, perhaps, than anybody else. Several
victims of the intensifying Palestinian terrorism died in his hands.9

These, then, were the immediate political grievances. But how did
Goldstein’s religious convictions figure in the Hebron massacre? For
many years a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein ulti-
mately became what Sprinzak called “the new Kahane Jew”10 who
acted in accordance with the glorification of violence that the rabbi
preached. Kahane and his followers “not only responded to violence
but also produced it in new acts of death and destruction, a spiral
of violence that continued long after the zealous rabbi’s death.”11
 Religious Terrorism  111

In Kahane’s “catastrophic messianism,” the central point is that “the

Messiah will come in a great conflict in which Jews triumph and
praise God through their successes . . . Anything that humiliated
the Jews was not only an embarrassment but a retrograde motion
in the world’s progress toward salvation.”12
For Kahane, both Arabs and secular Jews prevented the Israeli
people’s redemption that would come only after all Arabs were
removed from the sacred land of Israel. According to Sprinzak,
Goldstein believed in Kahane’s tenet:

There are numerous indications that following the 1990 assas-

sination of the rabbi, whom Goldstein loved dearly, the con-
secutive disasters after the 1992 elections, especially the Oslo
agreement, Goldstein started to slowly move into a desper-
ate messianic defiance. He felt that only a catastrophic act of
supreme Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of the name of God)
could change, perhaps, the course of history and put it back on
the messianic track [Kahane’s prescription for redemption]. A
responsible person who never was trigger happy, he had to carry
out this exemplary mission.13

In other words, Goldstein unloaded his shotgun on worshiping Muslim

Arabs in the conviction that this was the will of God.
While many Israelis condemned Baruch Goldstein for his lethal
act of terrorism, he was an instant hero for members of the religious
right. At his burial, one fellow settler said, “There’s no question about
it, he was a great man. There’s no question about it.”14 Another settler
added, “This was desperation for a man who was a moral man for
every instant of his life.”15

Defending the Faith in “Cosmic Wars”

The similarities among the three cases are striking in that terrorist vio-
lence was sanctioned by Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders of extreme
movements and carried out by their followers in the conviction that they
acted on behalf of God and in defense of their faith, tradition, right, and
interest. The men who committed the lethal acts of terrorism lived seem-
ingly normal and moral lives before they resorted to violence against what
they perceived as forces of evil. Such conversions can occur when persons
slip into what Albert Bandura has described as “moral disengagement”
112 Terrorism
that “is accomplished by cognitively restructuring the moral value of kill-
ing, so that the killing can be done free from self-censoring restraints.”16
And since religious terrorists believe they follow God’s orders, they can
displace responsibility for their deeds. According to Bandura, when it
comes to displacement of responsibility, “the higher the authorities, the
more legitimacy, respect, and coercive power they command, and the
more amenable are people to defer to them.”17 Once terrorists reach this
psychological stage, they are convinced they must fight “satanic” ene-
mies in a “cosmic war.”18 According to Mark Juergensmeyer,

The process of creating satanic enemies is part of the construc-

tion of an image of cosmic war . . . When the opponent rejects
one’s moral or spiritual position; when the enemy appears to hold
the power to completely annihilate one’s community, one’s cul-
ture, and oneself; when the opponent’s victory would be unthink-
able; and when there seems no way to defeat the enemy in human
terms—all of these conditions increase the likelihood that one will
envision one’s opponent as a superhuman foe, a cosmic enemy.
The process of satanization is aimed at reducing the power of one’s
opponents and discrediting them. By belittling and humiliating
them—by making them subhuman—one is asserting one’s own
superior moral powers.19

Religious terrorists draw strength from their conviction that they are
totally right, good, and moral and that their enemy is totally wrong,
evil, and immoral. As Jessica Stern has pointed out, “religious terrorism
attempts to destroy moral ambiguities.” The idea of defeating the evil and
Satan in an existential battle for God was central to Paul Hill’s, Baruch
Goldstein’s, and the Kouachi brothers’ convictions. When he decided to
kill Dr. Britton and his guard, Paul Hill considered the “abortionist’s knife
as [the] ‘cutting edge of Satan’s current attack’ on the world.”20 When he
decided to kill worshiping Muslim Arabs, Baruch Goldstein had come
“to the conclusion that unless stopped by a most dramatic act that would
shake the foundations of Earth and please God, the peace process would
disconfirm the dream of redemption.”21 When the Kouachis shot their way
into the Charlie Hebdo offices and killed staffers, they considered them-
selves defenders of the Prophet Muhammad willing to die as avengers.
Audrey Kurth Cronin lists the following five reasons that make religious
terrorists more dangerous than right-wing, left-wing, and nationalist/
separatist extremists:

•• Religious terrorists believe that they are involved in a “Manichaean

struggle of good against evil.” All nonbelievers are legitimate targets.
•• Religious terrorists desire “to please the perceived commands [to
commit violence] of a deity.”
 Religious Terrorism  113
•• Religious terrorists have a complete disregard for “secular values and
laws.”
•• Religious terrorists are alienated from the existing social system. “They
are not trying to correct the system . . . they are trying to replace it.”
•• Religious terrorists have “dispersed popular support in civil society.”
For example, “groups such as al-Qaeda are able to find support from
some Muslim nongovernmental foundations throughout the world,
making it a truly global network.”22

Are some practitioners of sacred terrorism “evil” and others perhaps

not? After interviewing many religious extremists and their supporters,
Stern made a distinction: “Few of the terrorists described in these pages
are single-mindedly thoughtful villains like those who masterminded the
September 11 attacks. In some cases the ethical basis of their actions is
complicated.”23 More specifically, she made the following observation:

Although none of the terrorism described in this book can be

described as morally acceptable, at least in my view, the pro-life doc-
tor killers probably come closest and are worth examining in detail
for that reason. Unlike the September 11 hijackers, the doctor killers
are discriminating: they target individuals who, in their view, are in
the business of murder.24

But considering that for bin Laden and Al Qaeda or al-Baghdadi and
ISIS, as well as like-minded individuals and groups, Americans collec-
tively are guilty of killing innocent Muslims, the difference between the
killer of one doctor, several worshipers, and those responsible for the
mass killings of 9/11 is in the number of victims, not in the moral distinc-
tion between justifiable and nonjustifiable murder.

The Proliferation of Religious Violence

For David Rapoport, the 9/11 attacks and similar violence by Al Qaeda
and like-minded groups and cells are part of a wave of religious terrorism
that began at the end of the 1970s and overlapped the “New Left Wave,”
which, apart from a few exceptions, disappeared after the end of the
Cold War. Since the “Anarchist Wave” (beginning in the 1880s) and the
“Anti-Colonial Wave” (beginning in the 1920s) preceded the “New Left
Wave” (beginning in the late 1960s), he considers the “Religious Wave”
as the fourth in the history of modern terrorism, and Islam the most
important religion in this latest period—but not the only one.25 Unlike
Rapoport, who names three near simultaneous events (the “Iranian
Islamic Revolution in 1979, the start of the Islamic hijri calendar, and
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan”) as starting points of the “Fourth
Wave,” Mark Sedgwick considers 1967 as the crucial date:
114 Terrorism
It was the shockingly sudden and complete defeat of the Arab armies
by Israel in that year that began the shattering of the Arab nationalist
dream incarnated by Egypt’s President Nasser, a process completed
by President Sadat’s concessions at Camp David in 1979 . . . It was
after 1967 that the re-Islamization of Egyptian society started. The
Arabs who went to fight for Islam in Afghanistan were in the mid-
dle of the wave, not at the start of it. The fourth wave, then, started
not in Iran or Afghanistan, but in Palestine and Israel, in almost the
same year that the third wave started in Europe and—to a lesser
extent—in America.26

Like Rapoport, this writer considers the Iranian Islamic revolution and
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (not the start of the fifteenth hijri cen-
tury) as triggers of the “Fourth Wave,” not the Arab–Israeli war of 1967.
While the “re-Islamization of Egyptian society started”27 after that war,
the more immediate result was the establishment of secular Palestinian
terrorist organizations that fit into the third or “New Left Wave” and
actually cooperated with European Marxist terrorist groups.
But whatever the exact date of the jihadist movement’s birth, there
is no denying that religiously motivated and justified political violence
of this sort has increased dramatically in the last several decades. As
Table 5.1 shows, of the five nonstate entities responsible for most ter-
rorist attacks worldwide in 2016, three were organizations claiming
to fight in the name of pure Islam. Houthi rebels, Shias supported by
Iran and Hezbollah, fought in the Yemini civil war against Sunnis,
supported by Saudi Arabia. The Indian Maoist Party was the only non-
Muslim group among the top five.

Alienation, Humiliation, and Fear

Although Sedgwick argues that Al Qaeda’s short-term or immediate
goals are more political than religious and “owe more to European radi-
calism than to Islam,” he also recognizes that the organization is “clearly
marked by Islam, and not only in its ultimate [religiously defined] aims.

Table 5.1  Nonstate Entities Committing Most Terrorist Attacks in 2016

Attacks Fatalities Injuries Kidnapped/ Hostages

Islamic State 1,133 9,114 7,671 8,379

Taliban 848 3,615 3,572 1,498
Maoists, India 336 174 141 171
Al-Shabaab 332 740 921 375
Houthi Rebels 267 374 568 137
Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
 Religious Terrorism  115
Al Qaeda’s potential constituency is the world’s Muslims, and the means
it uses to mobilize support in this constituency are derived from Islam.”28
The connection between shared Islamic concepts and images and terms
on the one hand and the need to recruit members and sympathizers on
the other is important in that it provides the movement with a large
pool of potential supporters. Al Qaeda is not unique in this respect as
al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, ISIS, and like-minded groups demonstrate.
Juergensmeyer notes with respect to all kinds of religious movements,

The groups that have made a long-term impact, such as Hamas, the
Khalistan movement [in India], Christian Identity, and the Jewish right
wing, have used violence not only to draw attention to themselves but
also to articulate the concerns of those within their wider cultures.
Radical though they may be, they have represented widely held
feelings of alienation and oppression, and for this reason their stri-
dent language and violent acts have been considered by their cohorts
as perhaps intemperate but understandable.29

Those who have studied religious terrorists seem to agree that under-
neath their tough words and deeds, there is a great deal of alienation,
humiliation, and even fear. Stern concluded that the grievances expressed
by religious terrorists “often mask a deeper kind of angst and a deeper
kind of fear. Fear of a godless universe, of chaos, of loose rules, and of
loneliness.”30 It is not unusual that religious extremists are frustrated by
the loss or pending loss of their privileged station in society. Thus, radi-
cal elements in the Christian Identity movement do not hide that they
hate African Americans and Jews, whom they blame for all the ills in
American society and in particular “for pornography, for the lack of
morality, for the economic situation in America, for minority rights over
white rights, and for kicking god out of schools.”31 Since many of the
rank-and-file members of such groups have at best finished high school,
work in low-wage jobs, or are unemployed, they blame nonwhite, non-
Christian groups for their predicament. In other societies, for example in
the Middle East, the frustration of university-educated males stems often
from their inability to find high-level jobs that require the skills they have.
After her conversations with Kerry Noble, a leader in the Covenant,
the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, a Christian Identity group, and
many religious extremists abroad, Stern concluded,

The grievances Noble described were similar to those of religious

extremists around the world. Al Qaeda’s complaints about the new
world order sound remarkably similar to Kerry Noble’s for example.
Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second in command, accuses
Western forces of employing international institutions such as the
United Nations, multinational corporations, and international news
116 Terrorism
agencies as weapons in their “new crusade” to dominate the Islamic
world. They often reject feminism in favor of “family values,”
whether their families are in Oklahoma or Peshawar.32

Real or perceived humiliation, too, seems to drive males into violent

groups. Thus, extremists like Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri believe
that “violence is a way to cure Muslim youth of the pernicious effects of
centuries of humiliation at the hands of the West.” Similarly, Christian
Identity extremists join violent groups to regain their masculinity and
forget that they were humiliated by gender and racial equality. Thus,
Kerry Noble told Stern that “he felt strong for the first time in his life
when he joined a violent, racist cult.” He said he had been humiliated
from elementary school on, when he was forced to play on the girls’
side in physical education classes.33 And violent Jewish individuals and
groups as well “see the peace process and giving up the occupied territo-
ries as humiliating to Jews.”34
Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, or devoted to idi-
osyncratic sects, religious extremists and fanatics resort to violence in
opposition to the overbearing, permissive, change-oriented, postmodern
world that spreads secular values and in the process threatens and even
destroys their way of life. This explains why the immediate objectives of
these groups and individuals are political. They choose the path of violence
in efforts to regain control of their environment and remake the world
around them according to their vision in order to achieve their ultimate
religious ideal—eventually. In the process, though, they distance them-
selves from the mainstream tenets of their respective religions. Even when
aware that they are out of step with the mainstream of their faiths, religious
extremists in various parts of the world tend to insist that “their groups are
in fact revivals of the original forms of their traditions.”35 Unfortunately,
the targets of religious terrorism are often unable or unwilling to distin-
guish between nonviolent mainstream religions and their teachings on the
one hand and the “new religions” of extremist leaders that justify terror-
ism in the name of God on the other. As a result, a whole religion may be
stereotyped by the image of its most extreme fringe groups.
Well before the 9/11 attacks, terrorism scholar Magnus Ranstorp
recognized the causes and dangers of the “virtual explosion of religious
terrorism in recent times” when he stated:

The uncertainty and unpredictability in the present environment as

the world searches for a new world order, amidst an increasingly
complex global environment with ethnic and nationalist conflicts,
provides many religious terrorist groups with the opportunity and
ammunition to shape history according to their divine duty, cause,
and mandate while it indicates to others that the end of the time itself
is near.36
 Religious Terrorism  117
This assessment sums up the setting that is conducive to the prolifera-
tion of international religious terrorism and the domestic variety as
well. Indeed, many seemingly domestic religious terrorists—for exam-
ple, adherents of Christian Identity in the United States or Al Qaeda-like
groups in Arab countries (e.g., Hezbollah)—are driven by grievances that
transcend the domestic context. Ironically, in many instances, the same
religious extremists, who resent what they perceive as the negative effects
of globalization, exploit vehicles of globalization, most of all global com-
munication and transnational arms and drug trafficking, to finance their
organizations and terrorist operations.
However, in spite of the long history of terrorism in all religious set-
tings, among the adherents of the same and different religions, and in
spite of the numerous similarities between these violent fanatics, the self-
proclaimed warriors in the name of Islam pose at the present time the
greatest threat because of the large number of individuals, cells, organi-
zations, and even networks devoted to the so-called jihadi cause. The
following section therefore deals exclusively with the theoretical under-
pinnings of the jihadi movement, its justification of violence, and the
impact of jihadi ideology on contemporary terrorists’ holy war against
infidels in their own and other religions.

The Jihadi Movement and Political Violence

Shortly before the 2008 presidential election, during an appearance
on NBC TV’s Meet the Press program, former Secretary of State Colin
Powell criticized opponents of Senator Barack Obama who claimed that
he was a Muslim. The retired general added, “What if he was? Is there
something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is
no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old
Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?”37
This was a much-needed civics lesson on tolerance and on the fundamen-
tal value of equality in a nation of immigrants. As Mark Juergensmeyer
noted, “Most Muslims regard Islam as a religion of peace, and Christians
and Jews regard their own religion in the same way.”38
Yet, it is indisputable that since the mid-1990s, and even more so since
the attacks of September 11, 2001, the most serious terrorist threat has
been closely tied to the most extreme strain of Muslim revivalism. After
9/11, there was a sudden surge of interest in Islam in the United States and
elsewhere in the West. University courses on Islam were oversubscribed
and books on the subject were written and bought in unprecedented
numbers. But most Americans were not interested and remained clueless.
In 2006, Jeff Stein, the national security editor at Congressional
Quarterly, concluded his series of interviews with Washington’s coun-
terterrorism officials in Congress, the FBI, and other agencies with the
question, “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”
118 Terrorism
He was not looking for theological explanations, but rather some basic
knowledge about the rivalries between the two groupings and their polit-
ical strengths and differences in Iraq and other settings. As he reported,

Most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That

includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also
members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy
agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?39

One would assume that none of these clueless counterterrorism experts

knew any details about the ideology of those they fought in the “war
against terror.” The following section explains the various constituent
groups within the overall Muslim population and, in particular, the reli-
giopolitical underpinnings of the ideas that fuel the violent mission of Al
Qaeda Central’s leaders as well as like-minded groups and individuals.

Muslims
Of the about 1.3 billion Muslims around the world, 85 percent are
Sunnis and the rest are Shias (or Shi’ites). They all follow the teachings
of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qu’ran. The two branches of Islam
split after Muhammad’s death, and to this day Sunnis believe that the
most competent among his companions were right in succeeding him,
whereas Shias believe that Muhammad’s descendants were his spiritual
heirs, with his son-in-law Ali first in line. Vali Nasr has explained that the
Sunni–Shia division “somewhat parallels the Protestant–Catholic differ-
ence in Western Christianity.”40 In the post-9/11 era, there is particularly
in the West a notion that Islam is the problem, that Islam encourages
violence. But John Esposito cautioned that, “in discussing political Islam,
it is important to distinguish between mainstream and extremist move-
ments. The former participate within the political system, whereas the
latter engage in terrorism in the name of Islam.”41 The vast majority of
Muslims do not agree with their extremist and violent brethren, espe-
cially not when the religious fanatics harm women, children, and old
people or attack fellow Muslims and harm Muslim interests.

Islamists
Within the Muslim population at large, Islamists, who strive for the
establishment or strengthening of the Islamic state on the basis of Islamic
law, constitute the next largest component on both the Sunni and the
Shia sides. Fueled by a strong religious revival since the 1960s and grow-
ing dissatisfaction with their authoritarian, pro-Western governments,
religion, mosques, and mullahs became a rallying point when there was
no space allowed for any other. The use of the mosque–mullah network
 Religious Terrorism  119
was critical in the Iranian revolution, as have been private (nongovern-
mental) mosques and their imams in Egypt and many other countries.42
Most Islamists support peaceful change, but a growing minority
believes that violence will advance their cause. The oldest and most
influential Islamist movement is the transnational Muslim Brotherhood
that was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna in opposition
to the British-backed monarchy. In the mid-twentieth century, it spread
throughout the Arab world and took root in countries such as Algeria,
Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Syria, and Tunis. Officially, the
Brotherhood has claimed to oppose violence but it makes an exception for
Palestinians in their fight against Israelis. In reality, however, the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt and affiliates elsewhere have resorted to terrorist
means in various settings and situations. As the 9/11 Commission Report
noted, “In some countries, its [the Brotherhood’s] oppositional role is
nonviolent; in others, especially Egypt, it has alternated between violent
and nonviolent struggle with the regime.”43 In some instances, the most
violent elements formed their own units within the Brotherhood; in other
cases, they established separate and more extremist groups.

Salafis and Wahhabis

The Salafi movement within the larger Muslim population comprises the
most puritanical form of Sunni Islam and promotes the return to
the original teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.
Some observers have compared this school of thought to the seventeenth-
century Puritan movements in England and America. Salafis believe that
the Qu’ran and the Prophet Muhammad’s practices (Hadith), not the later
interpretations of these sources by Islamic scholars, are the most authentic
guidelines for the devout Muslim. Like other puritanical movements, Salafis
believe that the end of Islam’s golden age, when Muslim rule extended into
Europe, was caused by their own “rulers and people who turned away
from the true path of their religion, thereby leaving Islam vulnerable to
encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land, wealth, and even
souls.”44 Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban movement reflected
best what the Salafi school of thought envisions as the societal ideal.
The most influential Salafis are Saudi clerics who preach an old ver-
sion of Salafism called Wahhabism, an eighteenth-century movement
named after its founder, Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab. Since the
modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia was established in 1932, Wahhabi
clerics have enjoyed a great deal of influence on all aspects of their
country’s religious, political, social, and cultural realities. The symbiotic
relationship between Saudi rulers and Wahhabi leaders spread religious
puritanism and intolerance throughout the kingdom, and it also bought
the ruling House of Saud protection from violent upheaval arising from
Salafi opposition to Westernized members of the royal family and to the
120 Terrorism
influence of the West on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. This arrangement
came with a price tag: The Saudi government and wealthy Saudis financed
the spread of Wahhabi militancy throughout the Middle East as well as
in other parts of the world, including Europe and the United States. In
more recent times, moreover, Saudi Arabia has produced growing num-
bers of terrorists. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were citizens of
Saudi Arabia. And records of foreign nationals who entered Iraq between
August 2006 and August 2007 to fight within the Islamic State of Iraq,
an Al Qaeda-affiliated group, revealed that of the 595 entries that listed
the nationality of these jihadis, 41 percent were of Saudi Arabian origin.45

Jihadis
Although most Salafis do not engage in violence and do not support the ter-
rorist acts of fellow Salafis, today’s most dangerous and by far most numerous
terrorist groups and cells are part of the Salafi movement. Marc Sageman
speaks of the “global Salafi jihad” as a revivalist movement “stretching from
Morocco to the Philippines, eliminating present national boundaries.” He
characterizes Al Qaeda as the “vanguard” of the jihadi movement.46

The Meaning of Jihad

When Osama bin Laden and four other leaders of jihadi groups in
Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in
February 1998, it was titled “The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against
the Jews and Crusaders.” In the text, bin Laden explained that “reli-
gious scholars throughout Islamic history have agreed that jihad is
an individual duty when an enemy attacks Muslim countries . . . After
faith, there is no greater duty than fighting an enemy who is corrupt-
ing religion and the world.”47 Bin Laden, other Al Qaeda leaders, and
their followers, supporters, and sympathizers around the globe use
the term jihad frequently to describe their terrorist mission and deeds.
Not surprisingly, the term has negative connotations in the West.
The literal meaning of jihad is striving or struggling in the path of
God and the Prophet Muhammad. And there is a distinction between
the greater jihad, as personal spiritual and moral struggle, and the
lesser jihad, as a violent struggle for the good of Islam. This distinc-
tion goes back to Muhammad, who reportedly said, “We return from
the lesser jihad [warfare] to the greater jihad [the personal strug-
gle to live a moral life].”48 As for the more controversial of the two,
Sageman explains,
 Religious Terrorism  121

The lesser jihad is the violent struggle for Islam. Traditional

Islamic jurisprudence saw jihad as an obligation in a world divided
into the land of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the land of conflict (dar
al-harb). The Muslim community, the umma, was required to
engage in a jihad to expand dar al-Islam throughout the world so
that all humankind could benefit from living within a just political
social order. One school of interpretation diluted this belligerence
by introducing the notion of land treaty (dar al-suhl), which had
concluded a truce with dar al-Islam and was not subject to jihad.49

When it comes to the belligerent or lesser jihad, there is another

distinction between defensive and offensive jihad—the first against
intruders in Muslim territory, such as the mujahideens’ fight against
the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan or against American and other
Western invaders of Iraq; the second to conquer non-Muslim land
and convert infidels.

In another expert’s view,

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda symbolize a global jihad, a network

of extremist groups threatening Muslim countries and the West,
whose roots have proved deeper and more pervasive than most had
anticipated. This new global threat, which emerged from the jihad
against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan, has exploded
across the Muslim world from Central, South, and Southeast Asia to
Europe and America.50

In terms of personnel, organization, and tactics, the origins of the global

jihadi movement can indeed be traced back to the Arab mujahideens’
fight against Soviet invaders and against Afghan government troops in
the 1980s, but the well-developed ideology of militant jihad that is at the
core of the theoretical underpinnings, teachings, and actions of Al Qaeda
and others in the contemporary jihadi movement has much deeper roots
as more recently the endless stream of ISIS publications attest to.

Jihadi Ideology
Utilizing a “citation analysis” of texts available in print and on jihadi
websites to identify the most influential theorists in the movement and
differentiating between leading medieval and modern radical thinkers,
two scholars found that in the first category the works by Ibn Taymiyya
122 Terrorism
are most popular among contemporary jihadis, whereas Sayyid Qutb is
most influential among modern thinkers in this respect.51
The texts authored by Taymiyya, a jurist living in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, offer a universal rationale for fighting foreign
invaders—at his time a call to fight against the Mongols or Tartars and
today a perfect justification of violent jihad against Westerners that are
present and/or have interests in the Muslim world. Taymiyya held that
fighting invaders was not only the right but the duty of every devoted
Muslim. He wrote furthermore that Mogul rulers who had converted to
Islam were not real Muslims and that they and any other Muslim group
not fully observing Islamic law must be defeated—a license to fight a
holy war against Muslim rulers and regimes that violate the tenets of
puritan Islam.
As for modern jihadi theorists calling for jihad against non-Muslims
and the overthrow of local apostate regimes, the dominant ideologue
remains to this day the late Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, perhaps the last of
the influential laypersons in the jihadi movement as compared to trained
Islamic and jihadi theological experts who are dominant today. The turn-
ing point in Qutb’s life was his two-year stay in the United States in the
late 1940s, during which he began his metamorphosis from admirer of
America and the West to jihadi revolutionary. Rejecting what he per-
ceived as the moral decadence and materialism of Western societies,
he joined the Muslim Brotherhood upon his return to Egypt, rose to
be the organization’s leading ideologue, and eventually clashed with the
government. Allegedly involved in a plot to assassinate Egyptian presi-
dent Gamal Abdel Nasser, Qutb was imprisoned and tortured but later
allowed to write. In his most influential work, “Milestones,” a mani-
festo of revolutionary religiopolitical Islam, Qutb declared that both
Marxism and the West’s model of democracy and capitalism had failed
and that the world was harmed most of all by the loss of moral values. It
was the responsibility of true Muslims to bring the world back onto the
right path; this, however, was possibly only after self-purification within
the Muslim community. For Qutb, the world consisted of two camps:
(1) Islam and (2) jihiliyya, the part characterized by barbarism, deca-
dence, and unbelief—a state that existed in the world before the Prophet
Muhammad delivered his divine message. According to Qutb, the choice
is between those two camps—between the good and the evil, God and
Satan. For him, far more people, Muslims included, are on the side of
jihiliyya and therefore all Muslims have the duty to “take up arms in this
fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever wor-
thy of destruction.”52 Qutb wrote of the need “to initiate the movement
of Islamic revival in some Muslim country” that would set “an example
in order to fashion an example that will eventually lead Islam to its des-
tiny of world domination.”53 For this to happen, he hoped for a vanguard
that would translate his ideas into reality.
 Religious Terrorism  123
These ideas came to guide contemporary jihadi terrorists, especially
the leading strata—Qutb’s vanguard. Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri,
who later rose to become Al Qaeda’s second in command, was on the
frontline in Qutb’s vanguard in that “the same year [1966] that Sayyid
Qutb went to the gallows, al-Zawahiri helped form an underground cell
devoted to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state. He
was fifteen years old.”54 Osama bin Laden, too, came to embrace the
tenets of Qutb’s extremist teachings, as did other leaders and followers
in the global jihadi network. Indeed, Qutb’s younger brother and keeper
of his legacy was reportedly one of bin Laden’s advisors.55

Excerpts from Communications by Osama bin

Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri
From bin Laden’s post-9/11 Message, October 7, 2001
God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest
buildings, praise and blessings to Him. America has been filled with
terror from north to south and from east to west, praise and blessings
to God. What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we
have tasted for decades . . . So when God Almighty granted success
to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them
to destroy America utterly. I pray to God Almighty to lift them up to the
highest Paradise.

From bin Laden’s Remarks during Interview with

Al-Jazeera, October 21, 2001
I say that the battle isn’t between the al-Qaeda organization and the
global Crusaders. Rather, the battle is between Muslims—the people
of Islam—and the global Crusaders . . . These young men that have
sacrificed themselves in New York and Washington, these are the
ones that speak the truth about the conscience of our umna, they are
its living conscience, which sees that it is imperative to take revenge
against the evildoers and transgressors and criminals and terrorists,
who terrorize the true believers. So, not all terrorism is restrained or
ill-advised. There is terrorism that is ill-advised and there is terrorism
that is a good act . . . So, America and Israel practice ill-advised ter-
rorism, and we practice good terrorism, because it deters those from
killing our children in Palestine and other places.
(continued)
124 Terrorism

(continued)

From a Taped bin Laden Message, Addressed to

the American People, Aired by Al-Jazeera,
January 19, 2006
You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will
not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out
jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us
is under the shadows of swords. Don’t let your strength and modern
arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and
steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet
Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy
and now they are nothing. In that there is a lesson for you.

From an al-Zawahiri Videotape and Remarks Addressed

to President-elect Barack Obama, November 19, 2008
As for the crimes of America which await you [President-elect
Obama], it appears that you continue to be captive to the same crimi-
nal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims.
The Muslim Ummah received with extreme bitterness your hypocriti-
cal statements to and stances towards Israel, which confirmed to
the Ummah that you have chosen a stance of hostility to Islam and
Muslims . . . you have climbed the rungs of the presidency to take
over the leadership of the greatest criminal force in the history of
mankind and the leadership of the most violent Crusade ever against
the Muslims. And in you and in Colin Powell, [Condoleezza] Rice and
your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him)
concerning “House Negroes” are confirmed.
You also must appreciate, as you take over the presidency of
America during its Crusade against Islam and Muslims, that you are
neither facing individuals nor organizations, but are facing a jihadi
awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire
Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and
country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see.56

From the 2014 Announcement of Declaring

the Establishment of the ISIS Caliphate under the
Leadership of Caliph Ibrahim (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi)
So rush O Muslims and gather around your khalifah [caliphate], so
that you may return as you once were for ages, kings of the earth and
 Religious Terrorism  125

knights of war. Come so that you may be honored and esteemed,

living as masters with dignity. Know that we fight over a religion that
Allah promised to support. We fight for an ummah to which Allah has
given honor, esteem, and leadership empowerment and strength on
the earth. Come O Muslims to your honor, to your victory. By Allah, if
you disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all
the other garbage and ideas from the west, and rush to your religion
and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and
west will submit to you. This is the promise of Allah to you. This is the
promise of Allah to you [. . .]
O soldiers of the Islamic State, Allah (the Exalted) ordered us with
jihad and promised us with victory but He did not make us responsible
for victory. Indeed, Allah (the Exalted) blessed you today with this vic-
tory, thus we announced the khilāfah in compliance with the order of
Allah (the Exalted). We announced it because – by Allah’s grace – we
have its essentials.
By Allah’s permission, we are capable of establishing the khilāfah.
So we carry out the order of Allah (the Exalted) and we are justified –
if Allah wills – and we do not care thereafter what happens, even if we
only remain for one day or one hour, and to Allah belongs the matter
before and after.57

Although there are dozens of modern and premodern theorists who

have contributed or added to one or the other aspect of jihadi ideology,
Qutb has remained for the time being the most influential one. Important
here is that all influential theorists are hardliners and are in favor of vio-
lence. According to Sageman, “Salafi ideology determines its [the jihadi
movement’s] mission, sets its goals, and guides its tactics.”58 Even the
training of self-described holy warriors and martyrs in the service of jihad
is guided by this extreme ideology. After studying the doctrines for ter-
rorist training as articulated by leading theorists, Brynjar Lia concluded,

When preparing recruits for waging a terrorist campaign or partici-

pating in a protracted guerrilla war, the jihadi theorists unanimously
agreed that ideological indoctrination and spiritual preparation
should take precedence over physical and military training. In order
to produce the kind of battle-hardened, martyrdom-seeking fighters
that have filled the ranks of jihadi groups of the past, the jihadi theo-
rists devote extraordinary attention to spiritual training.59

Not only recruits are the targets of the missionary fanaticism that perme-
ates the jihadi movement. Wherever these extremists get a foothold, they
126 Terrorism
force their convictions onto the population. Reporting from Iraq in the
summer of 2008, Alissa J. Rubin wrote,

Diyala residents and officials say [that] militants from Al Qaeda in

Mesopotamia have worked to instill their radical Islamist vision in
the population. Almost immediately after moving in four years ago,
they began holding religion classes for men and women. “Even in
Baquba, my niece went to some; she was shaken,” said Shamaa Abad
al-Kader, the headmistress of a school for girls in Muqdadiya who
also serves on Diyala’s provincial council. “They gathered people in
the villages; they brought women into Baquba and gave them lec-
tures on how to behave,” Ms. Kader said. “These Al Qaeda men
were going into the schools, into the mosques and they forced people
to listen to them. My niece said the man who came to her school had
a long beard and a sword with him.”60

In Afghanistan, jihadis of the resurging Taliban used violence to force

fellow Afghans to live according to their extremist Salafi convictions, as
they had during their fundamentalist movement’s five-year reign. During
that period, girls were not allowed to get an education, but this changed
after the Taliban was toppled in the wake of the post-9/11 invasion by
a U.S.-led coalition force. When the Taliban regained strength in former
strongholds like Kandahar, teachers and female students became the par-
ticular targets of brutal and often lethal attacks. In one incident, Taliban
militants doused a group of school girls and their teachers with acid, sev-
eral of whom were hospitalized with burnt faces. When arrested, the men
confessed that “a high-ranking member of the Taliban had paid the mili-
tants 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($1,275) for each of the girls they man-
aged to burn.”61 The Kabul government called the attack “un-Islamic,”
but for Taliban jihadis this sort of terrorism was part of their holy fight
to resurrect Afghanistan as a model of pure Salafi society.
To sum up, terrorism in the name of God has been practiced by the
adherents of all major religions and by pseudoreligious sects. Today,
however, jihadis commit far more and far more lethal terrorist attacks
and pose by far the greatest threat inside and outside the Muslim world.

Homegrown Jihadis in the West—Including the

United States
When tackling the threat of terrorism by homegrown or immigrated jihadis
in the West in the post-9/11 years, terrorism experts pointed to the dif-
ferences between the Muslim diaspora in Western Europe and American
Muslims. The greater degree of radicalization of and violence by second-
and third-generation Muslims in Europe in comparison to their American
counterparts was not simply explained by pointing to greater vigilance
 Religious Terrorism  127
on the part of American law enforcement. Rather, American Muslims’
societal integration was seen as a protective wall against indoctrination and
recruitment by jihadi propaganda and activities. “The nation as a melting
pot, the American Dream, individualism, and grass-root voluntarism—
these cultural values make American Muslims less likely than their
European counterparts to accept the interpretation that there is a war
against Islam,” Marc Sageman wrote seven years after 9/11. “It seems
easier to be anti-American from afar than from within.”62 In a 2007
report, Brian Jenkins noted that the

absence of significant terrorist attacks or even advanced terror-

ist plots in the United States since 9/11 is good news that cannot
entirely be explained by increased intelligence and heightened secu-
rity. It suggests America’s Muslim population may be less suscep-
tible than Europe’s Muslim population, if not entirely immune to
jihadist ideology.

But he also cautioned that “it requires not majorities, but only handfuls
to carry out terrorist attacks.”63
This last point was driven home in 2009, when two lethal acts of ter-
rorism and six foiled plots carried out or planned by American Muslims
added up to the by far largest number of such cases in the United States in
a single year. In the period from September 11, 2001, through December
31, 2008, there were a total of twelve cases in which American Muslims
were charged with plotting terrorist strikes within the United States com-
pared to six such cases in 2009 alone. None of these plotters was able to
carry out their attacks. But in addition to the six foiled plots in 2009, ter-
rorists succeeded in two cases: The most deadly of the two actual attacks
occurred on November 5, when Army Major Nidal Hasan went on a
shooting spree at the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas, killing thirteen per-
sons and injuring twenty-eight others. Five months earlier, an American
Muslim convert shot and killed a person and injured another at a military
recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas. In between, a potentially
most devastating attack on New York City’s subway system was pre-
vented, when Najibulla Zazi, a permanent resident of the United States,
was arrested for trying to build and detonate a weapon of mass destruc-
tion. Two fellow American plotters, former high school classmates, were
also charged as were several coconspirators abroad.
Shocking, too, was the failed bombing attempt at Times Square in
the heart of Manhattan on May 1, 2010, a Saturday, when many New
Yorkers and tourists populated the area. Around 6:30 p.m., an alert street
vendor noticed smoke escaping from the inside of a sport utility vehicle
(SUV) that was parked close by at 45th street. Then he heard the sound
of what seemed like a firecracker. He alerted a mounted police officer.
Within minutes, the police began to evacuate the area in and around
128 Terrorism
Times Square. Luckily, the home-made bomb device inside the SUV did
not explode as planned. Less than fifty-four hours later, Faisal Shahzad,
the would-be bomber and recruit of the Pakistani Taliban, was arrested
at Kennedy Airport before he could leave the United States for Pakistan.
Shahzad, a thirty-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, came from
Pakistan as a nineteen-year-old, had studied, worked as a financial
analyst, bought his own home, married, and became the father of two
children. He did not come to the United States to escape poverty. As the
son of a military officer, he had enjoyed a privileged upbringing in a
rather liberal environment. When studying in the United States, he was
interested in luxury cars, women, and drinking. By 2006, Shahzad had
found religion and bought into the prevalent view on jihadi websites that
he frequented, namely, “that the West is at war with Islam, and Muslims
are suffering humiliation because they have strayed from their religious
duty to fight back.”64
As catastrophic terrorism hit Western Europe hard in the second dec-
ade of the twenty-first century the United States experienced the two
most lethal terrorist attacks since 9/11 as well.
On December 2, 2015, Saed Rizwan Farook (age twenty-nine) and
his wife Tashfeen Malik (also age twenty-nine) left their six-month-old
daughter with his mother pretending to have a doctor’s appointment.
Instead, they drove from their home in the city of Redlands, California,
to a training session and Christmas party at San Bernardino County’s
Health Department, where the husband worked as an inspector. After
attending the event alone for a while Farook left abruptly. Sometime
later the couple, wearing face masks and tactical gear and carrying semi-
automatic pistols and rifles, returned to the festively decorated venue. In
quick succession they shot and killed fourteen people and injured twenty-
two before fleeing the scene. After a dramatic car chase, the couple were
shot and killed by police. As it turned out, the attackers had left bags
with explosives in the building before the shooting spree.
According to FBI investigators Farook, a native U.S. citizen of
Pakistani descent, and his wife, born and raised in Pakistan, had com-
municated long before their engagement and marriage about the need
for jihad and the glory of martyrdom. As FBI Director James Comey put
it, the two perpetrators were “consuming poison on the Internet” and
both had become radicalized “before they started courting or dating each
other online” and “before the emergence of ISIL [ISIS].”65 Nevertheless,
before their attack Farook and Malik left Facebook messages pledging
their allegiance to ISIS leader al-Baghdadi; ISIS in turn declared the cou-
ple “soldiers of the caliphate.” The couple brought a baby into the world
knowing all along that the little girl would grow up without her parents.
Even more deadly was the mass shooting in Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub
on June 12, 2016, where Omar Mateen (age twenty-nine), a U.S.-born
citizen of Afghan descent, shot and killed forty-nine people and injured
 Religious Terrorism  129
fifty-three more over a period of about three hours. Between his attacks,
Mateen called and talked to 9-1-1 operators, personnel at a local TV
station, and hostage negotiators of the Orlando police department. He
swore allegiance to ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, claimed that his attack was
in response to the recent killing of Abu Waheeb, a member of ISIS’s lead-
ership team, and, more generally, to American military intervention in
the Middle East. At one point, he answered a text message from his sec-
ond wife, who wondered where he was, by asking her whether she had
watched television. Eventually, Mateen was killed by a controlled explo-
sion set off by police.
Born on Long Island, New York, Mateen grew up in Florida, gradu-
ated from high school and earned an associate college degree in criminal
justice. Although born in the United States he seems not quite to fit in with
his peers. Like the perpetrator of the truck-ramming attack in New York
City, the Orlando mass shooter, a security guard well versed in handling
guns, was described by his former and second wife as an abusive husband
and by acquaintances and colleagues as a man with a volatile temper.
Not particularly religious during adolescence and young adulthood
Mateen became a very devout Muslim after the divorce from his first
wife, prayed regularly in his mosque, and went on a religious pilgrimage
to Saudi Arabia. However, neither family members nor acquaintances
remembered him expressing extremist views or mentioning ISIS.66
Contrary to the jihadis responsible for the deadly post-9/11 attacks
listed in Table 5.2, plus many more unsuccessful plotters, most Muslims
who were—and still are—fed up with U.S. military actions in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and elsewhere do not become terrorists.
How, then, can one explain the radicalization of the relatively few?

Table 5.2  Post-9/11 Deadly Terrorism inside the United States by Jihadists

Year Incident Number of Fatalities

2017 New York Truck Ramming 8
2016 Orlando Nightclub Shooting 49
2015 Chattanooga Shooting 4
2015 San Bernardino Mass Shooting 14
2014 Washington and New Jersey Shooting 4
2014 Beheading in Oklahoma 1
2013 Boston Marathon Attack 4
2009 Little Rock Shooting 1
2009 Fort Hood Shooting 13
2006 Jewish Federation Attack in Seattle 1
2002 Los Angeles Airport 2
Lethal attacks through December 2018 101
Source: Various open sources
130 Terrorism
In a comprehensive study about homegrown jihadis in the United
States, Canada, and Western Europe in the post-9/11 years, the NYPD
identified the following four developmental stages in a distinct model of
radicalization:

•• Pre-radicalization refers to the life of individuals before they enter

into the process of radicalization. As the case studies showed, most
of the future terrorists lived ordinary lives, had ordinary private and
professional aspirations, and had no histories of violence.
•• Self-identification is the stage in which internal and external factors
cause individuals to become interested in and adopt jihadi ideology
as their own. In this phase, typically, they seek contacts with like-
minded people.
•• Indoctrination leads to the intensification of individuals’ embrace of
the justification for violent jihad. According to the NYPD report,
contrary to the self-identification stage, at this time “association with
like-minded people is an important factor as the process deepens.”
•• Jihadization, unlike the previous stages, tends to be a short process.
Here members of the cell accept the call of jihadi indoctrination, decide
to become “holy warriors,” and prepare to carry out terrorist acts.67

In the post-9/11 era, the Al Qaeda organization was the inspiration for
most homegrown jihadi terrorism plots but was rarely, if at all, directly
involved. However, the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate warned that
“al-Qa’ida maintains its intent to attack the Homeland—preferably with
a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the US
economy, or both” and “retains the capability to recruit, train, and deploy
operatives to mount some kind of an attack against the Homeland.”68 If
not the original Al Qaeda organization or Al Qaeda Central, the group’s
Taliban allies may have had their hands in two terror plots inside the
United States in 2009 and 2010: The above-mentioned plotters of an
attack on New York City’s subway system and the would-be Times
Square bomber trained in Taliban-controlled areas in Pakistan. In the
case of the latter, the Pakistani Taliban actually claimed responsibility for
his failed car bombing. While Al Qaeda Central and/or the Taliban may
plot major attacks inside the United States, autonomous homegrown
cells and lone wolves pose probably a greater threat. One reason is that
the association with like-minded people that NYPD researchers found to
be an important factor in the radicalization process has shifted increas-
ingly from the actual contact to virtual association via the Internet. As
the NYPD analysis points out, “The Internet is a driver and enabler for
the process of radicalization.”69 Similarly, the U.S. Senate Committee
on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs cautioned that “as the
terrorists’ Internet campaign bypasses America’s physical borders and
undermines cultural barriers that previously served as a bulwark against
 Religious Terrorism  131
al-Qaeda’s message of hate and violence, the threat of homegrown terrorist
attacks in the United States increases.”70
As the second decade of the twenty-first century progressed ISIS became
the predominant threat within the United States and in other Western
countries. The group’s leadership appealed relentlessly to sympathizers
to strike in their homeland against military, police, and civilians as well.
However, opinion surveys showed that the vast majority of Muslims
around the world had negative views about ISIS.71 As for Muslims in
America, when surveyed in 2017, 76 percent of Muslim respondents in
the United States said that the killing of civilians for political, social, or
religious causes is never justified compared to only 59 percent of the gen-
eral U.S. public. Similarly, 14 percent of the general public and 12 percent
of Muslim respondents said that for the same causes civilians can some-
times or often be killed. Among Muslims in the United States merely 17
percent believed that there was a great deal (6 percent) or a fair amount of
support for extremism among Muslims in America. However, within the
United States the threat by Muslim extremists was not greater than that
posed by right-wing extremists. In a report on violent extremism inside
the United States the Government Accountability Office (GAO) listed
deadly terrorist acts by jihadists and right-extremists from September 12,
2001, the day after 9/11, and December 31, 2016. Because the research-
ers included ambiguous cases such as the Washington, DC sniper attacks
and violence within families among terrorism carried out by Muslims,
they listed a total of twenty-three cases in which a total of 119 persons
were killed. Several mass shootings, namely the Orlando Nightclub mas-
sacre and the San Bernardino and Fort Hood attacks, accounted for most
of the victims (seventy-six). In comparison, right-extremists carried out
sixty-two terrorist attacks, nearly three times as many, killing a total of
102 people.72

Notes
1 Corey Kilgannon and Joseph Goldstein, “Sayfullo Saipov, the Suspect in the
New York Terror Attack and his Past,” New York Times, October 31, 2017,
[Link]/2017/10/31/nyregion/sayfullo-saipov-manhattan-truck-
[Link], accessed December 1, 2018.
2 Mark Sedgwick, “Al-Qaeda and the Nature of Religious Terrorism,” Terrorism
and Political Violence 16:4 (Winter 2004): 808.
3 Magnus Ranstorp, “Terrorism in the Name of Religion,” working paper avail-
able from Columbia International Affairs Online, [Link].
[Link]/wps/ram01/[Link].
4 “Anti-Abortion Killer Executed,” CBS News, September 3, 2003, www.
[Link]/stories/2003/09/04/national/[Link].
5 Excerpts are from Paul Hill, “Defending the Defenseless,” [Link].
com/PHill_ShortShot.html.
6 “Anti-Abortion Killer Executed.”
7 Ibid.
132 Terrorism
8 The transcript is available at [Link]/news/world/europe/
paris-attackers-gave-interview-to-french-tv-station-we-are-defenders-of-the-
[Link], accessed
June 15, 2015.
9 Ehud Sprinzak, “Extremism and Violence in Israel: The Crisis of Messianic
Politics,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 555
(January 1998): 123.
10 Ibid., 120.
11 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious
Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 57.
12 Ibid., 54.
13 Sprinzak, 123.
14 The quote is from a report by ABC News on World News Sunday, February
27, 1994.
15 Ibid.
16 Albert Bandura, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Walter Reich,
ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of
Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 164.
17 Ibid., 174–75.
18 These terms are used by Juergensmeyer, chs. 8 and 9.
19 Ibid., 182–83.
20 Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New
York: HarperCollins, 2003), 167.
21 Ibid.
22 Audrey Kurth Cronin, “Behind the Curve: Globalization and International
Terrorism,” International Security 27:3 (Winter 2002/3): 42.
23 Stern, xxv.
24 Ibid.
25 David C. Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
Terrorism,” Current History (December 2001).
26 Sedgwick, 797.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 805.
29 Juergensmeyer, 221.
30 Stern, xix.
31 This is what Terry Noble, a leader in a Christian Identity organization, told
Mark Juergensmeyer. See Juergensmeyer, 193.
32 Stern, xviii.
33 Ibid., 286.
34 Ibid., 285.
35 Juergensmeyer, 222.
36 Ranstorp, 8.
37 Colin Powell made this statement as guest of the NBC News program Meet
the Press on October 19, 2008.
38 Mark Juergensmeyer, “Religion as a Cause of Terrorism,” in Louise
Richardson, ed., The Roots of Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2006), 134.
39 Jeff Stein, “Can You Tell a Sunni from a Shiite?” New York Times, October
17, 2006, [Link]/2006/10/17/opinion/[Link], accessed
December 6, 2008.
40 Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the
Future (New York: Norton, 2006), 34.
41 John L. Esposito, “Terrorism and the Rise of Political Islam,” in Richardson,
146.
42 Ibid., 147.
 Religious Terrorism  133
43 The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), 466, footnote
11.
44 Ibid., 50.
45 “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” Harmony Project, Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point, [Link]
[Link].
46 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1.
47 Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
(London: Verso, 2005), 107, 115.
48 This quote is from Esposito, 149.
49 Sageman, 2.
50 Esposito, 145.
51 William McCants and Jarret Brachman, “Militant Ideology Atlas,” Executive
Report compiled and published by the Combating Terrorism Center at
West Point.
52 The 9/11 Commission Report, 51.
53 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New
York: Knopf, 2006), 31.
54 Ibid., 37.
55 According to Youssef Aboul-Enein, “Sheik Abdel-Fatahl Al-Khalidi Revitalizes
Sayid Qutb,” West Point: The Combating Terrorism Center United States
Military Academy.
56 Excerpts are from Lawrence, Fox News, [Link]/story/0,2933,
454624,[Link]; and Information Clearing House, [Link]
[Link]/[Link], accessed December 5, 2008.
57 I copied the above paragraphs from the full text of the announcement
linked to via the Long War Journal’s website [Link]/
archives/2014/06/isis_announces_formation_of_ca.php. However, by early
2018, the text was no longer available.
58 Sageman, 1.
59 Brynjar Lia, “Doctrines for Jihadi Terrorist Training,” Terrorism and Political
Violence 20:4 (October–December 2008): 537.
60 Alissa J. Rubin, “Despair Drives Suicide Attacks by Iraqi Women,” New
York Times, July 5, 2008, [Link]/2008/07/05/world/middleeast/
[Link]?sq=despair%20drives%20suicide%20attacks%20by%20
Iraqi%20Women&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print.
61 Abdul Waheed Waffa, “10 Arrested for Afghan Acid Attack,” New York Times,
November 25, 2008, [Link]/2008/11/26/world/asia/26afghan.
html?scp=6&sq=taliban%20and%20school%20girls&st=cse,
accessed November 25, 2008.
62 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2008), 98.
63 Brian M. Jenkins, “Outside Expert’s View,” in Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin
Bhatt, eds., Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, New York
City Police Department Report, 2007, 14.
64 Andrea Elliott, Sabrina Tavernise, and Anne Barnard, “For Times Sq. Suspect,
Long Roots of Discontent,”New York Times, May 15, 2010, [Link].
com/2010/05/16/nyregion/[Link]?sq=faisal%20shahzad%20
and%20times%20square&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print, accessed June
8, 2010.
65 Al Baker and Marc Santora, “San Bernardino Attackers Discussed Jihad
in Private Messages, F.B.I. Says,” The New York Times, December 16,
2015.
134 Terrorism
66 There were claims by some sources that Mateen targeted the Pulse Nightclub
because it catered to gays and that he actually was a closeted gay man himself.
67 Silber and Bhatt, 6–7.
68 For the 2010 “Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community,”
see [Link]
accessed June 10, 2010.
69 Silber and Bhatt, 8.
70 U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
“Violent Islamic Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist
Threat,” May 8, 2008, 5.
71 Pew Research Center, “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and
around the World,” August 9, 2017.
72 United States Government Accountability Office, “Countering Violent
Extremism,” April 2017, available at [Link]
pdf, accessed December 18, 2018.
6 The Making of Terrorists
Causes, Conditions, Influences

During a United Nations (UN) conference on poverty in March 2002,

President George W. Bush said that the United States was ready to chal-
lenge “the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed
governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and
try to turn to their advantage.”1 A few months later, however, in an
interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the president suggested
otherwise when he stated that there was no direct link between poverty
and terrorism: “Poverty is a tool for recruitment amongst these global ter-
rorists,” Bush said. “It’s a way for them to recruit—perhaps. But poverty
doesn’t cause killers to exist, and it’s an important distinction to make.”2
No doubt, the president had the kind of terrorism in mind that had led to
the attacks on 9/11, but in expressing different assessments of the roots of
terrorism, he reflected the different viewpoints in the long-running expert
debate on this issue. There is no doubt that terrorism cannot be under-
stood without exploring the real and perceived grievances of groups and
individuals who resort to political violence. Grievances of this nature are
of a domestic or international nature—or both. But although the same or
similar conditions breed terrorists in some countries and not in others,
scholars have put forth a multitude of explanations.
The idea that socioeconomic conditions, such as poverty, lack of edu-
cation, and high unemployment, provide fertile ground for terrorism
pre-dates the rise of international terrorism in the last thirty-five years
or so and, more importantly, the recent focus on the roots of terror-
ism in Arab and Muslim countries. Based on his research examining the
lynching of black Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by
whites and the economic conditions over a long period of time, Arthur
Raper concluded that the number of lynching attacks peaked in times of
economic downturns and subsided in years of economic improvement.3
But using more advanced economic indicators, other researchers did not
find a relationship between the ups and downs in lynching incidents and
economic conditions.4 For example, there was no surge in these attacks
during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
At first sight, the argument that poverty breeds terrorism also carries
little weight with respect to experiences in the West from the late 1960s
136 Terrorism
through the 1980s, when some of the world’s richest countries (e.g.,
Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and the United States) produced a rela-
tively large number of very active terrorist groups of the left-wing variety.
The founders, leaders, and rank-and-file members of the most prominent
terrorist organizations during that period, from the Italian Red Brigades
to the German Red Army Faction (RAF) and the French Direct Action,
came typically from middle-class or upper-middle-class families and had
studied at universities. The same was true for left-wing terrorists in the
United States; many of them had finished college and earned professional
degrees (medicine, law, teaching, social work, etc.). But, as Brent Smith
and Kathryn Morgan found in their research, in the last decades of the
twentieth century, right-wing terrorists in the United States had very
different demographic characteristics than their left-wing counterparts:
One-third of the right-wingers had not graduated from high school, only
about 12 percent had a college degree, and a large number of them were
“unemployed or impoverished self-employed workers.”5 In other words,
the same society with the same macro-socioeconomic conditions pro-
duced one type of terrorist that came from the well-to-do segment of
society and another type from the lower socioeconomic strata.
Regardless of such findings, the idea that terrorism is the result of
“poverty, desperation, and resentment” in less developed countries
around the globe has survived as a plausible explanation in the search
for the causes of group-based political violence.6 However, statistical
evidence tells another story. As Walter Laqueur has pointed out, “In
the forty-nine countries currently designated by the United Nations as
the least developed, hardly any terrorist activity occurs.”7 Other recent
studies have contradicted the economic deprivation thesis with respect to
terrorism and terrorists in the Middle East. Claude Berrebi examined a
wealth of data on individual terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza, on the
general population in those areas, and on the economic conditions over
time. He concluded,

Both higher standards of living and higher levels of education are

positively associated with participation in Hamas or PIJ [Palestinian
Islamic Jihad]. With regard to the societal economic condition, I
could not find a sustainable link between terrorism and poverty and
education, and I interpret this to mean that there is either no link or
a very weak indirect link.8

Research by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova came to similar con-

clusions with respect to the Lebanese Hezbollah; their evidence suggests
“that having a higher living standard above the poverty line or a second-
ary school or higher education is positively associated with participation
in Hezbollah.”9 The same research also found “that Israeli Jewish set-
tlers who attacked Palestinians in the West Bank in the early 1980s
 The Making of Terrorists  137
were overwhelmingly from high-paying occupations.”10 Like Berrebi,
Krueger and Maleckova found no evidence for a direct causal relation-
ship between poverty and education on the one hand and participation
in or support of terrorism on the other.
Focusing on militants in the Lebanese Hezbollah organization who
had already undertaken or were willing to carry out suicide missions, one
researcher found that most of these terrorists or would-be terrorists “are
from poor families” and “geoculturally immobile.”11 But in the absence
of in-depth comparisons between the living standard of the population at
large and actual or would-be suicide bombers, the meaning of “poor” in
this context is not quite clear. Perhaps Berrebi’s research explains the dif-
ferent findings: With respect to the Palestinian groups he studied, Berrebi
found that suicide bombers came from higher economic circumstances
and had a higher education than the population at large but came “from
lower socio-economic groups when compared to other, non-suicidal, ter-
rorists.”12 Based on his empirical data analysis, James A. Piazza did not
find evidence for what he calls the “rooted-in-poverty thesis” at all.13
These findings have profound implications for policy-makers in their
fight to attack the roots of terrorism. If indeed economic and educational
conditions do not cause terrorism, efforts to improve economic condi-
tions, especially individual incomes, living conditions, health care, and
educational opportunities, would not decrease the number of terrorists
and their supporters or do away with terrorism altogether. But so far,
policies continue to be guided in many instances by the assumption that
aid to improve the economic circumstances of countries or regions is part
of prudent counterterrorism strategy. Thus, in the spring of 2009, when
the Taliban ally of Al Qaeda gained territorial control in Pakistan and
intensified its violence in both that country and Afghanistan, the Obama
administration pushed for a massive U.S. aid package that in part aimed
at financing school, hospital, and road projects in the Taliban stronghold
of Swat Valley and similarly contested regions in Pakistan.
It has been argued that changes in the content of education would be
a more promising way to go. In her examination of textbooks, teachers’
guides, and other official material used in schools on the West Bank and
in Gaza, Daphne Burdman found that

Palestinian children are urged to violent actions against Israelis even

when it is likely that they will be injured or die. They are encouraged
to desire rather than fear the circumstances, because they will find a
place in Paradise with Allah.14

Like Burdman, Berrebi has suggested that efforts to reduce terrorism

should focus on changes in the curriculum for children on the West Bank
and in Gaza. Similar issues have arisen with respect to other countries
and regions. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, there were reports
138 Terrorism
about and criticism of schools and textbooks in Saudi Arabia that encour-
aged intolerance and hate against non-Muslims. Similar indoctrination of
the young was reportedly practiced in Islamic schools in North America
and other parts of the world that received financial support from Saudi
Arabia. Students of an Islamic school in northern Virginia told a reporter
that some of their teachers “teach students that whatever is kuffar [non-
Muslim], it is okay to hurt or steal from that person.”15
But while propaganda of hate might well condition its receivers to
support and even commit political violence, it is far from clear, how-
ever, whether removing hateful texts and indoctrination from schools
would reduce terrorism significantly or eradicate it. After all, terrorism
has flourished in all kinds of environments—in democratic and non-
democratic societies, in settings where young people were and were not
indoctrinated into committing violence. Some scholars, among them Ted
Gurr, consider liberal democracies less vulnerable to political violence
than authoritarian systems because dissent and conflict can be brought
into the legitimate political process. Indeed, Gurr’s research indicates
that repressive regimes have a higher incidence of political violence than
liberal democratic settings.16 But after analyzing global data on terrorist
incidents from 1980 through 1987 with respect to the sites of terrorist
strikes and the nationality of attackers and victims, William Eubank and
Leonard Weinberg concluded that during the 1980s “terrorist violence
was far more common in stable democracies than in autocratic settings”
and that the perpetrators and the victims of terrorism were more likely to
be the citizens of stable democracies than of less stable or partial democ-
racies and of countries with limited authoritarianism or absolutism.17
How can one explain such contradictory findings? The most plausible
explanations point to the fact that the two research projects covered dif-
ferent time periods and, more importantly, focused in the first case on
domestic terrorism data and in the second case on international terrorism
data. Both explanations seem reasonable. Citizens who live in countries
with repressive regimes have more reasons to use violence against the rul-
ing clique, but in the absence of civil liberties, it is likely that the authorities
detect and crush opposition groups that have committed, or plan to com-
mit, terrorism. If terrorist acts do occur in closed societies, the targeted
governments have the means to prevent, curb, or spin the news coverage of
such events. Democracies offer citizens opportunities to participate in the
decision-making process, but when groups or individuals conclude that
their grievances are not adequately addressed, they may be more inclined
to resort to violence than their counterparts under authoritarian rule—if
only because the free press will spread their “propaganda of the deed.”
However, according to Piazza’s research there are also variables
that transcend the peculiarities of political systems and serve as impor-
tant predictors of terrorism, namely, “population [size, historical
development], ethno-religious diversity, increased state repression and,
most significantly, the structure of party politics.”18
 The Making of Terrorists  139
All of this leads to the conclusion that terrorists emerge in poor and
in rich countries, in democratic and in authoritarian states, in stable and
in nonstable countries, and in societies whose textbooks teach or do not
teach hate of other ideological, religious, or ethnic groups.
In the absence of a universal model that identifies the conditions that
breed group-based political violence and terrorists, experts in the field
have looked beyond the environmental conditions for other explanations.
If some groups and movements remain nonviolent in spite of unaddressed
political grievances and others decide to embrace violent tactics, then
group dynamics, decision-making processes, and leader–follower relation-
ships might explain the differences. Similarly, if some individuals under
the same or similar conditions become terrorists while others do not, it is
not far-fetched to suspect that an individual’s traits and experiences affect,
or even determine, whether he or she selects or rejects the terrorist path.
Terrorism scholars are not of one mind in this respect, but have proposed
different approaches and explanations, among them the following: (1) ter-
rorists make rational choices, (2) terrorists are guided by personal traits
and experiences, and (3) terrorists are the products of social interaction.

Terrorism as a Result of Rational Choice

Borrowing from the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who
noted that war is the continuation of diplomacy, Gary Sick has suggested
that terrorism “is the continuation of politics by other means.”19 While not
discounting the possibility that persons with a predisposition to violence
and fanatic beliefs are especially drawn to terrorism, Sick emphasizes that
terrorism is the result of a deliberate choice made in particular political
environments—at least in the early stage of a group’s life span. “Their
[group members’] choice of terrorism, as opposed to other possible forms
of [political] behavior, is a function of the political environment,” he
writes. For Richard Shultz, too, terrorism “is calculated violence” that is
“goal directed” and “employed in pursuit of political objectives.”20 In her
exploration of terrorism as a logical choice, Martha Crenshaw concurs
when she states that “Terrorism is likely to be a reasonably informed
choice among available alternatives, some tried unsuccessfully.”21
Thus, the Weathermen group in the United States was formed when its
founders concluded that the anti-Vietnam War, anti-authority protests
staged by the Students for a Democratic Society did not further their
ideological goals. Similarly, the RAF in Germany emerged as the radical
offspring of the Socialist Student Association. The Army of God, and
other extreme antiabortion groups that resorted to terrorist methods,
emerged and grew when its founders and recruits determined that the
mainstream pro-life movement’s attempts to work within the legitimate
political process to outlaw legalized abortions were in vain.
Based on many years of research, Ehud Sprinzak rejected the notion of
terrorists as psychologically challenged types or crazies and concluded,
140 Terrorism
“Terrorism is not the product of mentally deranged persons. Terrorism,
and ideological terrorism in particular, is a political phenomenon par
excellence and is therefore explicable in political terms.”22 On this count,
Christopher Harmon agrees with Sprinzak and discards the notion of
terrorist acts as mindless, stating,

It is mostly on the surface that terrorism appears to be madness, or

mindless. Behind the screaming and the blood there lies a controlling
purpose, a motive, usually based in politics or something close to it,
such as a drive for political or social change inspired by religion.
The terrorist is not usually insane; he or she is more usually “crazy
like a fox.”23

If terrorism is not committed by crazies, is this sort of political violence

the result of rational decisions that individuals and groups make? That
begs the question whether economic analysis and particularly rational
choice theory are helpful in determining whether groups and individu-
als act rationally when they decide whether or not to engage in terrorist
activity—and what kind of terrorism. Underscoring the relevance of the
rational choice model in terrorism studies Bryan Caplan distinguishes
between three types of individuals:

•• Sympathizers who are not involved in violence;

•• Active terrorists who belong to terrorist groups;
•• Suicide terrorists who are willing to die.

He measures the rationality or irrationality of these three types by

their “responsiveness to incentives, narrow-self-interest, and rational
expectations.”24
When calculating and assessing incentives to commit violence or not,
all three types tend to make rational choices. Active terrorists and sui-
cide bombers are guided by their commitment to their terrorist group.
In the absence of nonviolent incentives, attacking the enemy is a rational
choice; for the suicide bomber and his or her group this mode of attack
is cost-effective and has a high rate of success as measured by the number
of fatalities and inflicted damage (see also Chapter 8). If no risks were
involved in carrying out violent attacks, terrorist sympathizers would
become active terrorists as well.
The inactive sympathizer is most likely also guided by self-interest, is
removed from group dynamics, and has rational expectations of the con-
sequences of violence. Thus, for Caplan the sympathizer “deviates only
slightly from homo economicus.”25 In the same assessment, active terror-
ists come “probably close” to making rational choices in terms of narrow
self-interest and rational expectations in their conviction that they will
not die but succeed. In contrast, suicide bombers seem not rational on
both narrow self-interest and rational expectations. How can it be in
 The Making of Terrorists  141
one’s self-interest to die in order to kill others? And, since most suicide
terrorists tend to be of the religious variety, how can it be a rational
expectation to be rewarded in the after-life? Still, even suicide bombers
fit one of Caplan’s three rational choice criteria.
Recognizing that terrorists have “short-term organizational objectives
and long-term political objectives,” Louise Richardson characterized the
more immediate or “secondary motives” as the “Three Rs” for “revenge,
renown, and reaction.”26 No doubt, revenge for real or perceived injus-
tice and humiliation, renown in the sense of obtaining publicity and
glory, and the wish for reaction and overreaction on the part of their
targets are common motives of all kinds of terrorist groups. In deciding
to pursue the goals that Richardson calls the “Three Rs,” terrorists pre-
sumably make some rational decisions.
The notion that terrorism is political in nature, goal oriented, and the
result of rational or logical choices among several alternatives fits into
the instrumental paradigm that recognizes terrorism as a means to spe-
cific political ends, such as removing foreign influence from a country or
region, the removal of a regime, or national independence.27

Terrorism as a Result of Personal Traits and Experiences

Jerrold Post takes issue with the suggestion that terrorism is the result of
rational choices made by the perpetrators of political violence. Instead,
he argues that “political terrorists are driven to commit acts of violence
as a consequence of psychological forces.”28 Based on his interviews with
terrorists as well as memoirs and court records, Post suggests that “peo-
ple with particular traits and tendencies are drawn disproportionately to
terrorist careers.”29 A study of the background of 227 left-wing terrorists,
most of them active in the Baader-Meinhof group or RAF, confirmed the
idea that particular experiences and personality traits make some people
more prone to become involved with terrorism than others. In the case of
German left-wing terrorists, researchers found the following:

No less than 69 percent of the men and 52 percent of the women

reportedly had clashes with parents, schools, or employers—33 per-
cent with their parents, 18 percent with employers—or prior records
of criminal or juvenile offenses, many of them repeated entries.
Although there are no exact population averages or control groups
with which to compare, the percentages are so large as to suggest in
many cases a conflict-ridden youth aggravated by parental death,
divorce, remarriage and other misfortunes of modern society.30

Konrad Kellen described this type of background using the example of

Hans Joachim Klein, an eventual defector from the RAF. As a small boy
and teenager, Klein was constantly mistreated and beaten by his father.
According to Kellen,
142 Terrorism
When Klein was in his teens, a girlfriend gave him a small chain to
wear around his neck; the father ripped the chain off and beat him
once again. Suddenly, however, young Klein rebelled and slapped his
father’s face, expecting to be killed a moment later for his transgres-
sion. But the old man treated his son with courtesy and respect from
that moment on! The lesson for the younger Klein was probably that
force and the infliction of pain can do the trick . . . Presumably Klein
concluded, at some level, that if he could do this to his father, he
could do it to the state as well.31

Despite the fact that many left-wing German terrorists had troubled
backgrounds, Merkl has argued that “every German terrorist could just
as well have turned away from terrorism, being a creature endowed with
free will; and some did.”32 But what Jeffrey Ross has called individuals’
“facilitating traits,” such as alienation, depression, or antisocial behav-
ior, may drive persons to join terrorist movements—especially when a
particular group setting gives them for the first time in their lives the
feeling that they belong, that they count.33 Randy Borum takes a sensible
in-between position by concluding that “certain life experiences tend to
be commonly found among terrorists” and

Histories of childhood abuse and trauma appear to be wide-

spread . . . None of these contribute much to a causal explanation
of terrorism, but may be seen as markers of vulnerability, as possible
sources of motivation, or as mechanism for acquiring or hardening
one’s militant ideology.34

If one believes that terrorists are steered by their personal traits and a
“special psycho-logic [that] is constructed to rationalize acts they are
psychologically compelled to commit,” as Post suggests, the instrumen-
tal paradigm falls on its face: Terrorism is not seen as the means to a
particular political end, as a way to further one’s political causes; rather,
terrorism is the end itself, or, as Post puts it, “Individuals become ter-
rorists in order to join terrorist groups and commit acts of terrorism.”35

Risk Factors in the Making of Violent Extremists

Childhood trauma, adolescent behavior, and personal traits as risk
factors in the making of violent extremists do not merely apply to
left-extremists like members of the German RAF. A study based
on extensive interviews with forty-four former White Supremacists
(thirty-eight males and six females from fifteen U.S. states) revealed
severe childhood trauma in that
 The Making of Terrorists  143
•• 43 percent experienced childhood physical abuse;
•• 23 percent experienced adolescent sexual abuse;
•• 41 percent experienced physical neglect;
•• 36 percent experienced parental abandonment;
•• 54 percent witnessed serious violence;
•• 48 percent had mental health problems;
•• 73 percent had abused alcohol and illegal drugs during
adolescence.

As the researchers noted, these childhood experiences and adolescent

behavioral problems by far exceeded those in the general population.36
Similarly, based on their in-depth case studies of fifty-one per-
sons in the Netherlands who tried in vain or were successful in
joining jihadist groups abroad between 2000 and 2013, three Dutch
researchers found that seventeen of the fifty-one had “a criminal
history in petty theft, violence, burglary, and in some cases extor-
tion and possession of child pornography.”37 This research revealed
furthermore that psychological problems were far more prevalent
among those trying to become jihadists in the years from 2011 to
2013 than in the preceding time period. Thus, six of fifteen jihadists
or would-be jihadists in those years had “mental issues according to
health care professionals, varying from moderate mental instability
to serious psychiatric disorders.”38 While this relatively small sam-
ple may not allow us to use these and other findings to generalize,
it is nevertheless an interesting result.

Terrorism as a Result of Social Interaction

In her studies of members of the Italian Red Brigades, Donatella della Porta
found that social interaction and social ties, not personal traits, explain
why individuals join terrorist groups. Della Porta’s research revealed that

In as many as 88 percent of the cases in which the nature of the tie

with the recruiter is known, she or he is no stranger; in 44 percent, she
or he is a personal friend; and in 20 percent, she or he is a relative.39

Similarly, a study of Lebanese Shi’ite terrorists established that they were

“recruited by and from the concentric circles of kinship, friendship, or
fellowship.”40 That is precisely what Marc Sageman found when he ana-
lyzed the personal background of 172 members of the global Salafi jihad
movement, including Al Qaeda as its vanguard.41 There was no evidence
that these jihadis were brainwashed and enlisted by distinct recruiting
efforts; rather, the key was, according to Sageman,
144 Terrorism
Social affiliation through friendship, kinship, and discipleship; pro-
gressive intensification of beliefs and faith leading to the acceptance
of the global Salafi jihad ideology; and formal acceptance to the jihad
through the encounter of a link to the jihad.42

And then there are terrorist organizations that provide social services in
communities that otherwise would not have health care, schools, or secu-
rity forces. The Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas are good
examples of groups that consist of a community service arm, a politi-
cal branch, and a terrorist corps. By coming to the aid of needy people
in their communities, these organizations create large reservoirs for the
recruitment of terrorists—especially in their religious schools. Potential
recruits are often chosen at a very young age and well before they them-
selves have decided to become a terrorist. Instead, they are groomed
for their future role. According to Loretta Napoleoni, “People are not
only carefully selected, their background is analyzed minutely, and every
single detail is taken into consideration. If a candidate is judged to be
suitable, he is indoctrinated, fed a special diet of religion, spiritualism
and violence.”43 In the last several years, Western Europe has become
an especially fertile breeding ground of new jihadis—young members of
the Muslim diaspora who are disillusioned and alienated from the socie-
ties they live in. Whether in London or Birmingham, Paris or Marseilles,
Berlin or Cologne, and many other communities in the United Kingdom,
France, Germany, and neighboring countries, some of these Muslim new-
comers are likely to seek out and become part of social networks of fel-
low Muslims, where they join friends, relatives, or acquaintances. While
pointing out that “the history of radical Islamism and the terrorist cells
in Western Europe remains to be written,” Walter Laqueur was neverthe-
less certain about one aspect:

Hate and Violence as Addiction

Interestingly, when racial, ethnic, and/or religious supremacy
perceptions and intensive hate for the “other” inform an in-
group’s causes and its members’ identities, group members might
become consumed by hate and everything that magnifies related
feelings. Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazi entities, for example, fit the
profile of hate groups. Research suggests that hard-core White
Supremacists become addicted to hate and the symbols and
expressions of hate to such a degree that they remain vulnerable to
relapse just like recovering alcoholics long after they have sworn
off their hatefulness and left their groups. In extensive interviews
with eighty-nine former White Supremacists in the United States
 The Making of Terrorists  145
more than one-third of the interviewees described hate as a form
of addiction; 62 percent revealed some kind of relapse after they
had left groups.44 One woman told researchers,

Somebody needs to do a study . . . subject us to the [white

power] music, to the literature, to the racial slurs and watch
what fires in our brains. I guarantee you it’s an addiction. I can
listen to white power music and within a week be back to that
mindset. I know it.45

It is entirely possible that this hate addiction is present in other

extremist and violent groups.

The idea that over time a European Islam would develop that was
more liberal and open seemed to have been premature at the very
least. As a result a new generation grew up who were artificially
assimilated and in large part deeply disaffected. Among these sec-
tions the preachers of jihad found their followers.46

But in his review of the relevant research, Malise Ruthven found evi-
dence that neither alienation nor the embrace of religious and ideo-
logical extremism are the driving forces behind the establishment of
terrorist jihadi cells. Instead, “the people who form terror groups have
to know and trust one another. In most Muslim societies it is kin-
ship, rather than shared ideological values, that generates relations
of trust.”47

Differences between Leaders and Followers

Today, when it comes to the making of terrorists, there may well be
distinct differences between leaders and the second-tier activist strata on
the one hand and rank-and-file followers and sympathizers on the other
hand. It seems that those who decide in the first place to form a group
in order to achieve their objectives by carrying out violence consider the
alternatives, weigh their opportunities and challenges, and jump into
action because of certain events or developments or opportunities. These
are the people with strong ideological convictions regardless of whether
these are of the secular or religious variety. Typically, the leadership
cadre came together through personal contacts in the past, and it still
does so in the age of digital communication. Here kinship and friendship
are still the keys.
146 Terrorism
Those who eventually join may sympathize with and admire the
group’s leaders and actions, demands, and goals but may be far less
informed about the ideological and operational underpinnings than the
leadership and operator strata.
Take the example of the Islamic State. Its leaders, all Sunnis, discussed the
blueprint for the organization at great length and detail while imprisoned in
a U.S.-run detention facility in Iraq. Once free and upset about the mistreat-
ment of Sunnis by the Shi’ite-controlled central government in Baghdad, these
men built their organization according to plan with a priority given to the
formation of a most brutal jihadi force and a mighty propaganda machine.
But even as the Islamic State’s reach expanded and tens of thousands
of men and women traveled to ISIS-controlled territory, most of these
supporters had merely rudimentary knowledge of the group’s religious
orthodoxy and related political convictions.
After interviewing radicalized Muslim teenagers in the suburbs of Paris
a French journalist concluded,

They knew very little about religion. They had hardly read a book
and they learnt jihad before religion. They’d tell me, ‘You think with
your head, we think with our hearts.’ They had a romantic view of
radicalism. I wondered how that happened.48

Social media posts revealed that young ISIS devotees have great admi-
ration for the Islamic State and its jihadists, not unlike the sentiments
displayed by fans of sports clubs and stars in the entertainment world.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “fan” as “an enthusi-
astic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator”
and “an ardent admirer or enthusiast (as of a celebrity or a pursuit).”
When adding, according to the same dictionary source, that the term
“fan” is probably a short form for “fanatic,” it makes sense to consider
these young Muslims in the West as part of a virtual fandom commu-
nity similar to fanatic fan groups devoted to sports teams, pop bands, or
Hollywood celebrities. Based on their analysis of Twitter data concerning
the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, Tim Highfield, Stephen Harrington,
and Axel Bruns characterized “Twitter as an important new medium
facilitating the connection and communion of fans.”49
This point may help to explain the making of ISIS fans, radicalized
supporters, and eventual recruits under the influence of online propa-
ganda and social media interactions (see also Chapter 15).

The Lone Wolf Phenomenon

In September 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated by Leon
Czolgosz, a self-described anarchist who was radicalized by anarchist
newspapers and prominent anarchist individuals who in their writings
and speeches called for violence against the powerful. Czolgosz acted
 The Making of Terrorists  147
alone. He was not a member of an extremist organization; he was an
early lone wolf. In April 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a powerful
car bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City killing 168 persons and injuring many, many more. He was radical-
ized by antigovernment and Neo-Nazi books and regular visits to gun
shows. He acted alone, although he had an accomplice as he prepared
his home-made killer bomb. McVeigh was not a member of an extremist
organization; he was a lone wolf. In the more than nine decades between
these incidents, there were many more solo attacks.
Yet, while lone wolf terrorism is not a new phenomenon, there has
been a dramatic increase of cases in which one individual or a pair car-
ried out political violence against civilians or noncombatants. Jeffrey D.
Simon points to “the key role that technology, particularly the Internet,
is playing in the rise of the lone wolf” and the need “to revise our think-
ing about terrorism and shift away from an almost exclusive focus on
terrorist groups and organizations toward a new appreciation for the
importance of individual terrorists.”50
Yes, indeed, the spread of hate, violent messages, and calls for individ-
uals to carry out political violence via the Internet reaches far more people
in far more places around the globe than did terrorist propaganda before
the digital age. Thus, we do have many more lone wolves than at any
other time. As detailed in Chapter 15, social media in particular has been
instrumental in radicalizing and recruiting individuals who may or may
not team up with one, two, or three persons they are close to. Think of the
Boston Marathon Bombing: Internet posts introduced Tamerlan Tsarnaev
to the grievances of jihadists and their appeals to attack Westerners in
their own environment. He downloaded detailed instructions for prepar-
ing pressure-cooker bombs from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s
online magazine Inspire. And, finally, he recruited his younger brother
who joined him in their deadly attack in the heart of Boston.
Whether anarchist Czolgosz, antigovernment extremist McVeigh, the
jihadist Tsarnaev brothers, or the right-extremist nativist Anders Breivik
who, in 2011, killed seventy-six people in Norway in an unspeakable
killing spree in the name of defending Christian Europe against Islamic
invaders, they all were infected by viruses of hate spread by whatever was
the latest communication technology of their times. While they were loners,
they bought into extremist ideologies and acted according to the respective
movements’ propaganda—nowadays most prevalent on social media.
Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins made this very point. Noting before
the rise of ISIS that “two-thirds of the homegrown al Qaeda-inspired
terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 have involved a single indi-
vidual,” he concluded,

The term lone wolf would apply to only a few of these terrorist plot-
ters. The behavior of many resembles more that of stray dogs. They
sniffed at the edges of al Qaeda extremist ideology, participated
148 Terrorism
vicariously in its online jihad, exhorting each other to action, care-
lessly 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.51

The Lack of a Universal Terrorist Profile

But when everything is said and done, it seems impossible to understand
the roots of particular kinds of terrorism without considering the real
or perceived political, socioeconomic, or religious grievances that feed
into the formation of terrorist ideologies and serve as justifications for
terrorist acts. “However impoverished and reduced it may be,” Michel
Wieviorka wrote, “there is always an ideology underlying a terrorist
action.”52 This may be more the case for the founding fathers and moth-
ers of terrorist groups than for the rank-and-file members. But in order to
function and flourish, the founders and their heirs must translate real or
perceived grievances into an ideological framework or mission statement.
According to Jessica Stern,

The most important aspect of organization is the mission. The mis-

sion is the story about Us versus Them. It distinguishes the pure from
the impure and creates group identity. The organization’s mission
statement—the story about its raison d’être—is the glue that holds
even the most tenuous organizations together.53

The Stages Leading to Terrorism

Terrorism is rarely, if ever, the result of a sudden impulse. People do not
become terrorists on the spur of the moment. Groups and individuals
resort to political violence when they make the move into the last stage of
a process. By distinguishing between social movements, antimovements,
and terrorism, Wieviorka recognized different types of opposition group-
ings with different degrees of resistance to the existing power or powers
and different courses of action coupled with their possible transitions
from one type to another.54 Similarly, Ehud Sprinzak identified three
stages in liberal democracies—from strong opposition to intense opposi-
tion (with protests and even small-scale violence) to outright terrorist
activity: (1) crisis of confidence, (2) conflict of legitimization, and (3) cri-
sis of legitimacy.55 Once a group enters into the last stage, its grievances
turn increasingly into intense hate of the enemy, who is dehumanized.
“The regime and its accomplices are now portrayed as ‘things,’ ‘dogs,’
‘pigs,’ ‘Nazis,’ or ‘terrorists.’ The portrayal is not accidental and occa-
sional but repeated and systematic.”56 This pattern of dehumanizing the
enemy applies to all types of terrorist groups—those on the extreme left
and those on the extreme right; those who have extreme racist and reli-
gious views. Because of his Vietnam policy, President Lyndon B. Johnson
 The Making of Terrorists  149
was called “baby killer” by the most extreme voices in the radical left of
the 1960s; after the events at Waco, Texas, right-wing extremists called
federal agents “baby killers” and Attorney General Janet Reno “butcher
of Waco.” Members of the German RAF also moved gradually into the
last motivational stage. According to Merkl,

Once an enemy had been declared and made into the absolute moral
evil, the world became simple, and any means were justified for fight-
ing this evil. Soon the ‘struggle’ itself became the goal, and this in
turn could satisfy deep personal needs.57

A member of the Italian Red Brigades explained the terrorist mindset and
motivation when in search of a victim this way:

Then you have singled out your victim; he is physically there; he is

the one to be blamed for everything. In that moment there is already
the logic of the trial in which you have already decided that he is
guilty; you only have to decide about his punishment. So you have a
very “emphatic” sense of justice; you punish him not only for what
he has done but also for all the rest. Then, you don’t care anymore
which responsibilities that person has; you give him them all . . . he
is only a small part of the machine that is going to destroy all of us.58

Expressing his hatred of Israelis, one Arab terrorist said, “You Israelis
are Nazis in your souls and in your conduct . . . Given this kind of con-
duct, there is no choice but to strike at you without mercy in every possi-
ble way.”59 In defense of suicide missions, an Islamic terrorist said, “This
is not suicide. Suicide is selfish, it is weak, it is mentally disturbed. This is
istishad (martyrdom or self-sacrifice in the service of Allah).”60
First dehumanization, then the justification of killing as morally and
religiously justified, are part of what Albert Bandura describes as a
mechanism of moral disengagement on the part of groups that decide to
commit terrorism:

One set of disengagement practices operates on the construal of the

behavior itself. People do not ordinarily engage in reprehensible
conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality of their
actions. What is culpable can be made honorable through cognitive
reconstrual. In this process, destructive conduct is made personally
and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral pur-
poses. People then act on a moral imperative.61

Another way to trace the process of radicalization of terrorists is the

one described in Chapter 5 developed especially to trace the mak-
ing of jihadis who are born in or immigrated to Western countries.
It is possible and indeed likely to fit the moral disengagement and
150 Terrorism
dehumanization processes into the four stages of jihadi radicalization.
And, vice versa, essential parts of those stages may be well suited to
explain the radicalization stages of non-Muslims who turn into reli-
gious or secular terrorists.
In examining the causes of terrorism, Martha Crenshaw distinguishes
between two major factors: (1) the preconditions that are at the heart
of political, socioeconomic, or religious grievances felt by societal sub-
groups; and (2) the precipitants or specific events that trigger terrorist
acts.62 This twofold causation (see Table 6.1) can be traced with respect
to most, if not all, groups or individuals who perpetrate terrorism.
Although this chapter has discussed at some length the underlying polit-
ical and personal circumstances as causes of terrorism, trigger events
need further explanation. Typically, military or other violent govern-
ment actions, often reactions to nonviolent or violent dissent, serve
as catalysts for the formation of terrorist groups. Thus, brutal police
actions against protesters during the Democratic Party’s 1968 National
Convention in Chicago triggered the formation of the Weathermen.
One year earlier, the killing of a German student (Benno Ohnesorg) by
the police during a demonstration in West Berlin against a visit of the
Shah of Iran triggered massive student demonstrations as the prelude
to the formation of the RAF. The defeat of the Arab states by Israel in
the 1967 war became the precipitant for the formation of Palestinian
terrorist groups, just as the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the use
of Saudi Arabian bases by the U.S. military influenced the emergence of
bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization. Even the terrorist actions
of lone wolves can be associated with trigger events. For example, the
1993 inferno at Waco, Texas, hardened the antigovernment feeling
of American right-wing groups and was the trigger event for Timothy
McVeigh, who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing on the
second anniversary of the events at Waco.
The would-be Times Square bomber was affected by such a particular
event. In tracing Faisal Shahzad’s road to terrorism, Andrea Elliott wrote,

As dawn broke on July 10, 2007, Pakistani commandos stormed the

Red Mosque in Islamabad, ending a lengthy standoff with armed
militants in a blaze of gunfire that left more than 100 dead. In
Washington, officials applauded the siege as an important demon-
stration of Pakistan’s willingness to confront Islamist militants.
Yet Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani immigrant living in Connecticut,
was outraged. He had prayed at the Red Mosque during visits
home . . . The episode was pivotal for Mr. Shahzad, setting him on
a course to join a militant Pakistani group that would train him
in explosives and bankroll his plot to strike at Times Square last
month . . . “That was the triggering event,” said a person familiar
with the case.63
 The Making of Terrorists  151
Table 6.1  Causes of Terrorism/Formation of Terrorist Groups

Preconditions Trigger Events

Grievances Domestic, international, or both

Reactions: Reactions:
Articulation of dissent and Most radical individuals split from larger
ideological differences opposition segment
Alienation from those in power Core of leaders forms group for the
Nonviolent protests purpose of more militant action:
Possibly some violence terrorfare
Recruitment of members Securing of resources (weapons, finances,
hideouts, etc.)
Dehumanization of the enemy and Result: Terrorist acts
moral disengagement
Source: Author

The Roots of Terrorism: No Simple Answers

Recognizing a whole range of causes for the emergence of terrorism
and the difficulty of identifying one or a few predominant ones, Jessica
Stern wrote,

I have come to see terrorism as a kind of virus, which spreads as a

result of risk factors at various levels: global, interstate, national,
and personal. But identifying these factors precisely is difficult. The
same variables (political, religious, social, or all of the above) that
seem to cause one person to become a terrorist might cause another
to become a saint.64

Taken together, then, a variety of political, socioeconomic, and religious

motives combined with personal conditions and trigger events provide
merely clues for understanding the making of terrorists and the formation
of terrorist groups, the motivations of individual recruits, and the decisions
to commence violent campaigns. Also, there may be distinct differences
between group founders and leaders on the one hand and rank-and-file
members and lone like-minded autonomous cells and lone wolves on the
other hand. In the absence of a predominant causal model, it is always dif-
ficult for target societies to comprehend fully the complex causes of a par-
ticular terrorist threat and more thorny yet to attack the roots of terrorism.

Notes
1 “Bush Ties Foreign Aid to Reform,” [Link], March 22, 2002, www.
[Link]/stories/2002/03/21/politics/printable/[Link], accessed
June 30, 2003.
152 Terrorism
2 Jeffrey Donovan, “U.S.: Analysts See Weak Link between Poverty and
Terrorism,” [Link]/nca/features/2002/11/[Link],
accessed June 29, 2003.
3 Arthur Raper, “The Tragedy of Lynching,” Patterson Smith Reprint Series
in Criminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems, Publication no. 25
(Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1969; originally published 1933).
4 C. Hovland and R. Sears, “Minor Studies of Aggression: Correlation of
Lynchings with Economic Indices,” Journal of Psychology 9 (1940): 301–10.
5 Brent L. Smith and Kathryn D. Morgan, “Terrorists Right and Left: Empirical
Issues in Profiling American Terrorists,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism
17:1 (January–March 1994): 51.
6 See Allen Hammond, “Economic Distress Motivates Terrorists,” in Laura K.
Egendorf, ed., Terrorism: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven
Press, 2000), 77.
7 Walter Laqueur, No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century (New
York: Continuum, 2003), 15. The list of the world’s least developed countries
was based on several criteria: low per capita income, weak human resources,
and low-level economic diversification.
8 Claude Berrebi, “Evidence about the Link between Education, Poverty, and
Terrorism among Palestinians,” unpublished paper, 2003, 1.
9 Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, “Education, Poverty and Terrorism,”
unpublished paper, 2002, 1.
10 Ibid.
11 Ayla Schbley, “Defining Religious Terrorism: A Causal and Anthological
Profile,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26:2 (March–April 2003): 119.
12 Berrebi, 1.
13 James A. Piazza, “Rooted in Poverty? Terrorism, Poor Economic Develop­
ment, and Social Cleavages,” Terrorism and Political Violence 18:1 (Spring
2006): 170.
14 Daphne Burdman, “Education, Indoctrination, and Incitement: Palestinian
Children on Their Way to Martyrdom,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1
(Spring 2003): 97.
15 Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax, “Where Two Worlds Collide: Muslim
Schools Face Tension of Islamic, U.S. Views,” Washington Post, February
25, 2002, A1.
16 Ted Gurr, “Political Protest and Rebellion in the 1960s: The United States
in World Perspectives,” in Hugh Graham and Ted Gurr, eds., Violence in
America (Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, 1979), 59–73.
17 William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, “Terrorism and Democracy:
Perpetrators and Victims,” Terrorism and Political Violence 13:1 (Spring
2001): 160, 161.
18 Piazza, 159.
19 Gary G. Sick, “The Political Underpinnings of Terrorism,” in Charles W.
Kegley, Jr., ed., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 51.
20 Richard Shultz, “Conceptualizing Political Terrorism,” in Kegley, 45.
21 Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of
Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, States of Minds (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 10, 11.
22 Ehud Sprinzak, “Extreme Left Terrorism in a Democracy,” in Reich, 78.
23 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 201.
24 Bryan Caplan, “Terrorism: The Relevance of the Rational Choice Model,”
Public Choice 128:1–2 (2006): 93.
25 Ibid.
 The Making of Terrorists  153
26 Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy,
Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2006), ch. 4.
27 For more on the instrumental approach, see Martha Crenshaw, “Theories
of Terrorism: Instrumental and Organizational Approaches,” in David C.
Rapoport, ed., Inside Terrorist Organizations (London: Frank Cass, 2001),
13–31.
28 Jerrold M. Post, “Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of
Psychological Forces,” in Reich, 23.
29 Ibid., 25.
30 The results of a study of German terrorists are cited and commented on by
Peter H. Merkl, “West German Left-Wing Terrorism,” in Martha Crenshaw,
ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1995), 203–4.
31 Konrad Kellen, “Ideology and Rebellion: Terrorism in West Germany,” in
Reich, 58.
32 Merkl, 204.
33 Jeffrey Ian Ross, “Beyond the Conceptualization of Terrorism: A
Psychological-Structural Model of the Causes of This Activity,” in Craig
Summers and Eric Markusen, eds., Collective Violence (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).
34 Randy Borum, Psychology of Terrorism (Tampa: University of South Florida,
2004).
35 Post, 25, 35.
36 Pete Simi et  al., “Narratives of Childhood Adversity and Adolescent
Misconduct as Precursors to Violent Extremism: A Life-Course Criminological
Approach,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 53:4 (2016):
536–63.
37 Jasper L. De Bie, Christianne J. de Poot, and Joanne P. van der Leun, “Shifting
Modus Operandi of Jihadist Foreign Fighters from the Netherlands between
2000 and 2013: A Crime Script Analysis,” Terrorism and Political Violence
27:3 (2015): 426.
38 Ibid.
39 Donatella della Porta, “Left-Wing Terrorism in Italy,” in Crenshaw, Terrorism
in Context, 140.
40 Schbley, 119.
41 The global Salafi movement aims to restore authentic Islam and to establish
one united Islamist state reaching from Morocco to the Philippines.
42 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 135.
43 Loretta Napoleoni, Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars behind the Terror
Networks (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 132.
44 Pete Simi et al., “Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White
Supremacists,” American Sociological Review 82:6 (2017): 1167–87.
45 Ibid.
46 Laqueur, 67, 68.
47 Malise Ruthven, “The Rise of the Muslim Terrorists,” New York Review of
Books, May 29, 2008, 33.
48 Margarette Driscoll, “My ISIS Boyfriend: A Reporter’s Undercover Life with
a Terrorist,” New York Post, March 7, 2015.
49 Tim Highfield, Stephen Harrington, and Axel Bruns, “Twitter as a Technology
for Audiencing and Fandom,” Information, Communication & Society 16:3
(2013): 315.
50 Jeffrey D. Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2013), 21.
154 Terrorism
51 Brian M. Jenkins, “Foreword,” in Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism, 7–11.
52 Michel Wieviorka, The Making of Terrorism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993), 10.
53 Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New
York: HarperCollins, 2003), 142.
54 Wieviorka, ch. 1.
55 Sprinzak, 64–85.
56 Ibid., 82.
57 Merkl, 206.
58 Della Porta, 150.
59 Quoted by Jerrold M. Post, Ehud Sprinzak, and Laurita M. Denny, “The
Terrorists in Their Own Words: Interviews with 35 Incarcerated Middle
Eastern Terrorists,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1 (Spring 2003): 178.
60 Ibid., 179.
61 Albert Bandura, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Reich, 163.
62 Martha Crenshaw, “The Causes of Terrorism,” Comparative Politics 13:4
(1981): 379–99.
63 Andrea Elliott, “A Militant’s Path from Pakistan to Times Square,” New
York Times, June 22, 2010, [Link]/2010/06/23/world/23terror.
html?hp, accessed July 9, 2010.
64 Stern, 283.
7 Women, Children, and Terrorism

After a female Palestinian teenager blew herself up in a supermarket in

Jerusalem killing an Israeli girl in her teens and a security guard in 2002,
President George W. Bush said, “When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is
induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl,
the future is dying.” The president expressed the shock that many people
around the world felt when they learned of the suicide attack. The young
age of both the attacker and the victim heightened the shock in this case.
Following the terrorist drama in a packed Moscow theater in the fall
of 2002, one commentator asked,

Who did not feel a deep unease at the sight of the female Chechen
terrorists in the Moscow theater before it was stormed, with their
eyes peering through the masks of their black burqas, with their
Kalashnikovs, and their explosives strapped to their bodies?

Probably expressing the sentiments of many observers, the writer pointed

out that terrorism is always disturbing, but that “there’s an extra level of
disquiet when the terrorists are female.”1 The shock value of terrorism is
far greater when perpetrated by women because in such cases a common
assumption is that if “women decide to violate all established norms about
the sanctity of life, they do so only as a last resort.”2 As a result, when
female terrorists, especially suicide terrorists, strike, they get far more media
attention than their male counterparts. Moreover, media professionals are
far more inclined to explore the motives and the causes of female terrorists
than of their male counterparts.3 This is, of course, precisely what terrorist
groups want: mass-mediated debates about their causes and grievances.
So, whenever female terrorists strike, they receive far greater atten-
tion in their target societies and beyond than male terrorists for the same
type of actions. The reason is clear: In most, if not all, societies vio-
lence is associated with men—not women. That’s even true for fictitious
depictions of crime and terrorism. In October 2012, for example, NBC
aired an episode of its long-running series Law and Order: SVU titled
“Acceptable Loss.” What starts out as an investigation of a brutal prosti-
tution ring, turns into the discovery of a terrorism plot and into the hunt
156 Terrorism
for a terrorist believed to be ready to strike. Experienced police officers
and a seasoned Homeland Security agent assume that the unknown ter-
rorist is a male. In a shocking turn of events, they find that the terrorist
is a beautiful young woman from South Asia. Once caught, Sophia gets
the opportunity to tell her story and motive for turning to terrorism: An
American drone strike in her village killed her father and set her onto the
path to take revenge in the United States. “Every terrorist has to tell a
story,” one of the agents says.
Well, yes, but it takes a female terrorist to tell a story that makes her
a somewhat sympathetic figure.
When female terrorists plot or carry out attacks, popular culture con-
siders them outliers, exceptions. But this is not the reality as reflected
in the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Most Wanted List that in the summer
of 2015 comprised eight persons—five of them women. Two of these
women belonged to revolutionary groups (the Black Liberation Army
and the Black Panther Party) most active during the 1970s and 1980s;
two were members of the May 19th Communist Organization; one was
a member of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and/or Animal Liberation
Front (ALF).4 For many years the most notorious among female terrorists
wanted by the FBI was Joann Deborah Chesimard, for whose apprehen-
sion the FBI offered a reward of up to $1 million. By 2015 she was no
longer on the Most Wanted Domestic Terrorism List but on the FBI’s
global list of the Ten Most Wanted Terrorists that included at the time
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor.5
In 1973, Chesimard, a member of the Black Liberation Army, and two
accomplices shot and killed one New Jersey state trooper and injured
another when stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike. The trio were wanted
for bank robberies and other crimes. She was sentenced to life, escaped
prison in 1979, and fled to Cuba. With the exception of the ELF/ALF
activist who committed arson and other violent acts in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries, the other women were members of leftist
groups that were part of a multi-continent movement most active in the
1970s and 1980s. By mid-2018, five of fifteen persons on the FBI’s list
of Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists were females. Chesimard remained
on the FBI’s international list of Most Wanted Terrorists along with the
Jordanian woman Ahlam Ahmad Ai-Tamini and twenty-six males con-
victed or accused of terrorism.
Female terrorists are not a recent phenomenon. Although there were in
the past and are today more male than female terrorists, both as leaders
and as followers, taken together the number of women in these organiza-
tions was and is substantial. According to Christopher Harmon, “More
than 30% of international terrorists are women, and females are central
to membership rosters and operational roles in nearly all insurgencies.”6
Other estimates range from 20 to 30 percent for many domestic and inter-
national terrorist groups. The membership of some terrorist organizations
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  157
was and is all male, and a few have been known to have only female
members, but most of the groups are composed of both men and women.
Typically, far-left terrorist groups have emphasized the recruitment of
women, and far-right groups have been much less interested in recruiting
women willing to commit violence. As Harmon observed,

If the presence of women helps to illuminate the recruitment patterns

of successful leftist groups, a relative absence of women in the active
hard core is a revealing indicator of different recruitment patterns
among neo-Nazis and similar rightist militant groups. The latter gen-
erally do not seek out and promote women members. That approach,
the product of culture and ideology, may be one of the more decisive
weaknesses of these groups, which remain stuck on the political mar-
gins and are also overwhelmingly male.7

Regardless of the far-left/far-right divide in this respect, terrorists in all

kinds of countries, regions, and continents and with all kinds of causes
have for a long time recognized the advantage of incorporating women
into their operations. Karla J. Cunningham has noted,

Not only have women historically been active in politically violent

organizations, the regional and ideological scope of this activity has
been equally broad. Women have been operational (e.g., regular)
in virtually every region and there are clear trends toward women
becoming more fully incorporated into numerous terrorist organiza-
tions. Cases from Colombia, Italy, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran,
Norway, and the United States suggest that women have not only
functioned in support capacities, but have also been leaders in organi-
zations, recruitment, and fund-raising, as well as tasked with carrying
out the most deadly missions undertaken by terrorist organizations.8

Indeed, since the beginning of modern-day terrorism, women were

actively involved in political violence—beginning with their roles in the
anarchist bombings of nineteenth-century Europe. Women played par-
ticularly prominent roles in the post-World War II era—especially among
far-left terrorist groups in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and
Latin and Central America. During the 1970s and 1980s, the names of
many of these female terrorists became well known along with those of
their male comrades. Women strove in other types of groups and in other
parts of the world as well. To mention just a few examples of high-profile
female terrorists, apart from those in the well-known Baader-Meinhof or
Weather Underground types of organizations: Lolita Lebron was a par-
ticipant in the 1950 terrorist attack in the U.S. House of Representatives
by the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN (see Chapter 4); as a member
of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Leila Khaled
158 Terrorism
participated in hijackings in 1969 and 1970; Kim Hyon Hui was one of
the North Korean terrorists responsible for the 1987 bombing of a South
Korean airliner that killed all 115 persons on board; and in 1991, a female
member of the Tamil Tigers organization in Sri Lanka, known only by
the name “Dhanu,” assassinated Indian party leader Rajiv Gandhi dur-
ing one of his election campaign appearances.
In a number of prominent terrorist organizations, women were repre-
sented in large numbers as rank-and-file members and also held leadership
positions. Thus, the original RAF in Germany had fifty-one male and
thirty-nine female members. Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler formu-
lated the group’s ideological program. The successors of the original
Baader-Meinhof group had more female than male leaders—ten women
and six men. During the life span of the original Red Brigades in Italy, the
organization’s leadership included twelve men and seven women.9 When
arrested and imprisoned, female terrorists have proven more committed
to the terrorist cause and their comrades than their male counterparts.
However, while women were very much involved in the violent activi-
ties of such groups, it is also true that these organizations did not have a
large number of members so that the actual number of women was quite
small. According to Cindy Ness, there is no reason “to believe that these
groups could have recruited females in substantial numbers given that
they lacked broad-based support or the extensive infrastructure neces-
sary to enlarge their operations.”10
The Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) were among the larg-
est revolutionary, left-extremist groups with an official policy of gender
equality. To a certain extent this policy was implemented. Typically
women comprised between 20 and 40 percent of the total FARC force.
Girls and women went through the same basic military training as boys
and men did; they had to adhere to the same disciplinary rules; they had
to accept the same hardships associated with life in an insurgent group
that challenged the state’s military forces. But that did not mean that
with respect to gender the FARC was an equal opportunity organization.
Indeed, some of the same gender problems that plagued women in civil-
ian society were also prevalent in the insurgent army.11
Researchers who interviewed women and men who had left the FARC
saw five reasons for the group’s long practice of recruiting women:

1 The revolutionary ideology of the FARC insisted on gender equality

and according to the organization that is precisely what is practiced
within its ranks.
2 The inclusion of women increased the number and quality of the
pool of potential recruits.
3 Female fighters had proven as tough as and even more goal oriented
and brutal than their male counterparts—even if only because they
had to prove their qualifications.
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  159
4 Women were exploited for FARC propaganda intended to soften the
image of its fighters.
5 Women became sexual partners of males in the FARC and thereby
were “essential for the morale and stability of the organization.”12

While the FARC claimed that women joined because of their inequality
and hardship in Colombia’s civilian society, women who were formerly
in the organization reported that there was no gender equality in the
organization either.
Most right-wing, traditional, reactionary groups do not even pretend
that there are equal rights for females within their ranks. Yet, in some
instances, women are enlisted for supporting roles in violent plots. Here
are two examples:

•• In 2002, Erica Chase (age twenty-one) of Boston and her boyfriend

Leo Felton planned to blow up Holocaust museums and targeted
persons for violent attacks for their cause: Ridding the country of
minorities—blacks, Latinos, Asians, and, most of all, Jews. Both
were members of Neo-Nazi hate groups. Targets included the
New England Holocaust Memorial, the U.S. Holocaust Museum
in Washington, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and other African
American leaders.
•• In 2003, Holly Dartez (age twenty-eight) was found guilty and sen-
tenced to a year in prison for her participation in a Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) cross-burning in Longville, Louisiana. She was the secretary
of the local KKK chapter and drove four male Klansmen to the
house of three African American men who had moved to Louisiana
from Mississippi. All participants received prison sentences, but they
achieved their goal in frightening their African American targets
sufficiently that they did not move their families to Louisiana but
instead returned to Mississippi.

In the Boston case, it seems that Erica Chase came under the spell of
thirty-year-old Felton who had served eleven years in prison for attempt-
ing to kill a black taxi driver in New York City. In the Louisiana case,
Holly Dartez drove the male Klansmen to the site of the cross-burning.
In both cases, the males were the leaders, whereas the women had merely
supporting roles—which, again, is typical for these sorts of organizations.
Women have more prominent positions among extreme antiabortion
groups, such as the Army of God, that encourages and glorifies terror-
ism: violence against abortion providers whether carried out by males
or females. The website displays a list of “Anti-Abortion Heroes of the
Faith,” among them women. The most prominent female “anti-abortion
hero” is Shelley Shannon serving a thirty-year prison sentence for the
attempted murder of an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas, and for
160 Terrorism
carrying out two acid attacks against women’s health centers as well as
several arson and bombing attacks against Planned Parenthood types of
facilities. In one of her posts Shannon writes:

The accusation is made that it is not pro-life to close an abortion facil-

ity by destroying the building, and not pro-life to shoot an abortion-
ist. I did a lot of blockades with Advocates For Life, Lambs of Christ,
Operation Rescue, and other groups. I also did a lot of picketing and
other pro-life activities. Sometimes I felt like a failure when I stood
with a sign and didn’t do everything I could to try to save babies
lives. I let them kill the babies! I allowed it. When you stand and
watch 20 or more babies being taken to their death, how is that more
pro-life than making it so those babies cannot be killed? . . . Those
who killed abortionists chose life for all the innocent babies he would
have killed, and did our country a great service.13

Case Study: Women of the Islamic State

At the height of ISIS’s territorial gains there were two all-women ISIS
brigades, al-Khansaa and Umnn al-Rayan, but they were not fight-
ing on the frontlines. These armed brigades were functioning as a
religious police that enforced morality according to the Islamic State’s
interpretation of Sharia law. It seems though that Muslimas in these
brigades, especially in al-Khansaa, were as brutal as the Islamic
State’s male fighters when they found women in the Caliphate who
violated Sharia as dictated by ISIS. Thus, al-Khansaa policewomen
allegedly disfigured the faces of women with acid for not wearing a
niqab and tortured a mother for breastfeeding in public.14
In early 2015, the media wing of al-Khansaa published on vari-
ous social media sites “Women of the Islamic State: A manifesto on
women by the Al-Khansaa Brigade.”15 According to the manifesto,
“the fundamental function for women is in the house with her husband
and children.” As for the “ideal” education, women are only supposed
to learn the most rudimentary things, as the manifesto suggests:

From age seven to nine, there will be three lessons: fiqh [mean-
ing Islamic jurisprudence and the understanding of the Sharia]
and religion, Quranic Arabic (written and read) and science
(accounting and natural sciences).
From ten to twelve, there will be more religious studies,
especially fiqh, focusing more on fiqh related to women and the
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  161

rulings on marriage and divorce. This is in addition to the other

two subjects. Skills like textiles and knitting, basic cooking will
also be taught.
From thirteen to fifteen, there will be more of a focus on
Shariah, as well as more manual skills (especially those related
to raising children) and less of the science, the basics of which
will already have been taught. In addition, they will be taught
about Islamic history, the life of the Prophet and his followers.16

The most shocking part of the manifesto states that “it is considered
legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of nine. Most pure girls
will be married by sixteen or seventeen, while they are still young and
active” (emphasis added).
There are a few exceptions spelled out, namely, that women may
be outside their home for:

•• studying the science of religion;

•• working as doctors or teachers according to Sharia law;
•• participating in the jihad in extraordinary emergencies, if the
enemy is attacking her country and the men are not enough [sic]
to protect it.

The last exception is of particular interest because by late 2017 an

existential emergency existed when ISIS had lost most of its previ-
ously conquered territory and many jihadis had been killed or forced
to flee. In multiple appeals published in the organization’s online
magazine Rumiyah, its weekly newsletter Naba, and in social media,
ISIS now called on its females to join the battle. According to one
declaration in Naba,

Today, in the context of this war against the Islamic state, and
with all that is experienced of hardship and pain, it is manda-
tory for the Muslim women to fulfill their duty from all aspects
in supporting the mujahideen in this battle, by preparing them-
selves as mujahidat in the cause of Allah, and readying to sac-
rifice themselves to defend the religion of Allah the Most High
and Mighty.17

Indeed, soon thereafter ISIS released several videos of female jihadis

in action.
162 Terrorism
In the early 1980s, Martha Crenshaw noted,

There has been considerable speculation about the prominent posi-

tion of women in terrorist groups (not prominent in comparison to
the number of women in the population at large but in proportion to
the number of women active in politics or in leadership roles). It will
be interesting to find out if female participation in violence will have
an effect on general social roles or on the stereotyping of women.18

To what extent the role of women in social, political, and professional

settings is affected by female roles in terrorist groups, if at all, is diffi-
cult to assess. But stereotypical images and prejudices do enter into some
of the arguments put forth in the discussion of the perennial question:
Why do women become terrorists? A number of explanations have been
advanced—all of them guided by deep-seated cultural gender stereotypes.

For the Sake of Love

Probably the most common view is that women become terrorists to fol-
low their lovers, husbands, or perhaps brothers or male friends into the
organization. Others believe that personal tragedies or disappointments
drive women into close-knit terrorist groups that give them the sense
of belonging and help them forget their troubles. This view “diminishes
women’s credibility and influence both within and outside organiza-
tions,” as Karla Cunningham has suggested, and it is widely held by
experts and the public.19 Robin Morgan has argued that women would
have rather died than admit the fact that love motivated them to join ter-
rorist groups.20 In Morgan’s view, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the founders
and leaders of the RAF, Leila Khaled, the PFLP hijacker, or Shigenobu
Fusako, the founder and leader of the Japanese Red Army—all females in
terrorist organizations—were and are merely token terrorists and victims
of male dominance, power, and coercion. Looking upon terrorism as
inherently male, Morgan has described it as “the intersection of violence,
eroticism, and what is considered ‘masculinity.’”21

Demonstration of Gender Equality

In the 1970s, sociologists, psychologists, and political observers pointed
to the feminist movement as the most likely explanation for the large
number of women in left-wing terrorist groups.22 Criminologist Freda
Adler explained female terrorist activity in an interview with the New
York Times as a “deviant expression of feminism.”23 According to the
Times, Adler said that the publicity surrounding terrorism gives female
terrorists “a platform to say, ‘I am liberated from past stereotypes,
I am accepted in the ultimate masculine roles.’”24 Earlier, in her book
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  163
Sisters in Crime, Adler wrote, “Despite their broad political pronounce-
ments, what the new revolutionaries [such as female members of the
Weather Underground] wanted was not simply urban social gains, but
sexual equality.”25 Pointing in particular to the female terrorists of the
Symbionese Liberation Army, she added,

That such women turned so drastically toward a new and highly

volatile identity caused a good portion of the nation to ask incred-
ulously, “How could women do this sort of thing?” Perhaps the
question itself was the very point of the episode. The fires which
consumed the ramshackle Los Angeles house where the small band
staged its last shoot-out also burned away a large part of the prevail-
ing American illusion about women.26

In Europe, experts provided similar explanations for the large number

of female members in terrorist organizations, such as the Red Brigades
in Italy and the RAF in West Germany. According to one news account
in 1977, “Italian and German sociologists and news commentators, all
of them men, have suggested over the last few weeks that the significant
female membership in radical and terrorist groups was an unwelcome
consequence of the women’s liberation movement.”27 Male sociologists
and commentators in Europe were not the only ones to blame women’s
lib. A female German politician stated, “These women demonstratively
negate everything that is part of the established feminine character.”28
A male professor in Munich wondered whether these female terrorists “see
violence in society as [the] prerogative of males and ask, ‘Why shouldn’t
we participate?’”29 The former neighbor of the notorious female terrorist
Susanne Albrecht complained, “She sang Communist songs all night and
never cleaned the stairs.”30
Female terrorists in traditionally male-dominated societies have also
been hailed for furthering gender equality. Yassir Arafat, at the height
of the second intifada, told thousands of women during a speech in
Ramallah, “Women and men are equal. You are my army of roses that
will crush Israeli tanks.”31 Soon thereafter, in early 2002 and following
the first female suicide bombing in Israel proper, Abdel Hamuda, the edi-
tor of an Egyptian weekly, declared that this was a monumental event in
that it “shattered a glass ceiling” and “elevated the value of Arab women
and, in one moment, and with enviable courage, put an end to the unend-
ing debate about equality between men and women.”32 But it is far from
clear that a larger segment of these women became terrorists in a quest
for gender equality.
Take the example of female Palestinian suicide terrorists. Living in a
milieu in which gender inequality is deeply rooted in religious and cultural
traditions, young women with personal disappointments and emotional
problems are particularly vulnerable to being recruited and trained as
164 Terrorism
“martyrs.” Indeed, after talking to the families and friends of four female
suicide bombers and interviewing several women who had been recruited
but did not finish their mission, Barbara Victor wrote,

I discovered the hard reality that it was never another woman who
recruited the suicide bombers. Without exception, these women
had been trained by a trusted member of the family—a brother, an
uncle—or an esteemed religious leader, teacher, or family friend, all
of whom were men. What I also discovered was that all four who
died, plus the others who had tried and failed to die a martyr’s death,
had personal problems that made their lives untenable within their
own culture and society.33

These women’s social environment made them vulnerable to male manipu-

lation and exploitation. In Victor’s judgment, “there were, in fact, very dif-
ferent motives and rewards for the men who died a martyr’s death than for
the women.”34 It seems that whereas men justified the rationale for “mar-
tyrdom” in political terms, women were told by their male handlers that
their own or a male family member’s transgressions could only be redeemed
by killing themselves to kill Israelis and enjoy happiness in paradise.

Can Real Women Become Terrorists?

This question points to the image of the female terrorist as that of the
deviant woman—as masculine, not feminine. This view was widely held
in the past, but it is still alive and well in the twenty-first century. In early
2002, an article in a leading U.S. news magazine linked terrorism to male
hormones. The authors wrote, “Testosterone has always had a lot to do
with terrorism, even among secular bombers and kidnappers like Italy’s
Red Brigade and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang. As Andreas Baader
himself once declared, ‘F—cking and shooting are the same thing.’”35 In
this case, the reader was explicitly told that terrorism is a male domain.
At the same time, the implicit message was that female terrorists are aber-
rations, the exceptions to the rule, not real women.
Given such stereotypes, Cindy Ness concluded that

The secular terrorist group and the religious terrorist group alike
must historicize itself in such a way that its actions are not viewed as
a rupture from ‘decent’ behavior but, rather, a transition whereby an
old gender value is seen as being given new expression.36

Thus, the Tamil Tigers, for example, did not retreat from their culture’s
esteem for chastity and motherhood and rejection of female warriors,
but drew also from Hindu mythology to justify women freedom fighters
in extraordinary circumstances. According to Ness, “on all occasions
other than when their military projects are coordinated, the sexes remain
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  165
segregated within the LTTE. Females live in separate camps, run their
own military organization, and plan their own projects.”37 Similarly,
religious groups like Hamas characterize female terrorists “as defend-
ers of Islam, not by their stepping out of accepted social norms.”38 To
put it differently, terrorist organizations find explanations to counter
the idea that female members are not really women. As a sociologist
with knowledge of the Tamil Tigers put it, “behind the appearance of
every uniformed female fighter, is a tender, gentle and passionate young
woman with all the qualities attributed to femininity.”39

Tactical Advantages of Female Terrorists

Although, as noted earlier, female terrorists are not rare, the conventional
wisdom is that females are far less likely than males to commit political
violence. As a result, women have far better chances of carrying out ter-
rorist attacks without being intercepted than their male comrades. This
has been long recognized by terrorists who oversee their groups’ opera-
tions and are responsible for the success of attacks. Women are simply
less likely to be suspects and therefore less likely to be denied access to
potential targets and areas for attacks; they are less frequently selected
for thorough security checks than males; and they can fake pregnancies
for the sake of hiding weapons and explosives. As former German terror-
ist Bommi Bauman, member of a successor cell of the Baader-Meinhof
group, observed,

If a man in a high position, perhaps knowing that he may be a tar-

get for terrorists, is approached by a woman, he may think, she is
a prostitute. Women can go straight to the target’s doorstep; some-
times they do it in pairs, two women, saying they are lost. If two men
approached him, he would be suspicious.40

What Bauman described was precisely the script for several of the kid-
nappings and assassinations conducted by West German terrorists
in which women exploited the fact that they were not as alarming as
men—although it was well known that females were well represented in
these groups. Terrorists elsewhere followed this blueprint as well. Before
Dhanu, a female member of the Tamil Tigers, assassinated Rajiv Gandhi,
she had “garlanded him, bowed at his feet, and then detonated a bomb
that killed them both.”41 Playing the role of a female admirer of Gandhi,
she did not have any problem with getting close to him. It is telling that
one of the members of a two-person backup team was a young woman
as well. The Kurdistan Workers Party, too, decided to use female mem-
bers for suicide attacks because of their tactical advantages. But women
were also more inclined to become human bombs because they wanted
to prove themselves useful in a struggle in which they often could not
match the physical strength of their male comrades. The wave of terrorist
166 Terrorism
attacks against Russian targets by female suicide bombers was partially
explained as Chechen groups taking advantage of the fact that Chechen
females were able “to move more freely than Chechen men, who are rou-
tinely harassed by Russia’s police and security services.”42 In early 2004,
after Hamas claimed responsibility for dispatching the first female suicide
bomber to kill Israelis, the group’s spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin,
cited “purely tactical reasons” when asked why his organization had
decided on selecting a woman, saying, “It could be that a man would not
be able to reach the target, and that’s why they had to use a woman.”43
The authorities in some societies came to understand over time that
female terrorists were just as likely as their male comrades to commit
deadly acts of terrorism. When West Germany was faced with a wave
of terror by the RAF and its successor groups, the country’s counter-
terrorism units were allegedly ordered by their superiors to “shoot
the women first.”44 In responding to the increased attacks by Chechen
women, Russian authorities expanded their security checks to women
with scarves and other clothing typical of Muslim women. In the long
run, therefore, it is possible, if not likely, that the gender advantage will
fade once it is clear that attacks by female terrorists are not exceptions,
but common occurrences. For this to happen, however, it is not enough
for top officials to understand that the female paradox is a myth in the
realm of terrorism; rather, the men and women who implement anti- and
counterterrorist policies day in and day out must have this understand-
ing as well—and act accordingly. But this seems easier said than done.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for example, developed an
official profile of a typical terrorist that focused on males only. Jessica
Stern criticized this as “an important weakness in our counterterrorism
strategy” and warned,

Profiling men exclusively, and also focusing so tightly on countries

known to harbor terrorists, are significant loopholes that have not
been closed despite the FBI’s recognition that al Qaeda has begun
recruiting women, and despite the discovery last spring that an MIT-
trained female scientist may have been providing logistical support
to al Qaeda.45

Even in societies that have experienced repeated attacks by female terror-

ists, there is still a tendency to view and treat women differently. Israel
is a perfect example here. In January 2004, when a twenty-two-year-
old Palestinian woman, pretending to be crippled, told Israelis at a Gaza
checkpoint that she had metal plates in her leg that would sound the
alarm, they allowed her to wait for a woman to search her in a special
area. Moments later, the woman blew herself up and killed four Israelis.
Lamenting the cynical exploitation of his soldiers’ consideration for the
dignity of women, the officer in charge said,
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  167
We’re doing our best to be humanitarian, to consider the problems
associated with searching women. She said she had a medical prob-
lem, that’s why the soldiers let her in, to check her in private because
she is a woman. That’s a very cruel, cynical use of the humanitarian
considerations of our soldiers.46

The lesson here is this: While there are no profound gender differences
with respect to terrorists’ motives and actions, most societies continue
to deem females less suspect and less dangerous than males. Indeed,
indications are that more women will be recruited by terrorist groups
in the future. After analyzing cross-national opinion surveys in fourteen
Muslim countries, two scholars concluded that female respondents were
more likely to support terrorism in defense of Islam.47
There is also evidence that female terrorists can be more committed
to the terrorist cause and their comrades than their male counterparts.
With respect to the Italian Red Brigades and similar groups, Luisella de
Cataldo Neuberger and Tiziana Valentini found that a larger proportion
of male members collaborated with law enforcement and distanced them-
selves from the activities and goals of their terrorist organizations, when
imprisoned, than their female counterparts. Although not enough data
are available for the first generation of RAF, women seemed less inclined
than men to cooperate with the authorities once they were behind bars.48

Suicide Terrorism as Family Project

Yusef (seventeen) was a loving big brother who was happy when
videotaping his younger brother Firman (fifteen) and his sisters
Fadhila (twelve) and Famela (eight). Their dad, Dita Oepriarto,
and mom, Puji Kuswati, were doting parents. The family lived
in a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Indonesia’s second largest city
Surabaya and the children attended a private Muslim school that
emphasized racial and religious harmony. The family had contact
with Christian neighbors.
On May 13, 2018, the whole family carried out simultane-
ous suicide attacks against Christian churches. The father drove
his explosive-laden truck into a church during Sunday service; his
two sons blew themselves up on a motorcycle that they had driven
to a second church; mother and daughters detonated their bombs
near a third church. Twelve persons were killed and several dozens
injured. It was one of Indonesia’s most lethal terrorist attacks. Just
as the close-knit family had lived, all its members died in a well-
planned, three-pronged, suicide-homicide mission.

(continued)
168 Terrorism
(continued)
Hours later, a father of four accidentally detonated a bomb
that he and his family planned to explode jointly near a Christian
church. Instead, the bomb killed his wife and one of his daughters,
landing him in prison.
The following day, five members of yet another family blew
themselves up at a church, injuring ten bystanders and killing them-
selves, except for an eight-year-old girl that survived.
Even in the deadly annals of catastrophic terrorism the joint sui-
cide attacks of whole families opened a new, shocking, frightening
chapter.
The three fathers met at a local Quranic studying group where
their wives and children, too, were introduced to extremist propa-
ganda. Dita Oepriarto, the mastermind of the attacks, turned out to
be the leader of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an extremist Indonesian
Muslim group affiliated with ISIS. Indeed, shortly after the attacks
ISIS claimed responsibility.
Outwardly, the suicide families were comfortable in their multi-
ethnic, multi-religious settings. Neither the parents nor their chil-
dren seemed particularly religious, the women and girls did not
wear headscarfs. It seems that precisely their apparent modern life
style was a clever camouflage of their extremist feelings, covert
actions, and sinister plans.
They all seemed to have voluntarily embraced the plan to die
themselves in order to kill others—Christians, infidels—and in the
process go together to heaven.

The Making of Child Terrorists

“That’s my boy,” Khaled Sharrouf wrote on Twitter alongside a photo
of his seven-year-old son using both hands to hold up a man’s sev-
ered head. The photo, since removed from Twitter, was reportedly
taken in Raqqa, a Syrian city in the stranglehold of Islamic State mili-
tants, where the Australian father had taken his young family to join
the fight.
The Islamic State is not the first terrorist organization to recruit and
train young boys to commit unspeakable violence, but it is the first ter-
rorist enterprise that documents and publicizes how it runs its training
camps for young boys, many not older than nine or ten years and some
significantly younger. Nor does ISIS make a secret of its objective to
use its “Sharia camps” to produce a whole new generation of jihadists.
Indeed, in one of these readily available online propaganda videos, one
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  169
jihadist in an ISIS training camp for young boys declares proudly, “This
generation of children is the generation of the Caliphate.” Some fathers
are complicit in transforming young children into eager killers. In one
video, a man called Abdullah, the Belgian, is shown with his little son,
perhaps five or six years old. The father prods the little boy again and
again to say “The Islamic State.” He asks questions like, “What have the
infidels done?” The son finally answers, “They kill Muslims.”49
One result of these indoctrination methods was shown in the most
shocking online video in ISIS’s long list of horror shows that depicted a
young boy as executioner of two men who were allegedly Russian spies.
In the video, the boy, holding a pistol, stands next to a grown-up jihad-
ist who recites religious verses. The two condemned men are kneeling
when the boy steps toward them firing several shots before and after the
men collapse. The video ends with footage from an earlier production
in which the same boy identified himself as Abdallah and said that he
wanted to grow up to kill infidels.50 There could not be a more troubling
case of ruthless indoctrination, recruitment, and training with the sole
purpose of producing killers and publicizing it all online.
When it comes to the indoctrination of children, both boys and girls,
they tend to embrace whatever they are told by people closest to them,
parents, siblings, teachers, group leaders, and so on. In Nazi Germany,
boys and girls became members of the “Hitler Youth,” where they
wore uniforms and were socialized into the totalitarian regime’s hateful
propaganda.
Noting that of the many parties that recruit and use children, “the
vast majority are non-state actors,” the UN Special Representative
of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika
Coomaraswamy, told the General Assembly of several new developments:

We are also discovering that more and more children are being used
for military intelligence by different armed forces and groups around
the world . . . We are increasingly concerned with the changing
nature of warfare in different parts of the world and the difficult
challenges it poses for child protection partners. In some wars we
find children being used as suicide bombers—there were seven such
cases in Afghanistan and several in Iraq in 2009.51

If anything, the misuse of children by terrorists, especially guerrilla-type

organizations, has increased in the second decade of the twenty-first cen-
tury. Earlier, the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and the Taliban
in Pakistan began the practice of recruiting young boys from religious
schools or madrassas as suicide bombers; Al Qaeda in Iraq, too, enlisted
boys to attack U.S. troops and their allies. More recently, ISIS and its
associate in Nigeria, Boko Haram, are the main offenders. ISIS’s indoc-
trination and training camps are for boys only, whereas Boko Haram
170 Terrorism
targets girls as well and kidnaps them typically from schools to drive
home the point that females ought not to be educated. While some of
the young girls are forced into marrying jihadists, others are forced or
convinced to become suicide bombers.

What Happened to Our Children?

Beginning in 2016 ISIS tried to convince and prepare children in
the West for attacks in their own neighborhoods—with stunning
success in Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe. In Germany
alone, there were five ISIS-related attacks or foiled attacks involv-
ing teenagers:

•• A fifteen-year-old girl of German-Moroccan origin who was

in direct contact with an ISIS agent stabbed a German police
officer in the neck with a kitchen knife in Hanover. He survived
the attack after undergoing surgery.
•• Three boys, all aged sixteen, built a home-made bomb and threw
it at a Sikh temple, wounding three—one severely—and causing
extensive damage. The leader of the group, who went by the
name of The Emir, is a German-born son of ethnic Turks. After a
court hearing, his distressed mother wondered, “What happened
to our children?”
•• A seventeen-year-old Afghan asylum seeker attacked passen-
gers on a train traveling through southern Germany with a
knife and ax, injuring four people, two seriously. He admitted
later that he was “a soldier of ISIS.”
•• A sixteen-year-old Syrian asylum seeker was arrested in
Cologne because he was in contact with an ISIS “official” who
instructed him on how to build a bomb.
•• A twelve-year-old Iraqi-German boy, after contact with ISIS
via the messenger service Telegram, left a home-made bomb
near a shopping mall in Ludwigshafen. The bomb failed to
explode. The boy and his seventeen-year-old accomplice in
Austria were arrested.

Intelligence services in France, too, foiled several plots by teenag-

ers, among them one involving two girls and another planned by
three boys.
All of these children and juveniles were radicalized and recruited
by increasingly aggressive ISIS messaging, specifically tailored to
boys and girls. As the so-called Islamic State lost ground on the
Iraqi and Syrian battleground, its propaganda machine produced
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  171
videos and computer games designed to hook children and teen-
agers. Once young targets of these propaganda tactics were
captivated, personal contacts were sought and often established by
actual ISIS operatives.

Commenting on the increased number of child terrorists in 2012 and

thus before the establishment of ISIS, Mia Bloom warned that “the next
generation of terrorists will not grow up to take up arms but will do so
while still children.”52 Indeed, even groups that originally target boys
only as cannon fodder enlist girls as less suspicious attackers. In early
2014, there was a most shocking news report from Afghanistan that
an eight-year-old girl was prevented from carrying out a suicide attack
against a police station in Khanshin. According to one dispatch, while
Taliban commandos deployed female fighters before, this was the first
known incident when a very young girl was sent on a suicide mission.
It was reported furthermore that the child was the sister of a prominent
Taliban commander. According to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry,
“one of the Afghan soldiers spotted the girl wearing a suicide jacket.
But she could not operate the button to detonate the suicide vest or she
was arrested before she could carry out the attack.”53 As one would not
expect otherwise, after the incident the little girl was reportedly “in a
state of shock and confusion.”54
In reality, the practice of deploying the very young, especially girls,
was quite normal for a number of terrorist and insurgent groups. Thus,
in December 2016, two seven-year-old girls blew themselves up and
killed themselves in a market in Nigeria, killing another person and
injuring eighteen others. The authorities assumed that Boko Haram
had kidnapped the girls and fitted them with suicide belts. One shocked
eyewitness revealed later,

They got out of a rickshaw and walked right in front of me without

showing the slightest sign of emotion. I tried to speak with one of
them, in Hausa and in English, but she didn’t answer. I thought they
were looking for their mother. She headed toward the poultry sellers,
and then detonated her explosives belt.55

Notes
1 Kevin Meyers, “The Terrible Sight of a Female Terrorist,” [Link].
[Link]/opinion/[Link]?xml=/opinion/2002/10/27/[Link], accessed
July 20, 2003.
2 Alexis B. Delaney and Peter R. Neumann, “Another Failure of Imagination?
The Spectacular Rise of the Female Terrorist,” International Herald Tribune,
September 6, 2004.
172 Terrorism
3 Ibid.
4 [Link]/wanted/dt, accessed July 10, 2015.
5 [Link]/wanted/wanted_terrorists, accessed July 10, 2015.
6 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 212.
7 Ibid., 220.
8 Karla J. Cunningham, “Cross-Regional Trends in Female Terrorism,” Studies
in Conflict and Terrorism 26:3 (May–June 2003): 175.
9 These numbers are mentioned in Luisella de Cataldo Neuberger and Tiziana
Valentini, Women and Terrorism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 8, 9.
10 Cindy D. Ness, “In the Name of the Cause: Women’s Work in Secular and
Religious Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28:5 (September–
October 2005): 356.
11 Keith Stanski, “Terrorism, Gender, and Ideology: A Case Study of Women
who Join the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC),” in James
J. F. Forest, ed., The Making of Terrorists, Volume I: Recruitment (Westport,
CT: Praeger Security International), 2006.
12 Natalia Herrera and Douglas Porch, “‘Like Going to a Fiesta’: The Role of
Women in Columbia’s FARC-EP,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19:4 (2008):
613–14.
13 [Link]/[Link], accessed September 30, 2014.
14 Anita Peresin, “Fatal Attraction: Western Muslimas and ISIS,” Perspectives
on Terrorism 9:3 (2015): 22, [Link]/pt/[Link]/pot/
article/view/427/0, accessed July 2, 2015.
15 The English version of the manifesto is available at [Link].
org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/free/women-of-the-islamic-state3.
pdf, accessed July 14, 2015.
16 Ibid., 24.
17 Rita Katz, “How Do We Know ISIS Is Losing? Now It’s Asking Women to
Fight,” Washington Post, November 2, 2017, [Link]/news/
posteverything/wp/2017/11/02/how-do-we-know-isis-is-losing-now-its-ask-
ing-women-to-fight-for-it/?utm_term=.9ae775dc8247, accessed May 21, 2018.
18 Martha Crenshaw, “Introduction: Reflection on the Effects of Terrorism,” in
Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism, Legitimacy and Power: The Consequences
of Political Violence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 24.
19 Cunningham, 171.
20 Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (New York:
Washington Square Press, 2001), 204.
21 Ibid., xvi.
22 Cataldo Neuberger and Valentini.
23 Judy Klemesrud, “A Criminologist’s View of Women Terrorists,” New York
Times, January 9, 1979, A24.
24 Ibid.
25 Freda Adler, Sisters in Crime (New York: Waveland Press, 1975), 20.
26 Ibid., 21, 22.
27 Paul Hofmann, “Women Active among Radicals in Western Europe,” New
York Times, August 14, 1977, 7.
28 Hanna-Renate Laurien, a conservative, was quoted by Kim Wilkinson, “The
Hit Women,” Newsweek, August 15, 1977, 30.
29 Michael Getler, “Women Play Growing Role in Slayings by West German
Terrorist Groups,” Washington Post, August 6, 1977.
30 Ibid.
31 Barbara Victor, The Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women
Suicide Bombers (New York: Rodale, 2003), 19.
 Women, Children, and Terrorism  173
32 James Bennett, “Arab Press Glorifies Bomber as Heroine,” New York Times,
February 11, 2002, 8.
33 Victor, 19.
34 Ibid.
35 Christopher Dickey and Gretel C. Kovach, “Married to Jihad,” Newsweek,
January 14, 2002, 48.
36 Ness, 361.
37 Ibid., 363.
38 Ibid., 366.
39 Ibid., 364; quotes Adele Balasingham, the wife of a close advisor to the Tamil
Tiger leadership.
40 Harmon, 219, 220.
41 Cunningham, 180.
42 Steven Lee Myers, “Female Suicide Bombers Unnerve Russians,” New York
Times, August 7, 2003, 1.
43 Hamas’s first female suicide bomber was Reem al-Reyashi, a twenty-two-
year-old mother of two small children. Yassin was quoted in Greg Myre,
“Gaza Mother, 22, Kills Four Israeli Soldiers,” New York Times, January 15,
2004, A3.
44 Shoot the Women First was therefore chosen as the title of a book explor-
ing the phenomenon of female terrorists. See Eileen MacDonald, Shoot the
Women First (New York: Random House, 1992).
45 Jessica Stern, “When Bombers Are Women,” Washington Post, December 18,
2003, A35.
46 Brigadier-General Gadi Shamni, the Gaza divisional commander, was
quoted in Chris McGreal, “Human-Bomb Mother Kills Four Israelis at Gaza
Checkpoint,” The Guardian, January 15, 2004, 17.
47 C. Christine Fair and Bryan Shephard, “Who Supports Terrorism? Evidence
from Fourteen Muslim Countries,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29
(2006): 51–74.
48 Cataldo Neuberger and Valentini, especially ch. 1.
49 [Link]
twitter, accessed December 20, 2014.
50 The video was released on January 13, 2015, but was soon removed from ISIS
sites.
51 The text of the speech is available at [Link]/children/conflict/english/
[Link], accessed July 10,
2010.
52 Mia Bloom, “Analysis: Women and Children Constitute the New Faces
of Terrorism,” [Link], August 6, 2012, [Link]
2012/08/06/analysis-women-and-children-constitute-the-new-faces-of-terror/,
accessed July 11, 2015.
53 “Afghanistan Girl Wearing Suicide Vest Detained,” [Link]/news/
world-asia-25620543, accessed July 10, 2015.
54 Ibid.
55 Alex Matthews, “Two Girls of Just SEVEN Blow Themselves up in a Suicide
Bomb Attack at a Market in Nigeria,” Daily Mail, December 11, 2017, www.
[Link]/news/article-4022264/Girls-aged-7-8-stage-suicide-attack-
[Link], accessed May 21, 2018.
8 Common Threads
Goals, Targets, and Tactics

Although some persons are psychologically more prone to become ter-

rorists than others, it would be a mistake to dismiss terrorists and their
deeds as crazy or capricious. Instead, as Bruce Hoffman has noted, a
terrorist group’s course of action—the selection of targets and tactics—is
shaped by a variety of factors, among them the organization’s ideology.1
Indeed, there is little doubt that the ideology of a group, whether well
or ill defined, determines the goals, the targets or victims, and, to some
degree, the tactics or methods of terror as well. The size of a terrorist
group matters, too. Comparing the small Al Qaeda Central group with
organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, or ISIS in the context of social
movement theory, it is obvious that the latter three are far stronger in
terms of numbers and on that account get the greatest amount of atten-
tion and have the greatest impact on friends and foes as they display their
repertoire of violent performances. But there are also exceptions to this
rule, namely, when a relatively small terrorist group or cell—or even a
lone wolf—manages to carry out acts of catastrophic terrorism.
As for the goals, terrorists tend to have two sets of political objectives,
namely, short-term and long-term goals, and, typically, they have both
sets in mind when they plan and execute an act of violence. In the case
of Lebanese and Palestinian groups that were responsible for a series of
hijackings and kidnappings in the 1970s and 1980s, the short-term objec-
tive most of the time was to win the release of imprisoned comrades. One
shorter-term goal of Hezbollah was to force the pullback of American
and French troops from Lebanon. Once these forces had been withdrawn
following a horrific terror strike against their bases near Beirut in 1983,
the group explained its ultimate long-term goal in an “Open Letter to
Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World”:

As for Israel, we consider it the American spearhead in our Islamic

world. It is the usurping enemy that must be fought until the usurped
right is returned to its owners . . . This Islamic resistance must con-
tinue, grow, and escalate, with God’s help, and must receive from
all Muslims in all parts of the world utter support, aid, backing, and
 Common Threads  175
participation so that we may be able to uproot this cancerous germ
and obliterate it from existence.2

When the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, or

the Baader-Meinhof Red Army Faction (RAF) pulled off bank robber-
ies, their short-term goals were clear: They wanted money to support
their lives in the underground. But they rationalized their crimes and
their booty as means to further their ultimate or long-term goals—
revolutionary systemic changes. In the case of the RAF, this meant
nothing short of an international revolution. As one of the RAF’s
members described it,

Even if the masses in the European metropolis don’t put themselves

on the side of the revolution—the working class among us is privi-
leged and takes part in the exploitation of the Third World—the only
possibility for those who build the Vanguard here, who take part
in the struggle here, is to destroy the infra-structure of imperialism,
destroy the apparatus.3

Do Terrorists Achieve Their Goals?

If one considers the philosophy and objectives of the Baader-Meinhof
group and associated cells, it is crystal clear that they failed to achieve, or
even further, their ultimate or strategic goals. However, they were quite
successful in realizing their short-term or tactical objectives, such as the
release of fellow terrorists. In this respect, the West German radical left
was representative of other left-wing terrorists of this period in that these
movements often did succeed in their short-term agendas. The same is
true of other types of terrorists (right-wing, nationalist, single-issue, etc.)
as well. Given this mixed bag of successes and failures, it has been argued
that “the scorecard of struggle between nation-states and terrorists is not
so clear.”4 While acknowledging terrorists’ tactical successes, Robert A.
Feary concluded in regard to their ultimate objectives that the result “is
hardly a source of encouragement for terrorists.”5
To be sure, the battlefield of terrorism is littered with utter failure
in terms of long-term or ultimate strategic goals. But there were David-
beats-Goliath results as well. One of the terrorist success stories was
written by the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish militant group that operated
in what was then the British mandate in Palestine, which committed ter-
rorist acts against British targets. The most deadly and most notorious
of these attacks targeted the British headquarters at the David Hotel in
Jerusalem in 1946, resulting in the deaths of ninety-one persons. The
terrorist campaign led to the withdrawal of the British from Palestine
and the establishment of the state of Israel soon thereafter. According to
David Fromkin,
176 Terrorism
Of course, Britain might have withdrawn anyway, at some other
time or for some other reason. But that is really beside the point, for
the Irgun wanted independence then and there, in order to open up
the country for refugees from Hitler’s Europe. They got what they
wanted when they wanted it by doing it their own way.6

Similarly, the terrorist tactics of the National Liberation Front (FLN)

forced France to withdraw from its North African colony of Algeria and
open the way to Algeria’s national independence.
So, does terrorism work? Sometimes it does, in that one “can find,
well before Yassir Arafat’s reception at the United Nations in 1974, his-
torical illustrations of terrorism’s efficacy.”7 However, citing the cases
of Israel and Algeria, Fromkin has argued, “Terrorism wins only if you
respond to it in the way that the terrorists want you to.”8 Philip Jenkins
concluded that the case of the Algerian FLN demonstrated that terrorism
and terrorists can realize their long-term goals. According to Jenkins,

Several other movements have made the transition from loathed

terrorists to respected politicians. At some stages of its history, the
African National Congress used terrorist actions, but in 1994, the
ANC became the governing party of South Africa, the most powerful
state in black Africa. In Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army
has often employed savage violence against civilians and noncom-
batants, of a sort that can only be described as terrorism. By the late
1990s, leading IRA supporter Gerry Adams was a prominent figure
in Northern Irish politics and a member of the British Parliament. In
Israel, too, the condemned Jewish terrorists of the 1940s had by the
1980s risen to the status of respected political leaders.9

All in all, then, the terrorist rate of success is pretty high when it comes
to short-term goals but quite low when it comes to long-term objectives.
Yet, the fact that some terrorist movements did accomplish their ultimate
goals in the past continues to encourage contemporary terrorists’ belief
that they, too, may become exceptions to the rule.

The Selection of Targets

Once an ideological rationale has been embraced and the ultimate or
long-term goal or goals have been established, the range of acceptable
targets “is determined by a number of factors, and the terrorists’ ide-
ology is central to this process, not only because it provides the initial
dynamic for the terrorists’ actions, but because it sets out the moral
framework within which they operate.”10 Ideology is more important
than other factors because the doctrine “defines how the members of
a group see the world around them.”11 More importantly, the terrorist
 Common Threads  177
doctrine identifies the pool of enemies from which the victims will be
selected. The West German RAF, for example, considered the United
States and NATO (including West Germany, a member state) as the core
of the hated imperialist system. Thus, American citizens and NATO rep-
resentatives and facilities were logical and legitimate targets. While the
Italian Red Brigades (RB) shared the RAF’s hatred of the global imperial-
ist evil, in reality the movement’s ultimate goal was the removal of the
Italian regime. The result was, as C. J. M. Drake has pointed out, that
the German left-wing terrorists’ priority targets were the U.S. military
and high-level German officials in politics and the corporate world. The
RAF picked as victims individuals whom the group perceived as symbols
of gross injustices and wrongdoing. Italian terrorists, on the other hand,
attacked mostly low and middle-level targets—with a few exceptions,
such as the kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro
in 1978. Nearly all of the RB’s targeted persons were Italians.12
The examples of the RAF and RB demonstrate that even when
groups share the same ideological framework and the same enemies,
they can differ in the selection of their victims. For the Italian terrorists,
all police officers were legitimate and explicitly selected targets; for the
West German terrorists, low-level police officers were never intentional
targets—even though several were killed by accident during terror-
ist operations. Inside the West German terrorist movement, a marked
change occurred after the founders of the RAF—Ulrike Meinhof, Horst
Mahler, and Andreas Baader—had been arrested. On several occasions,
their “heirs” targeted “innocent” people with no symbolic meaning.
This was the case in several hijackings of airplanes. Reportedly, the RAF
founders rejected these strikes against innocents as the “willful dilution
of the moral thrust of the first RAF by later recruits,” and one of them,
Klaus Juenschke, complained about “this degenerate crew that has the
nerve . . . to boast of this cowardly murder and to present it as a new
quality in the anti-imperialist struggle . . . in Western Europe.”13 By and
large, however, even the new generation of German terrorists adhered to
the careful selection of military, political, or corporate targets.
For many years, anti-American terrorism affected civilians who seemed
to be randomly selected because they happened to be at the wrong place
at the wrong time. However, often the victims were “not selected purely
at random.”14 Instead, terrorists targeted U.S. citizens, persons carry-
ing Israeli passports, members of a particular religious group (namely
Jews), or simply those who visited a particular country. The Lebanese
terrorists who hijacked a TWA airliner in 1985, for example, collected all
passports and asked one of the flight attendants to sort out Israelis and
passengers with Jewish-sounding names. After a terrorist assault on Lod
Airport in Israel in 1972, during which a number of foreign tourists were
killed, one of the terrorists explained that “there are no innocent tourists
in Israel.”15 The rationale was that if you are not for us, you are against
178 Terrorism
us, or, as some terrorists have put it, “If you are not part of the solution,
you are part of the problem.”16 Similarly, following the first World Trade
Center bombing in 1993, the perpetrators of the first major international
terrorist act on American soil stated,

The American people are responsible for the actions of their govern-
ment and they must question all of the crimes that their government
is committing against other people. Or they—Americans—will be the
targets of our operations that could diminish them.17

Osama bin Laden explained his jihad against all Americans in similar
terms. He explicitly cited the will of God as the ultimate endorsement
when he wrote, “All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans
are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims.”18
In the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, members of Palestinian
terrorist groups, too, have rationalized the indiscriminate targeting of
Israelis on the basis of what they consider the justice of their cause. This
mindset is reflected in the remarks of Palestinian militants:

The organization did not impose any limits with regards to damage
or scope or nature of the armed attacks. The aim was to kill as many
Jews as possible and there was no moral distinction between poten-
tial victims, whether soldiers, women or children.
When it came to moral considerations, we believed in the justice of
our cause . . . I don’t recall ever being troubled by moral questions.19

Whereas Al Qaeda Central was all along a rather small group that often
put years of planning into the preparation of spectacular attacks, the
comparably huge Islamic State’s strike policy was more along the line
of Palestinian groups and their goal to strike as often as possible killing
one, two, or more persons at a time. Thus, ISIS’s media center issued
call after call for lone wolves to attack infidels wherever they are—with
whatever means. The idea is that many small attacks will have similar
or stronger effects than infrequent major strikes in that they most of
all intimidate and frighten the enemy. While ISIS told followers repeat-
edly to target members of the military and police officers primarily, in
other appeals the directive is to kill anyone, to kill indiscriminately. The
mastermind and perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995,
Timothy McVeigh, also justified the indiscriminate killing of innocents
for his cause. After he had disclosed his plan to bomb the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building to his friend Michael Fortier, he was asked
about the fate of all the people in the building. McVeigh answered,
“Think about the people as if they were storm troopers in Star Wars.
They may be individually innocent, but they are guilty because they
work for the Evil Empire.”20
 Common Threads  179
In sum, then, the overall ideological framework and the associated
assignment of blame for their grievances will guide some terrorists to
select a limited number of target types and others to pinpoint huge groups
of people, even a whole nation or several nations, as legitimate targets.

Terrorist Methods: From Primitive Bombs to WMD

As noted earlier, one can use social movement theory to study and
understand terrorist movements. Whether a movement is nonviolent or
violent, the goal is to stage public performances that draw the attention
of the larger public and political leaders. While violence in public places
always gets a great deal of attention, those actors with the most shocking
repertoire of performances receive the greatest attention. Terrorists are
well aware of this and justify violence as the only means of getting the
attention they need and deserve. Describing the mindset of terrorists as
they justify their violent means to achieve political ends, J. Bowyer Bell
observed that for terrorists,

the recourse to violence, often the last option, is a legitimate means

to shape the future. The present is intolerable and violence the only
way. As one Palestinian fedayi said, “We would throw roses if it
would work.” Since it does not, they throw bombs.21

The metaphor of the rose-throwing terrorist is, of course, in sharp con-

trast to the real-life damage that terrorists have caused for many years
and to the fact that terrorists have used all kinds of violent methods—
from stabbing or strangling their victims to dispersing nerve gas. The
most obvious reason for changes in terrorist tactics over time was sim-
ply the availability of ever more convenient and potent means to attack
and harm the targets of terrorism. Throughout the centuries, terrorists
embraced each new technology for their purposes, from the revolver to
sticks of dynamite, fertilizer bombs, rockets, and sarin gas. Advances
in transportation technology, too, have affected the choice of terrorist
methods as the derailment of trains, the hijacking of airplanes and ships,
the suicide bombing of crowded buses, or the explosion of car or truck
bombs have attested to—not to mention the attacks of 9/11, when terror-
ists turned airliners into devastating missiles.
The selection of one or more targets and of the methods of attack go
hand in hand. Both decisions are affected by the following factors:

•• The degree of access to targets;

•• The level of protection provided for targets;
•• The general state of counterterrorist measures in the targeted society;
•• The risks involved for the attacker(s);
•• The probability of carrying out a successful mission.
180 Terrorism
For terrorists, nothing is more important than executing an act of terror
successfully. As George Habash put it, “The main point is to select tar-
gets where success is 100% assured.”22 There are additional factors that
figure into the selection of the particular terrorist method to be used in a
given operation:

•• The terrorists’ level of training and skills;

•• The availability of financial resources, mobility, and hideouts;
•• The available weaponry;
•• The decision either to limit a strike to the immediate victim(s) and
spare innocent bystanders or to attack indiscriminately regardless of
the number of innocent bystanders.

Modern terrorists have a broad range of choices when deciding on a par-

ticular mode of attack. Over thirty years ago, terrorism experts Robert
Kupperman and Darrell Trent warned that terrorists were not only using
“pistols, submachine guns, and bombs” but that they also had attempted
to use “heat-seeking, surface-to-air rockets (SA-7s) and Soviet-made anti-
tank weapons (RPG-7s) and that German terrorists had threatened to
disperse mustard gas and nerve agents.”23 The more sophisticated among
terrorist groups often write and distribute their own instruction manuals
that describe the range of weapons recommended for terrorist strikes.
Thus, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) issued a pamphlet
describing various tactics, “including preparation and use of a variety
of explosives, special culvert bombs for burial beneath roadways, and
deployment of snipers. The text also mentioned submachine guns, pis-
tols, grenades, rifles, automatic rifles, mortars, and rocket launchers.”
According to one expert, “All these [weapons] have been deployed in
past strikes by the IRA, and all remain in regular service today. In that
respect the IRA was very typical for contemporary terrorism.”24 This
IRA list of suitable terrorist weapons shows that contemporary terrorist
groups have access to a larger variety of weapons.

Most Common Methods of Terrorist Attacks

•• Bombings;
•• Assassinations;
•• Suicide attacks;
•• Kidnapping/hostage-taking;
•• Attacks on maritime targets;
•• Missile attacks;
•• Mass disruption/mass destruction.

The bombing of targets is by far the most often used terrorist method
with the distinct type of suicide bombing not far behind. In 2016,
 Common Threads  181
54 percent of all recorded terrorist attacks were bombings, including
suicide missions; 21 percent were armed assaults; 10 percent were
hostage-taking; 9 percent were facility or infrastructure attacks; and
6 percent were assassinations. Most notable about those statistics was
that the number of suicide attacks decreased by 4 percent but that they
were more lethal than non-suicide terrorism.
Terrorist actions result in either conclusive incidents or incidents of
duration. Bombings, assassinations, and suicide missions are conclusive
incidents because the actual acts occur in fractions of seconds—armed
attacks can last longer—whereas hijackings and kidnappings are inci-
dents of duration because these terrorist events last for longer periods of
time—hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. Although in a different
league in terms of the likely damage, terrorism aimed at causing mass dis-
ruption and mass destruction also fits the category of conclusive incident
as far as carrying out these tactics is concerned. The following sections
summarize the characteristics of various terrorist methods or tactics.

Bombing
For a long time, terrorists have preferred bombing to all other methods of
attack because no other weapons are as readily available as incendiary or
explosive devices. Just as important, this is an “easily learned technique
that can be undertaken with minimal risk to the perpetrator” in that the
“bomber operates with time and distance on his side.”25 Putting timers
on devices allows perpetrators to detonate the explosives at the time of
their choosing. Bombs come in many forms and “the possible operations
for their use are almost infinite.”26 In most instances, terrorists’ bombs
are of the “do-it-yourself” variety because, as experts know, crude but
potent bombs “can be fabricated from seemingly innocuous materials
found in the open market.”27 Detailed instructions on the ingredients of
bombs and how to mix or assemble them are readily and legally available
in bookstores, in libraries, and on the Internet.
The website of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), for example, has
posted the “ALF Primer,” which describes in detail how to build simple
incendiary devices to commit arson, how best to place them in targeted
facilities, and how to avoid being caught by the police. In the “Getting
Started” section of the primer, the ALF details a “simple way to cre-
ate an incendiary device” and a “different version of the same device”
to be used by arsonists.28 A variety of potent home-made explosives are
described in easily available books, such as The Anarchist Cookbook or
Home Workshop Explosives. In June 2003, one customer reviewer of The
Anarchist Cookbook wrote the following on the [Link] website:

Almost all (with the exception of a few) of the things in here are
accurate in the sense that they show you BASICALLY how to do
182 Terrorism
something, but also in the sense that the way it tells you how to do
it is so dangerous that it will most likely fail . . . If you really want
to know how to make homemade explosives try “Home Workshop
Explosives” by Uncle Fester, now that book is a real deal. This
book’s techniques are taken from military handbooks that date back
to about 30 years ago!29

In October 2001, a Brazilian reader of Uncle Fester’s Home Workshop

Explosives wrote in a customer review on the [Link] site, “WOW!
I just received the 2nd Revised Edition and Uncle Fester made a mira-
cle: changed the best into something better . . . If you want the very best
book on explosives manufacture [sic], this is the only one to have.”30
But one does not even have to buy a book; instructions for putting
together bombs were easy to come by in the past and still are today.
Following the pipe bomb explosion in the Centennial Olympic Park in
Atlanta in July 1996, the [Link] website carried a story that detailed
in its text and an accompanying illustration how such a device is put
together. Readers learned the following:

A pipe bomb is a fairly simple device—literally a length of a pipe

capped at both ends and filled with an explosive. Often they are
packed with nails and screws to heighten damage . . . The pipes can
be filled with low-order gunpowder or higher-order plastique. It
can be rigged to go off instantly or with a timer.31

Seven years after the initial posting, the same story was still available on
CNN’s website. However, while the CNN story seemed to provide basic
information about the nature of pipe bombs unwittingly, other websites
carried explicit instructions on building explosives such as Molotov cock-
tails and bombs consisting of fertilizer and fuel.32 The terrorist conspira-
tors whose truck bomb nearly toppled one of the World Trade Center
towers in 1993 did not encounter any problems when they bought the
chemicals needed for putting together a powerful bomb. Simon Reeve
describes how Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade
Center bombing, and his associates proceeded:

Yousef, also using the name “Kamal Ibraham,” one of his 11 aliases
he used during his six months in the US, began ordering chemicals
from a local firm called City Chemical, including 1,000 lbs (454
kg) of urea, 105 gallons of nitric acid, and 60 gallons of sulphuric
acid. Yousef told City Chemical’s salesman he knew exactly what he
wanted: the nitrogen content of the urea crystals had to be 46.65 per
cent and the sulphuric acid had to be 93 per cent pure.33

Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, also purchased

with ease the ingredients for the powerful truck bomb that completely
 Common Threads  183
destroyed the large Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
According to Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck,

On September 30 and October 18 [1994], Terry Nichols purchased

a combined total of four thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate
using the alias Mike Havens. McVeigh purchased smaller amounts.
Whenever the opportunity presented itself, he pulled into the local
feed and seed store of a small town and loaded up his car with fifty-
pound bags of ammonium nitrate. He thought nothing of tossing ten
bags into the backseat of the Road Warrior; he would have filled the
trunk, too, if he weren’t concerned about the unequal distribution
in weight.
Between McVeigh and Nichols, they made about eight purchases
before they had the amount of ammonium nitrate they needed.34

Terrorists have also used plastic explosives with devastating results. The
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in late 1988 was accomplished by the
explosion of a small sheet of Semtex, a plastic explosive that was avail-
able at the time from the Czech Republic and Libya. The IRA “used it
independently and liberally for bombs, such as those carried in a brief-
case, or as a detonator for larger fertilizer bombs, just as non-Irish groups
often do.”35

The Long History of Vehicle Bombs

On September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn wagon moved into the
Wall Street area, stopping near the corner of 23rd Street across
the headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Company. The usual lunch
time crowd, mostly young employees, mingled around, paying
no attention to a man who jumped out of the wagon and moved
hastily away. A few seconds later a mighty bomb of dynamite and
cast-iron weights exploded, tearing horse and wagon into pieces,
killing a total of thirty-eight people and injuring several hundred
other persons. Flyers found near the Wall Street area demanded
the release of political prisoners and was signed by “American
Anarchist Fighters.”
While anarchists and communists were immediately suspected,
police investigations did not produce charges against individuals
or groups. However, some historians believe that the bomber was
Mario Buda, a member of an anarchist organization led by Italian
immigrant Luigi Galleani and that Buda acted in revenge for the
imprisonment of fellow Galleanists.

(continued)
184 Terrorism
(continued)
In the century since, terrorists selected cars and trucks far too
often to carry and detonate bombs for the purpose of killing and
maiming large numbers of people.
Nowhere were and still are mass car bombings more common
than in the Middle East. Introduced first by the Stern Gang as a
potent weapon against British and Palestinian foes, the tactic was
later embraced by Palestinian groups and the Lebanese Hezbollah.
The latter group was suspected of carrying out the 1983 truck
bombing outside Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines and fifty-eight
French military personnel.
Car and truck bombings have been utilized for decades by ter-
rorists in other parts of the world as well. In Northern Ireland, both
the IRA and Loyalist groups car-bombed for their causes as did the
German Red Army Faction and the Basque separatist ETA.
Whether affiliated with organizations like Al Qaeda, ISIS, al-
Shabaab, and Boko Haram or acting as lone wolves or autonomous
cells, modern-day Jihadists, too, embraced the car-bombing tactic
early on. Several of the more spectacular attacks of this sort were
directed against Western targets. In 1993, an Al Qaeda-affiliated
cell detonated an explosive-laden truck in the parking garage of the
World Trade Center in New York City killing six people but failing
to topple the building as intended. Far more deadly truck bomb-
ings were carried out by the same organization against the Khobar
Towers, a housing facility for the U.S. military, in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia in 1998 and two years later against the U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania with hundreds of fatalities. In 1995, Timothy
McVeigh filled a Ryder truck with fertilizer and fuel oil and deto-
nated a home-made super-bomb killing 168 persons, among them
nineteen children.
In the twenty-first century, truck and car bombs remain popular
terrorist weapons.

Dynamite was the first explosive used by terrorists. The anarchists of

the nineteenth century hailed Alfred Nobel’s invention as the “tool for
the destruction of society” in prose and even in poems.36 Dynamite is
still used by modern terrorists. Typically, they steal sticks of dynamite
from military stockpiles, construction sites, or mines. More than 100
years ago, anarchist John Most tried to assemble an incendiary letter
bomb, a device that modern-day terrorists have built and deployed as
well—albeit in more sophisticated forms. The “Unabomber,” Theodore
 Common Threads  185
Kaczynski, for example, killed and injured all of his victims by mailing
them letter bombs.

Assassination
If they use bombs to assassinate their enemy, terrorists have a better
chance of avoiding arrest than when using handguns. Depending on the
circumstances, even the assassin who shoots his or her victim from close
range may be able to flee the scene. In early 2002, for example, two assas-
sins killed an Italian government consultant, Marco Biagi, in Bologna,
by firing several shots as their victim entered his home. Both shooters
sped away on a scooter. The Greek terrorists who in 2000 assassinated
Stephen Saunders, a British military attaché in Athens, shot him with a
.45-mm pistol and got away. But, by and large, shooting a target from
close range is riskier than other tactics. Take the case of Yigal Amir, the
young Israeli who killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in order to stop
the Middle East peace process. Amir used a Beretta pistol to shoot Rabin
and was immediately subdued and arrested by security forces.

Suicide Attack
When nineteen members of the Al Qaeda organization flew hijacked air-
liners into buildings in New York and Washington, DC, on September
11, 2001, they introduced the United States to a terrorist tactic that until
then had been widely used and feared in other parts of the world: suicide
attacks. Immediately, the type of attack was compared to the practice
of kamikaze during World War II, when some 4,600 Japanese nation-
als committed suicide by crashing their planes into enemy targets. But
unlike the kamikaze flights that were undertaken as part of a country’s
war effort, the more recent suicide attacks were carried out by groups or
individuals. As Adam Dolnik recalled before the 2003 defeat of Saddam
Hussein’s regime in Iraq,

The modern practice of suicide bombings has its roots in Lebanon.

The first major suicide attack by a non-state group occurred in
December 1981, when 27 people died and more than 100 were
wounded in the bombing of the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut. This attack
was claimed by Al Dawa (The Call), the Iranian-backed Shia group
that seeks to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.37

For most Americans, however, the history of the modern suicide practice
dates back to 1983, when a member of the Lebanese Hezbollah drove a
truck laden with explosives into the American embassy in Beirut, killing
himself and more than sixty other persons. Six months later, another
member of the same organization ignited a truck bomb as he drove into the
186 Terrorism
U.S. Marine barracks near Beirut airport, killing 241 Americans. Another
lethal suicide attack against the French military stationed in Lebanon was
carried out nearly simultaneously and resulted in the death of fifty-eight
French paratroopers. Indeed, more than 500 individuals died within a
one-year period, from November 1982 to November 1983, as the result
of five major suicide attacks in Lebanon. Lawrence Eagleburger, then
undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Reagan administration,
said at the time that it was nearly impossible to defend oneself if a driver
is willing to kill himself.38 American and French troops were withdrawn
from Lebanon, and the Israeli Defense Forces retreated into the southern
part of the country. The success of the suicide missions was undeniable.
From the perspective of terrorists, suicide terrorism has a number of
advantages compared to other methods. According to Bruce Hoffman,
“Suicide bombings are inexpensive and effective. They are less compli-
cated and compromising than other kinds of terrorist operations. They
guarantee media coverage. The suicide terrorist is the ultimate smart
bomb.”39 The efficacy of the suicide tactic is best understood by terror-
ists themselves. After interviewing 250 of the most militant Palestinians
in the 1990s, Nasra Hassan wrote,

A Palestinian security official pointed out that, apart from a willing

young man, all that is needed is such items as nails, gunpowder, a
battery, a light switch, and a short cable, mercury (readily obtainable
from thermometers), acetone, and the cost of tailoring a belt wide
enough to hold six or eight pockets of explosives. The most expen-
sive item is transportation to a distant Israeli town. The total cost of
a typical [suicide] operation is about a hundred dollars.40

Furthermore, the planners of suicide missions do not have to make

escape plans or fear the arrest of their operatives and the revelation of
organizational secrets. More importantly, organizations that embrace
suicide attacks as their tactic of choice appreciate that this terrorist
method is more likely to succeed than most other means. According to
Nasra Hassan,

Military commanders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad remarked that the

human bomb was one [of] the surest ways of hitting a target. A sen-
ior Hamas leader said, “The main thing is to guarantee that a large
number of the enemy will be affected. With an explosive belt or bag,
the bomber has control over vision, location, and timing.”41

Suicide attacks are especially horrifying for targeting societies—for two

reasons. First, as one expert concluded, this tactic is “reliably deadly”
and “on average kills four times as many people as other terrorist acts.”42
Second, suicide attacks have lasting effects on the psyche of the target
 Common Threads  187
society because no one knows when, where, and how the next suicide
attack will occur.
Because of their operational and psychological effectiveness, modern-
day suicide attacks spread from Lebanon to an increasing number of
other venues, among them Sri Lanka, Turkey, Chechnya, Argentina, and,
of course, Israel. As Adam Dolnik has pointed out, religiously motivated
terrorists are not the only ones who have embraced this tactic in the last
three decades. To be sure, many of the suicide operations conducted by
groups in the Middle East were and are carried out by devout Muslims.
But secular groups have adopted the same tactic. In Lebanon, only about
half of all suicide attacks recorded since the early 1980s were carried
out by members of Hezbollah and Amal, both Shi’ite groups; several
secular organizations were responsible for the rest. Similarly, although
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both religious Muslim groups,
embraced suicide attacks as their most effective weapon against Israelis,
the more secular Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade followed suit, beginning in
late 2001.43
But it was the Lebanese Hezbollah that created the mythos of the
explosives-laden martyr in the Arab world and beyond—mostly because
of the television images that were broadcast after such attacks. The
result was what Christoph Reuter calls an extremely successful “martyr-
marketing.”44 This marketing assures that there is never a shortage of
individuals willing to die for a cause that they learn to perceive as far
more important than their own lives. Nasra Hassan has described the post-
incident glorification efforts after suicide attacks by Palestinian militants:

The [suicide] operation doesn’t end with the explosion and the many
deaths. Hamas and Islamic Jihad distribute copies of the martyr’s
audiocassette or video to the media and to local organizations as a
record of their success and encouragement to young men. His [the
suicide bomber’s] act becomes the subject of sermons in mosques,
and provides material for leaflets, posters, videos, demonstrations,
and extensive coverage in the media. Graffiti on walls in the mar-
tyr’s neighborhood praise his heroism. Aspiring martyrs perform
mock reenactments of the operation, using models of exploding cars
and busses.45

Religious terrorists undertake suicide missions in the belief that they will
be rewarded with a privileged existence in paradise; secular suicide ter-
rorists do not expect rewards from God. But the latter are also indoc-
trinated by sect-like groups that insist on absolute subordination to
whatever their “higher cause” may be. This explains the suicide terror-
ism of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known
as the Tamil Tigers, and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Although
suicide bombings by Middle Eastern groups received far more publicity
188 Terrorism
in the last thirty or so years, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) experienced
more such acts than any other country—an estimated 200 since the end
of the 1980s. In their fight against the Sinhala-dominated central gov-
ernment, the LTTE’s suicide corps, the Black Tigers, almost always tar-
geted government officials and symbols of power as well as the country’s
infrastructure. In January 1996, for example, a group of suicide bombers
attacked Sri Lanka’s Central Bank, killing eighty-six persons and injur-
ing more than 1,300. And in July 2001, an even larger contingent of sui-
cide bombers attacked the International Airport in Colombo, destroying
or damaging thirteen military and civilian planes. Reuter described the
indoctrination of designated LTTE suicide bombers as brainwashing.46
Recruits learned that it was a disgrace to be caught alive by the enemy.
For that reason, all members of the organization carried capsules of
potassium cyanide, which they were required to bite into “when injured
or when on the verge of capture.”47 The left-wing PKK conducted fifteen
suicide missions in southern Turkey during the late 1990s, targeting in
all instances government representatives, members of the military, and
military installations. The vast majority of the victims were policemen
and soldiers, but a few civilians were killed and injured unwittingly. Like
the Black Tigers in Sri Lanka, the PKK suicide bombers did not kill them-
selves in the name of God and a fast track to eternal life in heaven, but
rather to strengthen the group’s political cause.
Following the first suicide bombings by militant Muslim groups in
Lebanon, Shi’ite clerics were faced with the question of whether their
religion condemned or allowed these acts. Sayyid Muhammad Husayn
Fadlallah, for example, declared first that, based on his knowledge of
Islamic law, he had reservations about using suicides for political ends.
But, as Martin Kramer has pointed out, “Fadlallah eventually gave them
[suicide attacks] the fullest possible endorsement short of an explicit
fatwa.”48 This did not, however, resolve the issue for the Muslim clergy
in Lebanon or elsewhere. To this day, some religious leaders, whether
Shi’ites or Sunnis, sanction martyr missions against civilians if under-
taken within a strategy of self-defense, while others speak out against
this tactic.
Dolnik found that since the early 1980s, eighteen terrorist organi-
zations striking in fifteen countries carried out more than 300 suicide
missions. None of these attacks killed and injured as many individuals
or caused as much damage as the multiple kamikaze flights into sym-
bolic buildings in New York and Washington, DC, on September 11,
2001—not to mention the additional damage to the U.S. psyche. From
the perspective of their masterminds, the suicide operations of 9/11 were
successful; Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants expressed this much in
their post-9/11 communications. As long as terrorists consider suicide
attacks as the most effective of their tactics, they will continue to rely on
human bombs and human missiles.
 Common Threads  189
Robert A. Pape has rejected religious fanaticism as a plausible expla-
nation for this phenomenon, arguing instead that “suicide terrorism
follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern lib-
eral democracies to make significant territorial concessions.”49 In other
words, it is not whether a group is religious or secular, but whether its
nationalist aspirations determine the tactical choice of suicide attacks.
This conclusion fails to explain why some groups that fight for self-
determination and statehood do practice suicide terrorism and why oth-
ers with the same aspirations do not. Why did Palestinians embrace this
method, but not ETA or the IRA? It seems that fanatical devotion to a
religion and/or a charismatic leader of godlike stature is still the best
explanation. In the case of the LTTE, its founder and leader, Vellupillai
Prabhakaran, “exercised godlike absolute control over the cadre and the
organization seemed to resemble sects.”50 In this respect, the LTTE and
the PKK were like twins, according to Reuter, in that, before his capture,
Abdullah Ocalan’s status in the PKK was the same as that of Prabhakaran
in the LTTE: Ocalan was God or at least a saint, and the “PKK became
a de facto sect.”51 Michael Radu, too, has characterized the Tamil Tigers
and the Kurdish Workers Party as operating “more like religious sects
under the absolute control of a charismatic leader.”52 After studying sev-
eral nationalist groups, Aaron Horwitz identified a cultural tradition of
glorifying suicide for the collective good as the one most powerful deter-
minant: Where the tradition exists and is exploited by leaders, suicide
terrorism has proven an attractive option; where no such tradition exists,
suicide attacks have not been embraced as a terrorist tactic.53
Given the high publicity value of suicide terrorism, it is hardly sur-
prising that the most lethal of such missions are sometimes claimed by
two or more organizations that operate in the same environment. This
underlines an observation by Mia Bloom, namely that “under conditions
of group competition, there are incentives for further groups to jump on
the ‘suicide bandwagon’ and ramp up the violence in order to distinguish
themselves from the other organizations.”54 Whether such “outbidding”
occurs depends also on the reaction of those in whose name terrorist
groups and their members claim to act. According to Bloom, “If the
domestic environment supports the use of suicide terror and an insur-
gent group does not use the tactic, they tend to lose market share and
popularity.”55 In such a situation, a group may also try to regain support
by launching suicide missions. Finally, competition between groups may
also influence the selection of suicide terrorists that promise special atten-
tion of friends and foes—females rather than males, younger rather than
older volunteers. In November 2006, for example, Hamas scored big in
terms of news coverage and an outpouring of massive Palestinian support
after the organization claimed sole responsibility for a suicide bombing
carried out by the oldest suicide bomber by far on record: a sixty-four-
year-old mother of nine and grandmother of thirty-six.
190 Terrorism
No other terrorist organizations carried out as many major suicide
attacks as ISIS on military and civilian targets in Iraq, Syria, and more
recently in Afghanistan. Add to this the fact that ISIS affiliates in Africa
and Asia, too, rely mostly on suicide missions. In many of these attacks,
several dozen and often more than a hundred persons die, with many
more injured.

Kidnapping/Hostage-Taking
To kidnap one or more persons requires operational know-how and
favorable conditions in order to succeed. To take hostages in a friendly
environment or one in which the authorities are unable to provide for
law and order is, of course, far less risky than finding hideouts in a hostile
environment. The terrorists who held American hostages in Lebanon dur-
ing most of the 1980s did not have to fear discovery and arrest because
they were able to hide and operate in areas that they controlled or that
were surrounded by sympathizers. In the past, hostage situations have
often worked in favor of the captors in that the targeted governments
or private corporations gave in to the demands in order to free the hos-
tages. Terrorist groups in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, for
example, have kidnapped foreigners on numerous occasions and released
them when the hostages’ employers in North America or Europe paid the
ransom demanded.
Whatever the circumstances, a hostage-taking coup “requires intri-
cate planning, split-second timing, a large support apparatus to sustain
the group holding the victim, and the ability to remain secure while
still communicating demands or negotiating with third parties.”56 Past
hostage situations often ended with the eventual release of the cap-
tives, but there were other endings as well. In the 1980s, for example,
Lebanese terrorists murdered two of their hostages, William Buckley
and William Higgins. But whereas terrorist kidnappers in the past used
this tactic to pressure governments into giving in to their demands,
the more recent kidnappings by Al Qaeda and affiliate cells had a dif-
ferent motive all along. They did not want to bargain, but preferred
to kill their hostages in the most barbaric ways possible in order to
send warnings to their target audiences by publicizing videotapes of
their victims’ gruesome ordeals and executions. This tactic was evident
in early 2002, when kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel
Pearl was brutally murdered by terrorists in Pakistan. A year later, a
young American contractor, Nicholas Berg, was beheaded by terrorists
in Iraq, and an American engineer, Paul Johnson, Jr., suffered the same
fate in Saudi Arabia.
But no other organization exploited its hostages as inhumanly as ISIS
in an obvious and very successful effort to dominate the global news.
Here is a summary of ISIS’s killer propaganda:
 Common Threads  191
•• Tuesday, August 19, 2014. The media center of the Islamic State
uploads its video “#NewMessagefromISIStoUS” to YouTube. The
four-minute, forty-second production shows the American journal-
ist James Foley in an orange jumpsuit reminiscent of Arab prisoners
held in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Kneeling next
to a black-clad, masked ISIS fighter, Foley delivers an extensive state-
ment in which he calls on “his friends, family and loved ones . . . to
rise up against my real killers—the U.S. government—for what will
happen to me is only a result of their complacent criminality.”
•• After blaming strikes against the Islamic State for Foley’s death the
ISIS fighter pulls out a knife and decapitates his hostage. The camera
then moves over to another kneeling captive, the American journal-
ist Steven Joel Sotloff. According to the executioner, he will be the
next victim.
•• Less than two weeks later, an eerily similar two-minute, forty-
six-second video captures the beheading of Sotloff and ends with
a death threat against British citizen David Haines who is already
wearing an orange prison gown. This time, the video is posted on a
file-sharing website.
•• Ten days later, ISIS releases a two-minute, twenty-seven-second
video of Haines’s beheading on Twitter. Shortly thereafter, there are
more videos with the same images, the same threats.
•• But nothing is more shocking than the twenty-two-minute film
that culminates in the burning of captured Jordanian pilot Moaz
al-Kasasbeh alive. While the pilot was presumably executed weeks
earlier, the video’s release in early February 2015 indicates that ISIS’s
production staff needed time to present a “sophisticated” production
worthy of Hollywood standards.

These atrocities were staged and marketed via social media with one
goal: publicity. And, indeed, each of these cruel acts resulted in excep-
tional global media attention and in condemnations by President Obama
and many other leaders of major powers after each of these incidents.
Beginning in the late 1960s, the hijacking of a commercial airliner
was for a while the preferred terrorist tactic. Generally, these operations
were carried out by at least two, but often more than two, terrorists who
took control by threatening crew members and passengers with hand
grenades and/or handguns. Whenever hijackers forced the pilots to land
their planes in a country whose government was either sympathetic to
them or too weak for a rescue attempt, they were able to negotiate for
their immediate demands—typically, the release of fellow terrorists from
prison or the payment of a ransom. When a hijacked plane touched down
in an environment that was not hospitable to the terrorists aboard, the
hijackers would threaten to harm hostages unless they were assured free
passage out of the country. Whatever the particular circumstances, only
192 Terrorism
sophisticated groups can pull off a skyjacking with the prospect of suc-
cess because this tactic “demands patience on the part of the operatives
and an ability to handle a ‘duration operation.’”57
The risks that hijackers take in these operations depend in large part
on the counterterrorist measures at the airports of departure and aboard
the chosen planes. Good airport security can detect terrorists’ weapons
before they can be brought aboard a plane; armed sky marshals aboard
an airliner can overpower terrorists and prevent them from taking con-
trol; and, finally, well-trained counterterrorist commandos can storm a
hijacked plane on the ground. Indeed, once all of these counterterrorist
means were in place in an increasing number of countries, the number of
hijackings began to decrease in the 1980s.

Attacks on Maritime Targets

On April 2009, as the crew of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge
looked on, four Somali pirates held the captain of the MV Maersk
Alabama—a U.S.-flagged cargo ship carrying 17,000 metric tons of
cargo—hostage in an unpowered lifeboat. After several other Navy ships
arrived at the scene, the Alabama was escorted by military guards to its
destination port in Kenya. In the meantime, negotiations to free the ship’s
captain failed. The drama off the Horn of Africa ended when a group of
U.S. Navy SEALs, who had been flown to the site, killed three pirates in
the lifeboat while one of their comrades was aboard the USS Bainbridge
hoping to negotiate a substantial ransom. At the time of the incident,
more than a dozen ships and more than 200 sailors were held by pirates
who demanded many millions of dollars in ransom. But there were also
credible reports that part of their ransom money was handed over to Al
Shabaab—even before radical Islamists seized Xarardheere, one of the
most notorious pirate coves along the Somali coast, in the spring of 2010.
Moreover, in interviews with news organizations, pirates justified their
actions by claiming that European countries had dumped toxic waste
into the ocean and destroyed their once-rich fishing grounds.
In the last three decades, only about 2 percent of all terrorist incidents
qualified as maritime terrorism. The best remembered of these cases
occurred in 1986, when Palestinian terrorists took over the Italian cruise
ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean that had many American citi-
zens aboard. They brutally killed a wheelchair-bound New Yorker, Leon
Klinghoffer. The Achille Lauro terrorists did not succeed in getting com-
rades released from Israeli prisons, but because of the high success rate
of African, Asian, and Latin American pirates in securing high ransom
payments in the last several years and receiving enormous media atten-
tion around the globe, counterterrorism experts have voiced concern that
more, and more spectacular, maritime terrorism could occur in the fore-
seeable future.
 Common Threads  193
According to an expert assessment, the seven most likely scenarios for
maritime terrorism are the following:

•• Use of a commercial container ship to smuggle chemical, biological,

or radiological (CBR) materials for an unconventional attack car-
ried out on land or at a major commercial port such as Rotterdam,
Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, New York, or Los Angeles.
•• Use of a “trojan horse,” such as a fishing trawler, resupply ship, tug,
or similar innocuous-looking vessel, to transport weapons and other
battle-related material.
•• Hijacking of a vessel as a fundraising exercise to support a campaign
of political violence directed toward ethnic, ideological, religious, or
separatist designs.
•• Scuttling of a ship in a narrow SLOC [sea-lane of communication] in
order to block or disrupt maritime traffic.
•• Hijacking of an LNG [liquefied natural gas] carrier that is then deto-
nated as a floating bomb or used as a collision weapon.
•• Use of a small, high-speed boat to attack an oil tanker or offshore
energy platform to affect international petroleum prices or cause
major pollution.
•• Directly targeting a cruise liner or passenger ferry to cause mass
casualties by contaminating the ship’s food supply, detonating an on-
board or submersible improvised explosive device (IED) or, again, by
ramming the vessel with a fast-approach, small, attack craft.58

Missile Attacks on Fixed and Moving Targets

In November 2002, a surface-to-air missile was fired at an Israeli jet-
liner that was carrying a large group of tourists from the Kenyan resort
of Mombasa back to Israel. Luckily, the rocket missed its target. There
was no doubt that terrorists had launched the projectile at a time when
a car bomb killed fourteen persons in the lobby of an Israeli-owned
hotel in the same resort. This was not the first time terrorists had used
this tactic. In September 2000, for example, a rocket was fired from a
handheld launcher at a distance of only a few hundred yards onto Great
Britain’s Intelligence Headquarters in the heart of London. Officials
suspected that renegades of the IRA were responsible for the incident.
Although the pictures taken after the audacious attack showed only
minimal damage to the well-known MI6 building—once featured in
a James Bond film (The World Is Not Enough)—these images height-
ened the fear of an escalation of terrorist violence in London and
elsewhere in England. For years, the IRA used mortars and home-
made launchers to attack military and civilian targets. According to
Christopher Harmon,
194 Terrorism
One of the most creative and ingenious use[s] of mortars was popu-
larized by the IRA and by Japanese terrorists of the “Middle Core
Faction” during the 1970s and 1980s. The groups place mortars in
the back of an altered vehicle, creating a truly “mobile launcher” for
urban terrorism. The method was used in 1991 in a bold attack on
10 Downing Street [the Prime Minister’s residence]. It proved to be
a psychological victory that could have had an even greater impact
had one of the shells not struck a tree in the Prime Minister’s garden
rather than the residence itself.59

If they have the financial resources, today’s terrorists do not have to rely
on home-made mortars but can acquire sophisticated handheld missile
launchers to project lethal rockets against fixed and moving targets. The
facilitators of such sinister transactions are either some renegade coun-
tries or the striving black market that reaches into literally all continents.
Launching projectiles against enemy targets, even if done from some
distance, comes with some risks. Unless terrorists operate in a friendly
environment, operate within failed or failing states, or have secured geta-
way routes, there is always the risk of being caught.

Unconventional Tactics with Deadly Results

When the simultaneous hijacking of three commercial airliners
allowed the 9/11 terrorists to use those planes as weapons of mass
destruction, they resorted to an unconventional mode of attack. To
be sure, this was not an unsophisticated mission. The attack was
the result of long-term planning, and the hijackers had to learn to
fly an airliner. Conversely, anyone with a car can ram his or her
vehicle into a crowd of people causing harm. For that reason, this
tactic—sometimes combined with knifing—has been promoted by
some terrorist groups.
In 2010, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula recommended for the
first time vehicle ramming in the group’s online magazine Inspire.
It was a call to followers in the West to attack infidels more often
and use easily available weapons, such as a car or a truck. In the
following years, there were several such attacks. ISIS made the same
appeals on the heels of a horrific truck ramming in Nice in the sum-
mer of 2016 that killed eighty-four persons and injured hundreds of
others. The years 2016 and 2017 witnessed a wave of car, van, and
truck ramming attacks in Europe and North America. Table 8.1
lists those vehicle ramming incidents that resulted in deaths; there
were others too, though without casualties, and some were stopped
in time by police.
 Common Threads  195
Table 8.1  Period with Most Deadly Vehicle Ramming Attacks

Date Place Vehicle Plus Killed Injured

Knifing

July 2016 Nice Truck No 86 Hundreds

December 2016 Berlin Truck No 12 Dozens
January 2017 Jerusalem Truck No 4 10
March 2017 London Car Yes 5 10
April 2017 Stockholm Truck No 4 15
June 2017 London Van Yes 8 48
June 2017 London Van No 1 10
August 2017 Charlottesville Car No 1 19
October 2017 Barcelona Van No 13 130
October 2017 Cambrils, Spain Car Yes 1 6
October 2017 New York Truck No 8 11
Source: Author, using open sources

Mass Disruption and Mass Destruction

Without hurling bombs and missiles or assassinating individuals, without
toppling skyscrapers, taking hostages, or releasing poison gas, terrorists
can inflict great damage on any society they target. In early 1995, for
example, “high-tech” terrorists cut the cables of Germany’s public com-
munication agency at three key underground crossroads in Frankfurt
and disrupted all computer, telephone, and fax services in parts of the
city—including the international airport, hospitals, and office build-
ings. Fortunately, the communications blackout did not cause planes
to crash or patients to die. But the group that claimed responsibility,
Keine Verbindung (No Connection), demonstrated the vulnerability of
the communication system.
Terrorists who aim at seriously disrupting a country’s or region’s
infrastructure could aim at hitting electric power grids and gas pipelines.
A blackout of the New York Stock Exchange, the leading Wall Street
firms, and the backup systems that were established in the wake of 9/11
would affect and perhaps paralyze the domestic and global financial mar-
kets. The accidental breakdown of the electric power supply structure
in parts of the American Midwest and Northeast as well as in neigh-
boring Canada on August 14, 2003, affected an estimated 50 million
people, giving them a bitter taste of what would happen in the wake of
massive terrorist attacks on power grids and other vital parts of the infra-
structure. Such incidents do not simply disrupt the lives of people in the
immediately affected areas but cause ripple effects that are felt through-
out the country and abroad and that inflict high costs on individuals, the
business community, and markets.
196 Terrorism
Even the mere threat of causing major disruption can have chaotic
consequences, as happened in 1995, when a bomb threat was made
against the air traffic control center responsible for directing traffic
at two New York airports (John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia) and at
Newark Airport in New Jersey. Although the bomb threat proved to be
a hoax, landings and takeoffs at these three major airports were inter-
rupted for hours; this, in turn, affected air traffic in the rest of the country
as well. In the past, terrorist groups have repeatedly tried to damage
electric power grids and pipelines in various parts of the world but have
not caused a great deal of damage and disruption. But the potential for
more sophisticated and more determined terrorists succeeding in such
endeavors is high.
Security experts are especially worried about the prospect of devastat-
ing cyberterrorism. There is reason for concern because, in 2002, the FBI
made a shocking discovery as its agents investigated a mysterious pattern
of surveillance of Silicon Valley computer systems:

Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National Labora­

tories, the FBI traced trails of a broader reconnaissance. A forensic
summary of the investigation, prepared for the Defense Department,
said the bureau found “multiple casings of sites” nationwide. Routed
through telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and
Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone systems, electrical
generation and transmission, water storage and distribution, nuclear
power plants and gas facilities.
Some of the probes suggested planning for conventional attack,
U.S. officials say. But others homed in on a class of digital devices that
allow remote control of services such as fire dispatch and of equip-
ment such as pipelines. More information about those devices—and
how to program them—turned up on al Qaeda computers seized this
year, according to law enforcement and national security officials.60

One of the nightmares that haunts security experts is a scenario in

which terrorists launch a major physical attack in conjunction with a
cyberstrike that prevents swift action by emergency response profes-
sionals. Imagine 9/11-like events and simultaneous cyber-attacks that
knock out the 911 emergency systems and/or the electric power grid
in the affected cities and regions. There are other dangers as well. For
example, computers could be used to “remotely access cereal process-
ing plants, change the levels of iron supplement, and sicken or kill the
children of a nation as they eat their breakfast.”61 Or, terrorists could
remotely alter the pressure in a gas line and cause a valve to fail so that
“a block of a sleepy suburb detonates and burns.”62 No wonder that
even before Al Qaeda became the most dangerous terrorist organiza-
tion, experts warned,
 Common Threads  197
The danger today stems from induced disasters of vastly different
magnitude. The vulnerability of society’s life-supporting physical
networks literally invites focus on sabotage and the low-intensity
warfare of terrorist attacks. If successful, such assaults could exceed
the self-healing limits of society.63

Seen this way, the step from terrorism of mass disruption to terrorism
of mass destruction can be rather small or nonexistent. Pointing to new
WMD, Robert Bunker wrote,

While no such weapons have been utilized by terrorists to date, one

troubling trend has developed recently involving laser strikes on
commercial aviation and airborne law enforcement assets primarily
in the Los Angeles metropolitan region since 1996. These include
still unexplained incidents against Ontario, Pomona, and San Diego
police helicopters. Lasers make ideal terrorist weapons and, in fact,
possess a number of advantages over surface-to-air missiles (SAMs)
in the areas of availability, functioning, and operational deployment.
To further complicate matters, lasers, like computers, are drastically
falling in price and their performance levels are greatly increasing.64

WMD pose the ultimate threat. But experts speak increasingly of CBRN
(chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) weapons, because WMD
can also stand for “weapons of mass disruption.” Following the dis-
mantling of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, stockpiles of nuclear
weapons became accessible, and scientists and technicians who developed
nuclear arms and chemical and biological agents in Russia and elsewhere
in the East were for hire. Whether through official channels, the Russian
mafia, or some unpaid scientists, some of these dangerous weapons and
some of the human expertise found their way into countries with known
ties to terrorist groups. The idea that terrorists might resort to WMD is a
nightmare that was in the past merely the stuff of fiction. In his novel The
Turner Diaries, right-wing leader William Pierce described how biologi-
cal, chemical, and nuclear weapons were used for the Neo-Nazi conquest
of North America and Europe. Now the threat of catastrophic terror-
ism is real. The most publicized case involved the Aum Shinrikyo cult
in Japan and its repeated release of sarin nerve gas in 1995. But the Sri
Lankan Tamil Tigers were the first terrorist group to resort to a chemi-
cal weapon when it launched a poison gas attack against a Sri Lankan
military facility in 1990—half a decade before the sarin nerve gas attack
in Japan shocked the world.65
In the United States, evidence has surfaced that “white supremacist,
Christian Identity and elements of the militia movement have been exper-
imenting with chemical and biological agents. However, these have been
almost entirely low-grade incidents . . . [that] can hardly be described as
198 Terrorism
the use of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’”66 The same can be said of
an incident in 1984, when the Rajneesh cult poisoned salad bars in ten
restaurants located in the Oregon community they lived in. The plan was
to make enough citizens sick so that they were unable to vote against the
sect’s candidate in an upcoming local election. Yet the anthrax incident
on the heels of the 9/11 attacks drove home the point that there is a clear
and present danger of terrorists using biological or chemical agents as
WMD. This was indeed the judgment of a pair of experts in the field,
who made the following assessment:

Both chemical and biological agents can be obtained from govern-

ment laboratories through the terrorist-organised crime nexus. By
developing links with rogue scientists, terrorist groups can also pur-
chase the equipment required to produce these agents in the open
market. Although some biological agents are relatively difficult to
produce, the process of production is within the reach of contem-
porary terrorist groups with access to university-qualified members,
collaborators, supporters and sympathisers.67

So far, terrorist groups have not acquired nuclear arms. But Aum
Shinrikyo and Al Qaeda tried to buy highly enriched plutonium from
sources in Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union in order
to build their own nuclear weapons. It does not necessarily take the
financial resources of a bin Laden to acquire potent weapons. Just as the
U.S. Army is known to have lost track of large quantities of explosives
stored in military facilities such as Fort Bragg, it is not impossible that
groups or individuals could steal nuclear, biological, or chemical materi-
als by breaking into some laboratory. And there is always the chance that
a government that does not dare to fight openly against real or imagined
enemies will supply terrorists with WMD—even of the nuclear kind.
Twenty years ago, a group of experts warned of a post-Cold War
“nuclear anarchy” unless the United States and the international com-
munity prevented the worst-case scenario from unfolding. In case of
inaction, they warned, “Terrorist groups would be able to shop at the
Russian nuclear bazaar. Consider Hamas with nuclear weapons; the Red
Brigade with nuclear weapons, the Chechens with nuclear weapons.”68
But Russia’s stored nukes and their vulnerability to theft and sale to
the highest bidders are not the only danger in this respect. In addition
to Russia, seven other countries have nuclear weapons (China, France,
India, Israel, Pakistan, the United States, and the United Kingdom), and
by 2004, experts believed that North Korea had the material to build sev-
eral nuclear weapons and that Iran was working toward the same goal.
Whether provided by state sponsors or acquired on the nuclear black
market, nukes in the hands of terrorists have become the ultimate terror
threat. According to Rohan Gunaratna and Peter Chalk,
 Common Threads  199
With terrorist propensity to conduct mass casualty attacks, it is
a question of time that Al-Qaeda or another terrorist group will
acquire, develop and use a CBRN weapon in the foreseeable future.
Unless a state sponsor provides a nuclear weapon to a terrorist
group, it is highly unlikely that a terrorist group will be able to gain
access to a nuclear weapon. However, it is likely that a terrorist
group will acquire, develop or use a chemical, biological, or a radio-
logical weapon.69

Today, no society can be confident that terrorists will continue to rely

on “conventional” weapons and shy away from weapons of mass dis-
turbance and mass destruction. In spite of this threat, Graham Allison,
a leading expert on weapons and national security, suggests that the
ultimate terrorist catastrophe is preventable by an urgent, aggressive,
multifaceted effort of “denying terrorists access to nuclear weapons and
weapons-grade material.”70
In 2015, there were sporadic reports of chemical mortar shells filled
with chlorine gas or the insecticide phosphine being launched by ISIS
fighters against Kurdish militias. Reportedly, both chemical agents sick-
ened the targeted fighters. The use of chemicals by ISIS was not exactly
new but regional and international weapons experts were surprised and
shocked that the chemical mortar shells were by all accounts fabricated
in an ISIS facility. In 2014, ISIS fighters conquered on Iraqi territory
a defunct chemical weapons factory with more than 2,000 dilapidated
chemical rockets from Saddam Hussein’s one-time weapons program.
Perhaps that rundown arsenal helped ISIS technicians to design and build
their own mortar shells. This development fueled observers’ fears that the
Islamic State might try to use these weapons to fight the enemy with more
potent chemicals.

Most Likely CBRN Weapons in the Hands of Terrorists

States, terrorist groups, and individual terrorists could develop or
acquire a multitude of CBRN materials in order to commit lethal and
catastrophic political violence. Some groups inside and outside the
United States have developed or acquired biological or chemical agents
and tried to deploy them. Other terrorist organizations made similar
efforts without succeeding. Some incidents receive far greater publicity
than others. In 1995, after the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult attacked
the Tokyo subway system with sarin, the incident was widely reported
around the world. But evidence that extremists in the United States had
managed to buy dangerous biological agents received little media atten-
tion. Jessica Stern found that in 1995 alone, there were three known
cases that involved “survivalists” and “white supremacists” acquiring
biological agents. According to Stern,
200 Terrorism
In March [1995] two members of the Minnesota Patriots Council
were arrested for producing ricin with which to assassinate a dep-
uty U.S. marshal who had served papers on one of them for tax
violations.
In May, just six weeks after the Aum Shinrikyo incident, Larry
Wayne Harris, a former member of neo-Nazi organizations, bought
three vials of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic
plague, which killed nearly a quarter of Europe’s population in the
mid-fourteenth century.
In December a survivalist was arrested for trying to carry 130
grams of ricin across the border into Canada.71

Some of the most feared CBRN weapons that terrorists might use are
considered in the following sections.

Chemical
Mustard gas is a chemical agent in gas or liquid form that in some states
smells like mustard, but it has nothing to do with the mustard people
eat with frankfurters and other foods. Mustard gas attacks the skin and
causes severe blisters. When inhaled, it damages lungs, other organs,
and even the cells’ DNA, which can result in cancer and birth defects.
Although not as lethal as some other chemical agents, when used as a
weapon mustard gas is likely to inflict permanent injuries and suffer-
ing. There is no known case in which terrorists produced or acquired
mustard gas.
Sarin, whether in the gas or liquid form, is among the most lethal of
chemical weapons. It is far more deadly than cyanide and is able to kill
victims within minutes. Whether inhaled or absorbed through the skin,
this chemical material attacks the nervous system, muscles, and organs.
The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult produced sarin in the 1990s in its own
laboratories and used it as a terrorist weapon in its 1995 attack on the
Tokyo subway system.
VX, a chemical agent, is considered the most lethal nerve gas known.
When absorbed through the skin, VX attacks the nervous system and
tends to kill victims within a very short time. It is believed that ama-
teurs cannot produce this deadly material, but the scientists of the Aum
Shinrikyo cult did produce traces of VX and used it in several assassina-
tion attempts, in which one victim was killed.

Biological
Anthrax is a type of bacteria that is well known in the United States
as a biological weapon because a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a
still-unknown person mailed letters with anthrax spores to a number of
 Common Threads  201
people in the media and in politics. Anthrax can enter the body through
even the tiniest cut in the skin, through inhalation, and by ingestion with
food. When anthrax spores are inhaled and enter the lungs, without
treatment most victims die. The skin and stomach forms of anthrax are
thought to be less lethal.
Smallpox is a virus that is easily spread from person to person and, in
the past, it often killed millions of people during a single year. Declared
eradicated more than thirty years ago, only the United States and Russia
are known to have the smallpox virus stored—the United States in the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Russia in a reposi-
tory that once fed the Soviet Union’s biological weapons program. It
seems unlikely that terrorists would use this virus because it is highly
contagious. But there are concerns that a financially strong terrorist
organization with scientists in its ranks could perhaps acquire smallpox
through unemployed experts in the field who once worked in the Soviet
Union’s bioweapons program.
Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous biological agent known.
According to one account, in its most concentrated form “one pound
of it, if properly dispersed, could in theory kill a billion people.”72 The
bacteria that produce the botulinum toxin are sometimes found in soil.
When exposed to a potent form of this toxin, victims suffer muscle paral-
ysis and die within a short time. It was reported that scientists in the
Aum Shinrikyo cult “had tried to make germ weapons from anthrax and
botulinum” and that they “had staged as many as a dozen unsuccessful
germ attacks in Japan from 1990 to 1995.”73
Ricin is a protein toxin that can be inhaled, ingested, or injected.
Contained in castor beans, it can be extracted so that it is “two hundred
times more potent than cyanide.”74 Since no antidote is known, victims
will die. In early 2003, British police found a small quantity of ricin in a
building on the outskirts of London and arrested seven Muslim extrem-
ists in connection with it.

Radiological
Dirty bombs are conventional explosive devices that also contain radio-
active material. When a dirty bomb is set off, the dynamite (or whatever
explosives are used) will spray the radioactive material and contaminate
the targeted site. Depending on the radiation potency, weather condi-
tions, and speed of emergency responders, the number of victims killed
would vary. If, for example, a dirty bomb were to explode in New York’s
Times Square, this site and its environment would be uninhabitable for
a long time. If terrorist groups were to get hold of radioactive mate-
rial, it would be easy for them to construct a dirty bomb. There were
reports that Al Qaeda had in fact built such a radiological weapon in
Afghanistan before 9/11.
202 Terrorism
Nuclear Bombs
Documents found in Al Qaeda’s former safe houses in Afghanistan
revealed that bin Laden and his group were interested in learning as
much as possible about nuclear weapons. Indeed, since the 1990s, bin
Laden tried to acquire nuclear capabilities but there is no evidence that
these efforts were successful. The Aum Shinrikyo cult, too, was interested
in building nuclear weapons. Before he left office in early 2005, U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft warned,

If you were to have nuclear proliferation find its way into the hands
of terrorists, the entire world might be very seriously disrupted by a
few individuals who thought to impose their will, their arcane phi-
losophy, on the rest of mankind.75

Still, the nuclear nightmare scenario seems less likely than the threat of
terrorists deploying chemical, biological, and even radiological weapons.
Some experts reject the “alarmist scenarios” of catastrophic biological
or chemical terrorism that are reinforced by certain government officials,
sensational news reports, and Hollywood movies. But even the anti-
alarmist school does not completely rule out such attacks.

Notes
1 Both of these points are articulated by Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 157.
2 “Open Letter to Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World,” in Walter Laqueur
and Yonah Alexander, eds., The Terrorism Reader (New York: Penguin, 1987),
318.
3 The West German terrorist Michael Bauman is quoted in David C. Rapoport,
“The International World as Some Terrorists Have Seen It: A Look at a Century
of Memoirs,” in David C. Rapoport, ed., Inside Terrorist Organizations
(London: Frank Cass, 2001), 44.
4 Robert Kupperman and Darrell Trent, Terrorism: Threat, Reality, Response
(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1979), 7.
5 Robert A. Feary, “Introduction to International Terrorism,” in Marius H.
Livingston, ed., International Terrorism in the Contemporary World
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 31, 32.
6 David Fromkin, “Strategy of Terrorism,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., ed.,
International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls (New York: St.
Martin’s, 1990), 57.
7 Kupperman and Trent, 17.
8 Fromkin, 61.
9 Philip Jenkins, Images of Terror: What We Can and Can’t Know about
Terrorism (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2003), 81.
10 C. J. M. Drake, “The Role of Ideology in Terrorists’ Target Selection,”
Terrorism and Political Violence 10:2 (Summer 1998): 53.
11 Ibid., 56.
12 For an excellent account of the relationship between ideology and target
selection and the differences between the RAF and RB, see Drake, 53–85.
 Common Threads  203
13 Peter H. Merkl, “West German Left-Wing Terrorism,” in Martha Crenshaw,
ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1995), 192.
14 Donna M. Schlagheck, International Terrorism (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books, 1988), 2.
15 Brian M. Jenkins, “Der internationale Terrorismus,” Aus Politik und
Zeitgeschichte B5 (1987): 25.
16 This slogan was popular among the radical left in the United States and was
attributed to Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party. See ibid., 25.
17 From a letter published in the New York Times on March 28, 1993, 35.
18 “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, 23 February 1998,” [Link].
com/wp-dyn?article&node=&contentId=A4993-2001Sep2.
19 Jerrold M. Post, Ehud Sprinzak, and Laurita M. Denny, “The Terrorists in
Their Own Words: Interviews with 35 Incarcerated Middle Eastern Terrorists,”
Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1 (Spring 2003): 181, 183.
20 Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the
Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Regan Books, 2001), 166.
21 J. Bowyer Bell, “Terror: An Overview,” in Livingston, 38.
22 George Habash is quoted in Bowman H. Miller and Charles A. Russell, “The
Evolution of Revolutionary Warfare: From Mao to Marighella to Meinhof,”
in Kupperman and Trent, 191.
23 Kupperman and Trent, 5.
24 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 111.
25 Miller and Russell, 193.
26 Ibid.
27 Kupperman and Trent, 52.
28 [Link], accessed July 21, 2003.
29 [Link] website, [Link], accessed July 21, 2003.
30 Ibid.
31 “Pipe Bombs: Low-Tech, Lethal Tools of Terror,” [Link]/US/9607/27/
[Link]/.
32 One such site, [Link], described how to build all kinds of bombs
from crude pipe bombs to very potent explosives based on ammonium nitrate
fertilizer mixed with gasoline. After the operator of the anarchist site and
writer of the guide to explosives was arrested in early 2002, it was no longer
accessible. A successor site did not carry the guide.
33 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the
Future of Terrorism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), 146.
34 Michel and Herbeck, 164, 165.
35 Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002), 59.
36 Harmon, 113.
37 Adam Dolnik, “Die and Let Die: Exploring Links between Suicide Terrorism
and Terrorist Use of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear
Weapons,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26:1 (January–February
2003): 25.
38 Eagleburger is quoted in Christoph Reuter, Mein Leben ist eine Waffe
(Munich: Bertelsmann, 2002), 95.
39 Bruce Hoffman, “The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Atlantic Monthly, June
2003, 40.
40 Nasra Hassan, “An Arsenal of Believers,” New Yorker, November 19, 2001, 39.
41 Ibid.
42 Hoffman, “The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” 42.
43 See Dolnik, 22–27.
204 Terrorism
44 Reuter, 128.
45 Hassan, 41.
46 Reuter, 349.
47 Dolnik, 24.
48 Martin Kramer, “The Moral Logic of Hizballah,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins
of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 144.
49 Robert A. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political
Science Review 97:3 (August 2003): 343.
50 Reuter, 344–45.
51 Ibid., 356, 358.
52 Michael Radu, “Radical Islam and Suicide Bombers,” article distributed by
the Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 21, 2003.
53 Aaron Baruch Horwitz, “Charisma, Repression, and Culture: The Making
of a Suicide Terrorist,” unpublished senior thesis, Department of Political
Science, Columbia University.
54 Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005), 94.
55 Ibid., 95.
56 Ibid.
57 Miller and Russell, 195.
58 Michael D. Greenberg et al., Maritime Terrorism: Risk and Liability (Santa
Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2006), 27.
59 Harmon, 113.
60 Barton Gellman, “The Cyber-Terror Threat,” Washington Post, weekly edi-
tion, July 1–14, 2002, 6.
61 Robert J. Bunker, “Weapons of Mass Disruption and Terrorism,” Terrorism
and Political Violence 12:1 (Spring 2000): 40.
62 Ibid.
63 Robert Kupperman and Jeff Kamen, Final Warning: Averting Disaster in the
New Age of Terrorism (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 109.
64 Bunker, 35.
65 The Tamil Tigers’ poison gas attack is mentioned by Bruce Hoffman, “A Nasty
Business,” Atlantic Monthly, January 2002 (retrieved from the ProQuest
database on August 10, 2003).
66 David Claridge, “Exploding the Myth of Superterrorism,” Terrorism and
Political Violence 11:4 (Winter 1999): 136.
67 Rohan Gunaratna and Peter Chalk, “Terrorist Training and Weaponry,” in
Counter Terrorism, 2nd ed., October 2002, Jane’s, [Link], accessed
June 20, 2003.
68 Graham T. Allison et al., Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1996), 73.
69 Gunaratna and Chalk.
70 Graham T. Allison, “How to Stop Nuclear Terror,” Foreign Affairs (January–
February 2004), [Link], accessed October 4, 2004.
71 Jessica Stern, The Ultimate Terrorists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1999), 7–8.
72 Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, Germs: Biological
Weapons and America’s Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 39.
73 Ibid., 154.
74 Ibid., 215.
75 According to an Associated Press report. See “Ashcroft: Nuke Threat the
Largest Danger,” [Link]/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050128/,
accessed January 28, 2005.
9 Organizational Structures and the
Financing of Terror

Traditionally, most terrorist movements have organized along the lines

of the predominant hierarchical model of other organizations, whether
they were of the legitimate kind, such as governments or corporations, or
the illegitimate variety, such as crime syndicates. One leader or a group
of leaders occupy the top of the organizational pyramid, while lieuten-
ants and rank-and-file members populate the lower levels. The chain of
command here is comparable to that in the military in that decisions are
made at the top and communicated to and carried out by those below.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), for example, has been
described as a “hierarchically-organized authoritarian structure ensur-
ing both operational and non-operational efficiency.”1 Similarly, the
Lebanese Hezbollah has been known to be governed “on the national
and local level by the supreme political-religious leadership, composed of
a small and select group of Lebanese ulama [community of learned men
expressing the true content of Islam].”2 The oldest among the Palestinian
militant groups were perfect examples of hierarchical organizations built
around forceful leaders—from Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) and Al Fatah to the Abu Nidal Organization,
George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and
Abu Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Front. The absolute commitment to
the causes of their group displayed by the Black Tigers, the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE)’s suicide brigade in Sri Lanka, and of
all Tamil Tigers has been related to the strict hierarchical indoctrination
and command system under the control of LTTE’s charismatic founder
Vellupillai Prabhakaran. Similarly, under the leadership of Abdullah
Ocalan, who was arrested in 1999 and put behind bars in Turkey, the
Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party was commanded from the top.
However, many terrorist movements increasingly abandoned the
hierarchical structure and adopted the “leaderless resistance” principle
once practiced by the Communist Party. In a 1992 pamphlet, Louis
Beam, a notorious American right-wing extremist, explained the advan-
tages of dropping the hierarchical organization model as a means of
preventing government agents from infiltrating and destroying the
206 Terrorism
movement. Instead, the idea is to have all groups and individuals oper-
ate independently from one another and from a central command.
According to Beam,

At first glance, such a type of organization seems unrealistic, primar-

ily because there appears [to be] no organization. The natural ques-
tion thus arises as to how are the “Phantom cells” and individuals to
cooperate with each other when there is no intercommunication or
central direction? The answer to this question is that participants in
a program of Leaderless Resistance through Phantom cells or indi-
vidual action must know exactly what they are doing, and how to do
it. It becomes the responsibility of the individual to acquire the nec-
essary skills and information as to what is to be done. This is by no
means as impractical as it appears, because it is certainly true that in
any movement, all persons involved have the same general outlook,
are acquainted with the same philosophy, and generally react to a
given situation in similar ways.3

When he wrote the article, Beam had first-hand experience with the vul-
nerability of hierarchical organizations. He had been the Grand Dragon
of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and presided as the leader
from the top of its organizational pyramid. For a long time, law enforce-
ment agencies were very successful in penetrating the Klan organizations.
Disillusioned with this sort of scrutiny, Beam joined the White Supremacy
group Aryan Nations in order to promote and practice the leaderless
cell concept. While acknowledging that independent cells or lone wolves
needed to keep up with the “organs of information distribution such
as newspapers, leaflets, computers, etc.,” Beam failed to mention that it
fell to leaders to provide such motivational and informational resources.
But by emphasizing the responsibility of the individual in the leaderless
resistance model, Beam recognized fully well that one person or a very
small group is able to function as a “patriotic” resistance cell against
“state tyranny.”4 The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was
a perfect example of the functioning of an independent cell. He had a
co-conspirator and friends who knew of the plot. There is no reason to
believe that McVeigh received direct instructions, assistance, or financial
resources from higher-ups in right-wing organizations. But he kept him-
self informed about the radical antigovernment sentiments in these circles
and read fiction and nonfiction that detailed how to vanquish federal
agents. Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani who attacked and killed employees
at the entrance to the CIA headquarters near Washington, DC, in 1993,
acted as a lone wolf or leaderless cell in a larger cause—the holy war
declared by Islamic extremists against the United States.
Secular right-wing and left-wing organizations, single-issue groups, and
religiously motivated movements embraced the concept of “leaderless cells”
 Organizational Structures and Financing  207
before and after Louis Beam discovered and promoted it. For example,
when the founders of the Baader-Meinhof group and the Red Army
Faction were in prison, their followers outside established “Revolutionary
Cells” that continued to fight for the cause. Modern-day anarchists in
the United States and elsewhere, particularly the Antifa (for antifascist)
movement in Western Europe, rely on this organizational principle, as do
the militia movements, the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation
Front, and a host of other single-issue movements in the United States
and Europe.
For many extremists, terrorism becomes “a career as much as a passion.”5
They become full-time or professional terrorists in contrast to others who
are part-time or amateur terrorists. The members of the Marxist terror
groups of the 1970s and 1980s became professional terrorists, if only
because they had to operate underground; many committed adherents of
the far-right antigovernment movements fall into the amateur category.
As long as leaders (who tend to be full-timers) articulate the ideology of a
particular movement, groups with predominantly professional members
and those with overwhelmingly amateur adherents both prefer increas-
ingly the leaderless resistance model.
Jihadis too, have bought into this principle. Thus, the so-called
Encyclopedia of Jihad, at times available online, “provides instructions
for creating ‘clandestine activity cells,’ with units for intelligence, supply,
planning and preparation, and implementation.”6 Pointing out that this
trend poses particular problems for law enforcement in the West, Jessica
Stern has noted,

In one article on the “culture of jihad” available on-line, a Saudi

Islamist urges bin Laden sympathizers to take action without wait-
ing for instructions. “I do not need to meet the Sheikh [Osama bin
Laden] and ask his permission to carry out some operation,” he
writes, “the same as I do not need permission to pray, or to think
about killing the Jews and the Crusaders that gather on our lands.”7

But leaders remain crucial in one respect: Without leaders taking up a

cause, formulating a philosophy, and convincing others to embrace what
they preach, there will be neither hierarchical movements nor indepen-
dently operating cells. Even when forceful individuals take the initiative,
terrorist cells or larger organizations emerge only when actual or poten-
tial domestic and/or international factions are sympathetic to a particular
cause. Only a few in such constituencies may favor a violent course of
action and pursue it actively, but sympathizers are crucial in terms of
hideouts, financial support, and reaction to counterterrorist measures.
The Internet that facilitates all kinds of social networks is also instru-
mental in connecting networks of dispersed cells devoted to political
violence. In the process, new types of networks of groups, cells, or
208 Terrorism
individuals, whether criminal or terrorist in nature, confront governments
in a new type of conflict—what experts call “netwar.”8 The term netwar
has a double meaning, indicating in the first place a cell-based organiza-
tional mode or network and, second, such networks’ strong reliance on
the Internet and other means of modern communication technology in
order to communicate, coordinate, and indoctrinate. Or, to put it dif-
ferently, the terrorists (or criminals) “depend on using network forms
of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology.”9 Recognizing that
relatively new terrorist groups differ in their organizational philosophy
and practice from older terrorist organizations, Michele Zanini observed,

The rise of networked arrangements in terrorist organizations is

part of a wider move away from formally organized state-sponsored
groups to privately financed looser networks of individuals and sub-
groups that may have strategic guidance but enjoy tactical independ-
ence. Related to these shifts is the fact that terrorist groups are taking
advantage of information technology to coordinate activities of dis-
persed members. Such technology may be deployed by terrorists not
only to wage information warfare, but also to support their own
networked organizations.10

Whether understood mostly as leaderless resistance cells that otherwise

operate along traditional lines or as a trend toward the netwar princi-
ple that utilizes information technology, the basic idea of moving away
from the strictly hierarchical organization was embraced by all kinds of
domestic and transnational terrorist groups beginning in the 1980s. Two
types of organizations in particular adopted the cell-based network mode
early and wholeheartedly—the far right in the United States and Europe
and extremist Islamic groups around the world. According to Michael
Whine, “These types of organizations, comprised of geographically far-
flung, radical, non-state components make them ideal users of networks
and proponents of Netwar.”11 Well before the attacks of September 11,
2001, Zanini described a transnational Arab terrorism network that was
different from traditional organizations of this kind in that it consisted of
a variety of relatively autonomous groups. According to Zanini,

The most notorious element of the network is Osama bin Laden,

who uses his wealth and organizational skills to support and direct a
multinational alliance of Islamic extremists. At the heart of this alli-
ance is his own inner core group, known as Al-Qaeda (“The Base”),
which sometimes conducts missions on its own, but more often in
conjunction with other groups or elements in the alliance.12

What eventually became the most extensive terrorist network ever

began as Al Qaeda’s own move toward the cell model. Beginning in the
 Organizational Structures and Financing  209
mid-1990s, bin Laden sent trusted followers into many countries and
regions to establish a global network of cells. In 1994, the first and per-
haps most important of these cells was established in the United Kingdom.
The whole extent of the European cells became clear in the months
and years after 9/11. During the trial of Al Qaeda operatives who had
plotted to blow up a U.S. military base in Belgium, one of the prosecutors
told the court that defendants had “established a ‘spider’s web’ of Islamic
radicals plotting attacks and recruiting fighters in Europe for al-Qaida
and the now-deposed Taliban in Afghanistan.”13
But the Al Qaeda network alone was not sufficient for bin Laden’s
grand design. In 1998, he convened a meeting in Afghanistan that was
attended by the leaders of autonomous Islamic groups, among them the
physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, who
soon thereafter became bin Laden’s right-hand man. Also present were
the leaders of Egypt’s Gama’a al-Islamiyya, representatives of radi-
cal Pakistani groups, and the head of Bangladesh’s Islamic Jihad. As a
result of this meeting, the Al Qaeda leader established what he called
the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad against the Jews and
Crusaders, a quickly growing international alliance of existing groups
in exclusively or partially Muslim countries. Although up to then strictly
reserved for Sunni Muslims, Al Qaeda also reached out to and cooper-
ated with Shi’ite groups, in particular the Lebanese Hezbollah, or Party
of God, one of the best-organized—albeit hierarchical—organizations.
Hezbollah is known as a Lebanese organization with interests in neigh-
boring countries, but the group has supporters, if not cells, in North and
South America, Africa, and Europe as well. Last but not least, as a result
of his growing fame as an anti-American and anti-Western mastermind
of terror, bin Laden inspired the establishment of numerous new cells in
many parts of the world.
Taken together, the Al Qaeda cells and the IIF’s network of associated
but independent organizations, many of which contain a multitude of
nodes, formed an expansive terrorist network with a presence on most
continents and in dozens and dozens of countries. The organizations that
bin Laden put together corresponded in many respects to the archetypal
netwar design as described by theorists:

Ideally, there is no single, central leadership, command, or headquarters—

no precise heart or head that can be targeted. The network as a whole
(but not necessarily each node) has little to no hierarchy; there may
be multiple leaders. Decision making and operations are decentral-
ized, allowing for local initiative and autonomy.
The capacity of this design for effective performance over time
may depend on the existence of shared principles, interests, and
goals—perhaps an overreaching ideology—which spans all nodes
and to which the members subscribe in a deep way.14
210 Terrorism
To be sure, as the head and heart of Al Qaeda and the IIF network, bin
Laden was something like a chairman of the board, with al-Zawahiri as
the chief executive officer at his side. Trusted associates headed the fol-
lowing committees with responsibilities in specific areas:

•• The Political Committee, or Shura: Responsible for issuing religious

edicts or fatwa that justify and even order actions in the name of
Islamic law—among them, terror against infidels.
•• The Military Committee: Responsible for planning specific attacks
and in charge of managing Al Qaeda’s training camps.
•• The Finance Committee: Responsible for the fundraising, budgeting,
and financing of Al Qaeda’s living and operational expenses.
•• The Foreign Purchase Committee: Responsible for the acquisition
of technical equipment (e.g., computers), weapons, and explosives.
•• The Security Committee: Responsible for intelligence, counterintel-
ligence, and the protection of Al Qaeda leaders and facilities.15

This elaborate organizational setup was first utilized during bin Laden’s
stay in the Sudan and later on in Afghanistan, where the Al Qaeda leader
and his associates felt safe. An estimated 20,000 or so members of dozens
of autonomous and affiliated groups and cells were trained by Al Qaeda
operatives in camps in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia,
Malaysia, and elsewhere. At the same time, Al Qaeda provided associ-
ated cells with financial resources, weapons, and logistics.16
After 9/11, when Al Qaeda’s main hub in Afghanistan was lost, the
network’s secondary hubs (headquarters/camps of autonomous organi-
zations) and nodes or cells became crucial to continuing the fight for the
cause and to planning and carrying out terrorist activities. By 2003, ter-
rorism expert Rohan Gunaratna explained,

With the removal of its main Afghan base in October 2001, Al-Qaeda’s
leadership is now looking to associated groups to advance their terri-
torial aims, as well as support Al-Qaeda’s universal jihad. To this end,
its organizers, trainers, financiers and human couriers have dispersed
and are moving around the world to provide support to these groups.17

Although in hiding, bin Laden continued “to inspire many of the opera-
tives he trained and dispersed, as well as smaller Islamic extremist groups
and individual fighters who share his ideology.”18 But bin Laden was no
longer involved in important decisions as he had been before when he
personally “approved all al Qaeda operations, often selecting the targets
and operatives.”19
In the post-9/11 era, the following autonomous organizations were
among the increasing number of groups that were part of the Al Qaeda/
IIF network of terror:
 Organizational Structures and Financing  211
•• Abu Sayyaf Group, a small separatist group fighting for the estab-
lishment of an independent Muslim state in the southern Philippines.
The group engaged in kidnappings for ransom, assassinations, and
bombings and expanded its operations into Malaysia.
•• ’Asbat al Ansar (League of Followers), a Lebanese Sunni group that
committed terrorism against domestic and international targets
(among them, Americans).
•• Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group, or IG), Egypt’s largest mili-
tant organization, which conducted many terrorist attacks inside
Egypt. Senior members of the group signed Osama bin Laden’s 1998
fatwa that declared war against the United States.
•• Al-Jihad, also called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an extremist group
founded in the 1970s, merged with Al Qaeda/IIF in 2001 but retained
the ability to conduct independent operations.
•• Harakat ul-Mujahidin (Movement of the Warriors, HUM), a radi-
cal Pakistani group that committed terrorist acts in Kashmir. Fazlur
Rehman Khalil, the longtime leader of HUM, was among the co-
sponsors of Osama bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war against the
United States.
•• Jemaah Islamiya (JI), an extensive terrorism network in Southeast Asia
with hubs and cells in Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Thailand, and the
southern Philippines. The group cultivated strong ties to Al Qaeda.
Many of JI’s followers received training in bin Laden’s training camps
in Afghanistan as well as financial and logistical assistance. JI was
responsible for the 2002 bombings of a Bali nightclub and the 2003
truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
•• Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Righteous, LET), a radical Sunni
group in Pakistan with ties to Al Qaeda. Abu Zubaydah, a close bin
Laden associate, was arrested in early 2002 in a LET safe house in
Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Al Qaeda’s network structure proved crucial after the central leadership

had fled Afghanistan and remained in hiding for many years. In some
ways, Al Qaeda Central’s expansion, especially after 9/11, resembled
the organizational model of those multinational corporations that grow
through mergers and acquisitions in different parts of the world and
leave most, if not all, decision-making to the various national or regional
affiliates. In the case of Al Qaeda, its “peripheral elements are minimally
dependent on its core leadership.”20 But just as the headquarters of multi-
national corporations push for increased brand recognition and demand
for their product, Al Qaeda uses virtual propaganda for the marketing of
its brand of ideology. According to an early 2009 assessment,

Physical sanctuary in Pakistan has provided immense value to

al-Qa’ida’s efforts to regain control over the movement, and it has
212 Terrorism
allowed the core group to better enable its affiliated organizations.
The organization has expanded through selective mergers and affili-
ations in Somalia, Yemen, South Africa, West Africa, the Levant
and Algeria. The al-Qa’ida affiliates that developed in these regions
present a lesser, yet persistent threat strengthening the brand, fur-
ther perpetuating the movement. Affiliate organizations offer greater
opportunities for al-Qa’ida as well as increased risk due to loss of
control of its message, brand and target selection. Despite the risks,
al-Qa’ida has continued to expand.21

To be sure, just as corporate mergers are not without risks, the addi-
tion of cells and hubs to a virtual network may prove problematic if
the individual parts move away from the objectives of the core. That
happened as ISIS became the most prominent terrorist organization that
attracted thousands of foreign fighters to establish, build, and defend
the proclaimed caliphate. Since ISIS’s leadership core had expertise in
media and communication, computer technology, and guerrilla warfare,
some terrorist groups switched their allegiance from Al Qaeda to ISIS.
Such opportunistic moves benefitted new ISIS affiliates, for example,
Al-Shabaab in Somalia that established its own media center with the
assistance of ISIS experts. Others vacillated between their allegiance for
one or the other group or split into pro-Al Qaeda and pro-ISIS factions.

ISIS: Organized Like a Police State

During the post-9/11 decade when bin Laden and Al Qaeda Central were
widely accepted as leaders of the global jihadi movement, more spiritual
than operational, though, a charismatic and ruthless jihadi rose in Iraq
following the fall of Saddam Hussein as result of the U.S. invasion and
occupation of the country: The Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
who had spent time with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan before
and after 9/11. Upon his return to Iraq, al-Zarqawi established Al Qaeda
in Iraq, pledging his and his group’s allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
By 2005 he declared unilaterally a total war against Shi’ites in Iraq and
launched many violent attacks. Al Qaeda Central protested when its
Iraqi affiliate brutally executed Muslims and Westerners. But by that
time al-Zarqawi was already the new star in the jihadi movement and
on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists with a $25 million reward for
information leading to his capture, the same amount offered for such
information about bin Laden.
After Al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006 during a U.S. airstrike, Al
Qaeda in Iraq declined rapidly. This changed in 2010, when Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi became the leader of the group that by then had taken the
name of Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). As most leaders of Al Qaeda Central
were killed by drone strikes or arrested and the group weakened, the
 Organizational Structures and Financing  213
ISI leadership implemented step by step its well-laid plan to recruit and
train a substantial number of fighters and thereafter conquer territory
in Syria as a beachhead for an all-out assault on Iraq and eventually
beyond. With a considerable footprint in Syria, the group called itself
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State in Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) before in 2014 declaring itself the Caliphate in charge of
all Muslims.
In mid-2015, based on the reality in the jihadi movement, FBI Director
James Comey said that ISIS was far more dangerous for the American
homeland than Al Qaeda. He explained that

the threat that ISIL presents to the United States is very different in kind,
in type, in degree than Al Qaeda. ISIL is not your parent’s Al Qaeda,
it’s a very different model. And by virtue of that model, it’s currently
the threat that we are worried about in the homeland most of all.22

Based on documents attributed to a killed ISIS leader with the code

name Haji Bakr and investigative reports, the German news magazine
Der Spiegel revealed in 2015 how ISIS planned in every detail the con-
quest of land and the domination of people. To begin with, followers were
recruited for what they were told was the opening of a new missionary
project. From the men attending instruction sessions, several were chosen
and recruited to spy on the people of their villages. The plan was from the
outset to establish a police state in which the group would have total con-
trol over the populace. To that end, spies were asked to do the following:

•• List the powerful families;

•• Name the powerful individuals in these families;
•• Find out their sources of income;
•• Name names and the sizes of (rebel) brigades in the village;
•• Find out the names of their leaders, who controls the brigades and
their political orientation;
•• Find out their illegal activities (according to Sharia law), which could
be used to blackmail them if necessary.

Those selected as spies were told to note whether someone was a crimi-
nal or a homosexual, or was involved in a secret affair, so as to have
ammunition for blackmailing later. Some were ordered to marry the
daughters of influential families to gain influence in communities.23 The
blueprint also provided for the appointment of provincial commanders
and councils with detailed prescriptions for the establishment and run-
ning of schools, daycare centers, a transportation system, and, most of
all, a total surveillance system. As reported in Der Spiegel, “The nucleus
of this godly state would be the demonic clockwork of a cell and com-
mando structure designed to spread fear.”24
214 Terrorism
With total control in the conquered territories the Islamic State called
on like-minded brothers, sisters, and whole families in the Muslim
world and in the Western diaspora to immigrate to the Islamic State to
strengthen the Caliphate and create a new generation of devoted Salafis
and jihadis. As FBI Director Comey noted, “They [ISIS propagandists
and recruiters] are preaching through social media to troubled souls,
urging them to join their so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq, or if you
can’t join, kill them [infidels] where you are.”25 The ISIS organizational
and operational model was a far more ambitious design than that of
Al Qaeda.

From Bureaucratic Pseudo-State to Online Caliphate

At its height ISIS was the best organized terrorist organization with
a state-like bureaucracy that drew heavily on the experiences of
men who had been civil servants under previous Iraqi and Syrian
administrations. Voluntarily or under duress these ISIS adminis-
trators implemented and recorded the enforcement by the letter of
extreme moral codes and the detailed system of taxation. In 2018
when Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times located stacks
of ISIS documents in various parts of Iraq, the handwritten records
showed that the “Caliphate” had collected taxes on literally all
commercial transactions and private requirements—from the sale
of farming products to birth and marriage licenses. By all reports,
taxes, religious donations, and the sale of oil made ISIS the rich-
est terrorist organization ever.26 In return, though, even opponents
of ISIS praised a better delivery of public services than they had
ever experienced—from regular garbage removal to the building
of roads.
After Iraqi and Kurdish forces, trained and assisted by U.S.
Special Forces, pushed ISIS out of most of their territories in Iraq
and Syria, the organization was reduced to a shadow of its short-
lived glory. With its leadership strata and jihadi fighters either dead,
arrested, or scattered, ISIS became more of a virtual than an actual
factor in the region.
Yet, as the second decade of the twenty-first century neared its
end, there was no reason to announce ISIS’s demise. Similar to what
happened after Al Qaeda’s hasty exodus from Afghanistan in 2001,
the Islamic State could count on a number of affiliates and, more
importantly, safe havens with new opportunities. Afghanistan in
particular became a new venue for ISIS violence. In 2017 and 2018
a multitude of the most lethal terrorist attacks in the capital city
of Kabul and around the country were carried out and claimed by
ISIS. Moreover, the organization’s propaganda machine continued
 Organizational Structures and Financing  215
to spit out its words and images of hate via social media, messag-
ing services, and the dark web. If not originating with ISIS’s media
center, these communications came from the group’s global net-
work of “online jihadists.”

How Terrorist Groups Decline or End

Several events or conditions cause or contribute significantly to the
decline and even ending of terrorist groups. Utilizing factors of decline
or demise detailed by several terrorism experts, most of all Audrey Kurth
Cronin, the following seem the most important ones:

•• Decapitation;
•• Physical defeat;
•• Success;
•• Transition;
•• Lack of public support.27

Decapitation. Once the American-led coalition invaded Afghanistan

and began its hunt for Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders,
many observers wondered whether the arrest or death of bin Laden
would also mean the end of Al Qaeda and even the IIF. While bin Laden
remained on the run and in hiding, an estimated two-thirds of the Al
Qaeda network’s leaders were either arrested or killed.28 This offered
regional and local operatives opportunities to step into leadership roles;
not only al-Zarqawi saw the opportunity. Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria became
quasi-autonomous groups. It was telling that of the Al Qaeda network’s
first fourteen attacks after 9/11, nine were independently planned,
financed, and carried out by local cells.29 Well before bin Laden’s demise
finally came on May 2, 2011, his actual influence had waned—although
he was still respected as a spiritual leader in jihadi circles.
The case of Al Qaeda was not the first in which the removal or fugi-
tive status of leaders led to greater decentralization. After the founders
of Germany’s Red Army Faction were arrested, they were not replaced
by another set of similarly influential leaders. Instead, under the pres-
sure of intensified police actions, the RAF operated along the line of the
cell model. When Hamas’s spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was
assassinated by Israel in early 2004, Dr. Abd-al-Azis al-Rantisi immedi-
ately succeeded him. But the subsequent assassination of al-Rantisi raised
questions about the organization’s future structure. Hamas’s next overall
leader Khaled Meshal continued to live in exile in Qatar which out of
necessity left decision-making room for leaders in Gaza.
216 Terrorism
The death or arrest of a strong group leader can also result in internal
fights for his or her succession and weaken or even break up a group.
This happened in the American setting after William Pierce, the founder
and leader of the right-wing National Alliance organization, died, and
after Matthew Hale, the leader of the White Supremacy World Church
of the Creator group, was arrested. In both cases, the man at the top had
operated like an absolute ruler who did not allow strong associates with
meaningful positions at his side. As a result, there were no designated
successors with enough influence to carry on.
Physical defeat. Typically, the defeat of terrorist organizations comes
in the form of massive police and/or military campaigns that result in
the death or arrest of many members. This was the fate of Italy’s Red
Brigades, Uruguay’s Tupamaros, and many other leftist organizations.
When followed up with amnesties for both prisoners and terrorists in
hiding, governments seem especially effective in rooting out political
violence. When Tupamaros founder Raul Sendic Antonaccio was par-
doned, he asked his comrades to abandon terrorism in exchange for
peaceful political participation. The adoption of so-called repentance
laws in Italy convinced a number of Red Brigades’ members to throw
in the towel.
Complete military defeat of a terrorist organization with a sizeable
military wing is the surest way to end terrorism albeit at the expense
of international humanitarian law. This was the case when in 2009 the
Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tiger guerrillas decisively after
more than twenty-five years of armed conflict. In the end, not only Tiger
leaders and many fighters were killed but hundreds of civilians as well,
among them children.
Success. Of course, the most obvious reason for ending terrorism is
the realization of a terrorist organization’s objectives. An example here is
the terrorism committed by Irgun Zvai Leumi in the British mandate in
Palestine that led to the desired withdrawal of the British and the estab-
lishment of the state of Israel.
Transition. After participating in negotiations with governments some
terrorist groups abandon violence, lay down their weapons, and par-
ticipate in the legitimate political process. That happened in Northern
Ireland, after the 1998 peace agreement between the British government
and the PIRA, brokered by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. Nearly
two decades later, negotiations led to the Colombian FARC’s re-entry
into electoral politics.
Loss of public support. When the RAF in Germany finally abandoned
violence, they admitted that they failed to enlist public support. The
beginning of ETA’s end as a violent political group came when public
support in the Basque country declined significantly. In Northern Ireland,
peace negotiations were enhanced because both the general Catholic and
Protestant publics were worn out and tired of the violent struggle.
 Organizational Structures and Financing  217
Terrorist Groups’ Big Helpers: State Sponsors
Although terrorist organizations are nonstate actors by definition, some
of them are generously sponsored or partially supported by the govern-
ments of nation-states. Decision-makers in target countries emphasize
the complicity of governments because it is easier to threaten and punish
state sponsors than terrorist organizations. Just as governments in the
Eastern Bloc and Soviet client states elsewhere sponsored anti-Western
terrorism during the Cold War (see Chapter 3) state support has remained
an important factor in bolstering terrorists and their deeds.
According to three laws (section 6(j) of the Export Administration
Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A of the
Foreign Assistance Act), U.S. secretaries of state are required to designate
states as sponsors of terrorism if they determine that they have “repeatedly
provided support for acts of international terrorism.”30 This designation
triggers the following sanctions against state sponsors of terrorism:

1 A ban on arms-related exports and sales.

2 Controls over exports of dual-use items, requiring thirty-day
Congressional notification for goods or services that could signifi-
cantly enhance the terrorist-list country’s military capability or ability
to support terrorism.
3 Prohibitions on economic assistance.
4 Imposition of miscellaneous financial and other restrictions, including:
•• Requiring the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank
and other international financial institutions;
•• Exception from the jurisdictional immunity in U.S. courts of
state sponsor countries, and all former state sponsor countries
(with the exception of Iraq), with respect to claims for money
damages for personal injury or death caused by certain acts of
terrorism, torture, or extrajudicial killing, or the provision of
material support or resources for such acts;
•• Denying companies and individuals tax credits for income earned
in terrorist-list countries;
•• Denial of duty-free treatment of goods exported to the United
States;
•• Authority to prohibit any U.S. citizen from engaging in a financial
transaction with a terrorist-list government without a Treasury
Department license;
•• Prohibition of Defense Department contracts above $100,000
with companies in which a state sponsor government owns or
controls a significant interest.31

After Cuba was taken off the U.S. Department of State’s country list
of state sponsors of terrorism, only three such countries remained:
218 Terrorism
Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The following excerpts from the 2016 State
Department’s “Country Reports on Terrorism” summarizes U.S. charges
against the three countries.

IRAN: Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984, Iran

continued its terrorist-related activity in 2016, including support for
Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in
Syria, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East. In 2016, Iran supported
various Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, including Kata’ib Hizballah, as
part of an effort to fight ISIS in Iraq and bolster the Assad regime
in Syria. Iran views the Assad regime in Syria as a crucial ally and
Syria and Iraq as crucial routes to supply weapons to Hizballah,
Iran’s primary terrorist partner. Iran has facilitated and coerced,
through financial or residency enticements, primarily Shia fighters
from Afghanistan and Pakistan to participate in the Assad regime’s
brutal crackdown in Syria. Iranian-supported Shia militias in Iraq
have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni
civilians and Iranian forces have directly backed militia operations in
Syria with armored vehicles, artillery, and drones.
Since the end of the 2006 Israeli-Hizballah conflict, Iran has sup-
plied Hizballah with thousands of rockets, missiles, and small arms,
in direct violation of UN Security Council resolution (UNSCR)
1701. Iran provides the majority of financial support for Hizballah
in Lebanon and has trained thousands of its fighters at camps in Iran.
Iran has historically provided weapons, training, and funding to
Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine
Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-
General Command. These Palestinian terrorist groups have been
behind a number of deadly attacks originating in Gaza and the West
Bank, including attacks against Israeli civilians and Egyptian security
forces in the Sinai Peninsula.
Iran has provided weapons, funding, and training to Bahraini
militant Shia groups that have conducted attacks on the Bahraini
security forces. On January 6, 2016, Bahraini security officials dis-
mantled a terrorist cell, linked to IRGC-QF, planning to carry out a
series of bombings throughout the country.
SUDAN: Sudan was designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in
1993 due to concerns about support to international terrorist groups,
including the Abu Nidal Organization, Palestine Islamic Jihad,
Hamas, and Hizballah. Notwithstanding this history, countering ter-
rorism is today a national security priority for Sudan, and Sudan
is a cooperative partner of the United States on counterterrorism,
despite its continued presence on the State Sponsors of Terrorism
List. During the past year, the Government of Sudan continued to
pursue counterterrorism operations alongside regional partners,
 Organizational Structures and Financing  219
including operations to directly counter threats to U.S. interests and
personnel in Sudan. Sudan takes seriously the threat posed by ISIS,
and in September 2016, the U.S. government acknowledged the
Government of Sudan’s significant efforts to counter ISIS and other
terrorist groups and to prevent their movement into and through
Sudan. Earlier, in June 2016, a senior U.S. official praised Sudan for
its counterterrorism efforts as well.
There were no reported terrorist attacks in Sudan in 2016. There
also were no indications that the Sudanese government tolerated or
assisted terrorist organizations within its borders in 2016. Reports
indicate that the Government of Sudan ceased providing Hamas with
any direct support as they did in years past. As a result of a U.S.
engagement plan with the Government of Sudan in 2016 that offered
potential economic sanctions relief if Sudan took positive actions in
a number of areas including enhanced counterterrorism cooperation
the Sudanese government has taken steps to improve its counterter-
rorism efforts through enhanced interagency and international coop-
eration to address the ISIS threat.
SYRIA: Designated in 1979 as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, the
Assad regime continued its political and military support to a variety
of terrorist groups affecting the stability of the region as the Syrian
conflict entered its sixth year. The regime continued to provide politi-
cal and weapons support to Hizballah and continued to allow Iran
to rearm the terrorist organization. The Assad regime’s relationship
with Hizballah and Iran grew stronger in 2016 as the regime became
more reliant on external actors to militarily fight the Syrian opposi-
tion. These groups played a critical role in the regime’s seizure of
eastern Aleppo in December. President Bashar al-Assad remained a
staunch defender of Iran’s policies, while Iran exhibited equally ener-
getic support for the Syrian regime. Statements supporting terror-
ist groups, particularly Hizballah, were often in Syrian government
speeches and press statements.
Over the past decade, the Syrian government has played an impor-
tant role in the growth of terrorist networks in Syria through the
Assad regime’s permissive attitude towards al-Qa’ida and other ter-
rorist groups’ foreign terrorist fighter facilitation efforts during the
Iraq conflict. Syria served for years as a hub for foreign terrorist
fighters, and the Syrian government’s awareness and encouragement
for many years of violent extremists’ transit through Syria to enter
Iraq for the purpose of fighting Coalition troops, is well documented.
Those very networks were among the violent extremist elements
which terrorized the Syrian and Iraqi populations in 2016.

As Table 9.1 shows, North Korea appeared on the list of state sponsors
of terrorism in late 2017—actually for the second time. It was first put
220 Terrorism
Table 9.1  U.S. State Department: List of State Sponsors of Terrorism
(June 2018)

Country Designation Date

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea November 20, 2017

(North Korea)
Iran January 19, 1984
Sudan August 12, 1993
Syria December 29, 1979
Source: U.S. Department of State

on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist state sponsors in 1988, the
year after agents of the Pyongyang regime planted a bomb on a South
Korean airliner causing it to crash. All 110 passengers and crew members
were killed. Twenty years later, in 2008, North Korea was taken off the
list, when the George W. Bush administration believed that it would help
to negotiate an anti-nuclear deal. Even though these hopes never mate-
rialized, the country remained off the list until November 2017, when
President Donald Trump put it back on. This step was, according to the
president, taken in order to “increas[e] pressure on the rogue nation to
abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”32 It seemed that in this case the
list of state sponsors of terrorism was used for political expediency unre-
lated to a government’s support of nonstate terrorism.
States that sponsor international terrorism over longer periods of
time share several characteristics: repressive governments, ambitious
political and/or religious goals that transcend their own borders, and a

Table 9.2  Needs of Terrorists and Motives of State Sponsors

What Terrorists Why States Sponsor State Sponsors

Need Terrorism Listed by the U.S.
Government in 2018

Bases of operation Shared goals and grievances Iran

Training facilities Same enemy(ies) Sudan
Financial support Want terrorists to carry out Syria
Weapons violent acts North Korea
Intelligence/ Ability to deny involvement
logistic support in terrorism
Opportunities for Avoidance of
recruitment counterterrorist strikes
Safe havens Divert domestic radicals’
frustrations to outside
target(s)
Source: Author
 Organizational Structures and Financing  221
tendency to blame an outside enemy (or enemies) for their own domestic
or regional problems. Governments and terrorists cooperate when both
sides determine that they benefit from such a relationship (see Table 9.2).
Typically, state sponsors provide support in the form of training camps,
safe havens, financial resources, logistical expertise, weapons, and so on.
In return, terrorist groups carry out terror strikes against targets that
sponsor states cannot attack without risking retaliation. For more than
two decades, Iran has systematically and generously provided organiza-
tions abroad with all kinds of support that terrorists need.

The Case of Saudi Arabia

Martha Crenshaw wrote, shortly after the attacks of 9/11, that for thirty
years most acts of international terrorism against the United States were
committed “because of United States support for unpopular local govern-
ments or regional enemies.”33 Add to this the fact that oppressive regimes
in the region were not unhappy when their most militant critics directed
their fury and terror against others, namely the United States and Israel.
Indeed, for the sake of protecting their own back, these regimes chan-
neled the hatred of these groups to outside targets. To that end, some
of the regimes also provided financial support to terrorists or allowed
individuals and organizations within their countries to do so as long as
the militants did not strike inside their borders.
While other countries in the region, especially those on the oil-rich
Arabian Peninsula, supported and/or tolerated terrorism that targeted
Israel, Saudi Arabia’s role in financing a global network of terrorist breed-
ing grounds was unique. According to a staff report for the National
Commission on Terrorism Attacks Upon the United States,

Saudi Arabia is a key part of our international efforts to fight terror-

ist financing. The intelligence community identified it as the primary
source of money for al Qaeda both before and after the September
11 attacks. Fund-raisers and facilitators throughout Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf raised money for al Qaeda from witting and unwitting
donors and divert funds from Islamic charities and mosques. The
Commission staff found no evidence that the Saudi government as an
institution or as individual senior officials knowingly support or sup-
ported al Qaeda; however, a lack of awareness of the problem and a
failure to conduct oversight over institutions created an environment
in which such activity has flourished.34

But whether the Saudi government, some of the princes of the House of
Saud, or their wives transferred funds directly to Al Qaeda or related
cells and individuals was of less concern than the well-known practice
of Saudi Arabia’s rulers of indirectly facilitating preachers of hate and
222 Terrorism
terror abroad. Loretta Napoleoni describes an extensive “mosque net-
work,” sponsored by Saudi Arabian funds, as “the ideological partner
of the terror financial network; it complements it and is as complex and
comprehensive a web as its monetary counterpart.”35
This global mosque network is the result of a symbiotic relationship
between the guardians of Wahhabism, the most fundamentalist version of
Islam, and the ruling House of Saud. In return for the religious leadership’s
support of Saudi Arabia’s rulers, the government has traditionally sup-
ported the strict implementation of Wahhabi teaching and Wahhabism’s
missionary zeal. Because Muslims are required to make charitable dona-
tions (known as zakat), a great deal of money flows into the coffers of
charitable organizations in the oil-rich countries around the Persian Gulf.
For many years, most of the generous giving by wealthy Saudis went to
“government-linked charities with the dual mission of doing good works
and propagating the country’s strict Wahabbi Islam.”36 In order to divert
growing opposition to their own regime, the Saudi rulers encouraged the
Wahhabi colonization drive “as a release valve for the most extreme reli-
gious strains inside Saudi Arabia.”37 This was especially the case after the
end of the first Persian Gulf War. According to Dan Murphy,

In the 1990s, many of the kingdom’s most militant and committed

preachers and young men were sent overseas to work and preach.
They were given tacit approval for militant activities abroad so long
as the same methods were not brought to bear against the monar-
chy, which men like Osama bin Laden consider to be corrupt and
illegitimate.38

By establishing mosques, financed by Saudi charities, Wahhabi mullahs

found first of all fertile ground in those parts of the world where Muslims
had not enjoyed religious freedom for a long time, namely in several of
the newly independent former Soviet republics. Mosques and religious
schools were also established in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and
elsewhere in the developing world. While aggressive in those regions, the
approach was more discreet in the West. But the result was the same, as
Napoleoni observed:

In the West, the Mosque Network’s main operations have been

recruiting and fundraising. So successful have they been in perform-
ing these tasks that several mosques have now become hotbeds of
potential terror fighters, who have been fed an explosive mixture of
religion and political ideology.39

Contrary to the Saudi rulers’ intention to export the domestic discontent,

Osama bin Laden and his followers did not lose sight of their number-
one target. Beginning in 2003 and intensifying in 2004, Al Qaeda cells
 Organizational Structures and Financing  223
mounted a deadly terrorist offensive inside Saudi Arabia. Starting in
May 2003 with the truck bombing of a Riyadh housing compound for
Westerners that killed thirty-five persons and injured more than 200,
there was a multitude of bold attacks on foreigners, including one on
the U.S. consulate in Jeddah in late 2004, as well as kidnappings and
executions. The immediate victims of these acts of terrorism were mostly
Americans and other foreigners, but the House of Saud was a target as
well. Bin Laden and his followers wanted to drive foreigners, including
those working in the oil industry and U.S. military personnel, out of the
country and thereby weaken Saudi Arabia’s economy and defense. The
offensive was at least partially successful in that some foreign companies
reduced their presence in Saudi Arabia. More recently, ISIS has attacked
the kingdom relentlessly and made great efforts to expand its influence in
the country with the goal of removing the House of Saud.
Even as the Saudi government officially fought terrorist elements
within and without, wealthy individuals and groups in the country still
made sizeable donations to terrorist groups in the region.

Failed and Failing States and “Brown Areas”

The typical state sponsor of terrorism displays a strong central govern-
ment firmly in control of its territory, but weak states present problems
with respect to terrorism as well. In the absence of a strong central gov-
ernment, terrorists have free reign in the territory of these countries, or
parts thereof. Colombia is a good example in that the central govern-
ment manages to exert its authority over some parts of the country but
not in others. As a result, a number of domestic terrorist and paramili-
tary groups control chunks of the country and, at times, fight each other
for what they perceive as valuable pieces of real estate—especially those
where farmers grow coca plants, the prime ingredient in cocaine. Yemen
is an example of a failed state in which effective governmental authority
has not been exercised for a long time, leaving room for Al Qaeda and
more recently ISIS groups.
And then there are states with functioning central governments that
nevertheless contain geographical areas in which the government cannot
or does not try to exert its authority and control. The territory of the
Philippines, for example, contains what have been defined as “brown
areas”—geographical enclaves where the government has no or little
control. As a result, terrorist groups like the Abu Sayyaf group, an Al
Qaeda affiliate, operate in the southern Philippines in spite of repeated
efforts by government troops to destroy the terror organization once and
for all.
From the American perspective, one of the most explosive “brown
areas” is the so-called tri-border area (TBA), where Argentina, Brazil,
and Paraguay meet. According to Benedetta Berti,
224 Terrorism
The Triple Frontera is one of the most important commercial centers
of South America, with approximately 20 thousand people transiting
on a daily basis from the neighboring states to the free-trade area of
Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. The intense volume of people and goods
entering the TBA, together with its porous borders, are two impor-
tant factors that originally attracted criminal and armed groups to
this area. Additionally, the relative ease with which money is locally
laundered and transferred to and from regions overseas constitutes a
very powerful incentive to maintain a base of operations in the TBA.40

No wonder that terrorist organizations with very different agendas and

ideologies have found a haven to exchange operational expertise and
financial resources. Hezbollah in particular has for decades had a strong
presence here. Al Qaeda leaders obviously recognized the opportunities
offered by the triple frontier region because a map of the area was found
in an Al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan. While there is no conclu-
sive evidence that Al Qaeda Central was ever active in the TBA, jihadis
have reportedly established training facilities in this brown area and are
using the region as a launching pad to recruit all over Latin America.
According to terrorism expert Walter Purdy, this “region is one of the
world’s emerging threat areas that terrorists could use to stage attacks.”41
Had the Assad regime in Syria controlled all of the country, ISIS, al-
Nusra, and other jihadist groups would not have been able to move in,
conquer, and occupy chunks of territory from which to launch attacks
against the central government and in the case of ISIS against neighbor-
ing Iraq. When Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya, his regime oppressed all
dissidents whether violent or nonviolent. However, after his demise the
struggle for power among a multitude of factions allowed organized ter-
rorist groups, most of all ISIS, to establish affiliates in the country.

Involuntary Host Countries

When governments invite or allow terrorists to operate, train, or hide
within their borders, their countries are what one may call “voluntary
hosts” of terrorist organizations and/or individual members. Sudan
allowed bin Laden and a group of fellow Al Qaeda operators to live in
the country. Under Gaddafi, Libya was a safe haven for various terrorists
as were Cuba and other countries.
Ironically, there are far more nation-states that have become invol-
untary hosts of either domestic or international terrorists than there are
state sponsors or voluntary hosts. As discussed earlier, because failing or
failed states are unable to defeat terrorists, they often become involuntary
hosts of terrorist groups. But liberal democracies are just as vulnerable to
becoming involuntary host countries and hideouts for terrorists—albeit
for very different reasons.
 Organizational Structures and Financing  225
Democratic countries and their peoples provide an environment con-
ducive to breeding their own terrorism and attract terrorists from abroad
because of their commitment to freedom and civil liberties. Political
and religious tolerance, open borders, freedom of movement, increased
diversity of the populace because of immigration, and political asylum
opportunities are among the reasons why terrorists seek out democratic
states. Terrorists know that it is much easier to operate in free societies
than under repressive regimes—unless they are allied with those regimes.
If there was any question about the abundance of terrorist cells in demo-
cratic states that do not share the characteristics of failing and failed
states, the post-9/11 years removed such doubts. After all, investigations
uncovered that Al Qaeda operatives and like-minded cells existed and
operated in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as well as in other
democracies in Europe and elsewhere. As terrorist attacks in Europe,
North America, and Australia demonstrated in the second decade of the
twenty-first century, ISIS adherents plotted strikes in their homelands.

Financing Terrorism
After 9/11, U.S. President George W. Bush and his secretary of state, Colin
Powell, stated that money is the oxygen or lifeblood of terrorism and that
the administration was therefore intensifying efforts to dry up terror-
ist organizations’ financial resources. To follow the money trail is a solid
counterterrorist tactic in that the flow of money can help to identify donors,
middlepersons, and even recipient cells and their members, but there is no
evidence that lack of money puts terrorist groups out of business. For sure,
in order to support themselves, operate training facilities, acquire weapons,
and travel, professional terrorists need substantial (and amateur terrorists
need some) financial resources. And there are known cases in which terror-
ists had to scale down their plans because they lacked the necessary funds.
Nimrod Raphaeli cites the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 as
one such incident in that “due to the lack of funds, the terrorists were
unable to build as large a bomb as they had intended.”42 But by and large,
terrorists have been very resourceful in financing their violence.
For a long time, Western observers assumed that Osama bin Laden’s
inherited fortune allowed him to support the terrorist operations in
Afghanistan and around the world. But the National Commission on
Terrorism Attacks Upon the United States found that bin Laden’s per-
sonal wealth was far more modest than was widely assumed. According
to the commission,

Bin Laden never received a $300 million inheritance. From about

1970 until approximately 1994, he received about $1 million per
year—a significant sum, but hardly a $300 million fortune that could
be used to finance a global jihad.43
226 Terrorism
The truth is probably somewhere in between the “huge fortune” and
hard-pressed-for-money versions. If there was ever any shortage of
money, Peter Bergen points out that “lack of money was no impediment
to al Qaeda’s almost simultaneous bombings of the American embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania on 7 August 1998.”44 When governments deprive
terrorists of their financial resources, they hope to prevent further acts of
terror. But terror organizations have proven resourceful in finding new
sources to finance their operations. After the U.S. government announced
that it would aggressively go after terrorist funds, bin Laden declared
such measures ineffective. “By the grace of Allah,” he said, “Al-Qaeda
has more than three different alternative financial networks.”45
Martin S. Navias has identified three sources of funding that are
unique to terrorist organizations and difficult to cut off.46 But there is
at least one additional (and not at all unique) way to finance terrorism.
These are the four most common funding sources:

•• State sponsors provide financial support. Such support can be indirect

in that the sponsor government provides living quarters, training camps,
weapons, and so on free of charge; and it can be direct in that the terror-
ist group receives cash payments or can draw from legally established
and funded bank accounts. There are many examples of this kind of
support, for example Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah, Libya’s past
sponsorship of secular Palestinian groups, Saudi Arabia’s monetary sup-
port of charitable front organizations for terrorists, or Saddam Hussein’s
generous payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Apart
from confiscating funds in banks within their borders and putting pres-
sure on state supporters, governments that are the targets of sponsored
terrorist groups have difficulties in stopping this sort of support.
•• Private organizations/individuals provide donations. The stronger
the sentiments in favor of a terrorist group’s motives and goals, the
greater is the likelihood of organizations collecting a large number
of small donations for, and wealthy individuals donating significant
sums to, terrorist groups. As Navias points out, “Significantly, such
funds may be generated in terrorist host states or in states that are
the target of the terrorist group’s activities or are at least hostile to
them.”47 This financing scheme is particularly crafty when the recipi-
ents of donations are involved not only in terrorism but in social
services and legitimate political activities as well. The Palestinian
Hamas, for example, provides educational opportunities, health
care, and other social services while its military branch commits acts
of terrorism. The Lebanese Hezbollah has carried out terrorist acts
while participating in the legitimate political process.
•• Terrorists use their own legitimate businesses to fund violent acts. This
is by far the least likely way to finance terrorism, and the most obvi-
ous example is Al Qaeda. The organization was originally funded by
Osama bin Laden’s inheritance and by the profits of the commercial
 Organizational Structures and Financing  227
enterprises he established in the Sudan.48 Of course, many hate
groups that overtly or covertly encourage political violence rake in
profits by selling books, T-shirts, posters, CDs, and other items—
most often via their online stores.
•• Terrorists get involved in criminal activities to finance their opera-
tions. The first three funding sources are significant, but many, if not
most, terrorist groups are also involved in criminal activities in order
to finance their operations. Typically, past and contemporary terror-
ists have committed bank robberies, pulled off kidnappings to extort
ransom money, and engaged in profitable drug trafficking. Smuggling
drugs has been a particularly popular source of funding for terror-
ist groups in the Middle East, in South Asia, in Southeast Asia, and
in Latin America. Focusing particularly on terrorism financing in
Southeast Asia, Aurel Croissant and Daniel Barlow concluded,
Stripping away ideological goals, most terrorist organizations in
the region have a strong tradition utilizing the same techniques as
organized crime. Southeast Asia has long been a center for laun-
dering and generating illegitimate funds from criminal activities
such as illicit drug production and the small arms trade; decade
old insurgent groups, ethnic armies, and organized crime have
long used the region to acquire and channel funds to accomplish
their purposes.49

When part of a loosely linked terrorist network, groups may transfer

money to affiliates via front firms or charities. In the case of Al Qaeda
and local affiliates, for example,

Funds flow into and out of Southeast Asia to support both Al Qaeda
and local organizations. Once transnational terrorist organizations
have generated funds from local activities or received funds from
foreign sponsors, the money is distributed to allied front organiza-
tions or individuals.50

South America’s TBA where the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and

Paraguay converge is also notorious as a source of terrorism financing.
A significant part of the money that is raised by terrorist groups here or
transferred to them by their supporters stems from criminal activities,
such as drug trafficking and counterfeiting of goods. Affiliates and sup-
porters of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda along with Latin American
groups raise a great deal of money here through criminal activities.
Tracing these funds is difficult because “money transfers in this area is
done through informal value transfer systems, such as the hawala sys-
tem” or, in other words, outside conventional banks.51
To get their hands on money, terrorists use different illegal methods in
different parts of the world. In the West, for example, they are likely to
228 Terrorism
commit credit card fraud, sell forged passports, violate intellectual prop-
erty rights, and smuggle persons illegally into countries.52 But although
essential for the operation of terror organizations and their violent
activities, the lack of financial resources is unlikely to reduce terrorism
significantly—if at all.

The Ten Richest Terrorist Groups

In early 2018, Forbes published a list of the richest terrorist
groups around the globe and provided details about their finan-
cial resources.53 It was hardly surprising that ISIS, once the best
financed terrorist entity, was not on top of the list, but it was star-
tling that the so-called Islamic State was still listed in fifth place
and one spot behind Al Qaeda. However, according to Forbes the
group’s annual income plunged from about $2–3 billion in 2014 to
about $200 million in 2017. The Lebanese Hezbollah with strong
financial support from Iran, substantial donations from wealthy
individuals abroad, and a highly lucrative drug trafficking net with
the strongest links in Latin America, Africa, and Asia was with an
annual income of $1.1 billion the richest terrorist organization fol-
lowed by the Taliban ($800 million), Hamas ($700 million), and Al
Qaeda ($300 million).
Of the ten richest terrorist organizations, at least five (Hezbollah,
the Taliban, Al Qaeda and affiliates, the PKK, and the Real
IRA) are involved in trafficking heroin and cocaine and/or illicit
tobacco and cigarettes. But no other organization has a global
reach in drug smuggling and other illicit activities like Hezbollah.
According to Forbes, Hezbollah has a “worldwide crime opera-
tion [that] extends from South America, through Africa, Europe,
the Far East, Australia and the Middle East.” Its cells are primar-
ily involved in trading heroin and cocaine but they also facilitate
money laundering, weapons trade, and forgeries. Furthermore,
four of the richest groups (Hezbollah, Hamas, Kata’ib Hizballah
in Iraq, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) received substantial finan-
cial support from Iran.
More recently, many terrorist groups began to take advantage
of cryptocurrencies starting with their early interest in Bitcoin, the
first virtual currency. By utilizing cryptocurrencies and encryption
on the dark web, terrorists have profited handsomely by selling
counterfeit merchandise from video games to pricy tickets to celeb-
rity concerts. It is here where the boundaries between terrorism and
crime disappear.
 Organizational Structures and Financing  229
Narco-Terrorism or Narco-Funded Terrorism?
Although drug smuggling is a major source of income for many ter-
rorist organizations, it is far more precise to speak of narco-funded
terrorism than to use the more common term narco-terrorism, which
blurs the differences between groups involved in political violence and
those engaged in crime. For this very reason, Abraham H. Miller and
Nicholas A. Damask rejected the “narco-terrorism” characterization as
a “myth” exploited since the 1980s by policy-makers interested in link-
ing drug traffickers and terrorists. While not denying that cooperative
ties between terrorist organizations and drug cartels exist, Miller and
Damask mentioned the turf battles and often deadly clashes between the
two sets of groups. They use the Latin American example to pinpoint
the fundamental differences between the goals of terrorist organizations
and those of drug cartels:

Left-wing insurgents seek to create economic structures where the

government controls economic enterprises. Drug traffickers desire gov-
ernments where intervention in the economy is at a minimum, where
ideology is of minimal concern, and where bribery is easily accepted.
What brings traffickers and insurgents together are not common
goals but a common enemy—the government.
The narco-terrorism idea is, consequently, based on simplistic ste-
reotypes which emphasize the few similarities between terrorists and
traffickers and ignore the many differences.54

A case in point is Colombia where the FARC and the smaller M19
(Movement 19 April) struggled for years with financial difficulties that
weakened their recruitment and operational abilities. This changed in
the early 1980s, when the left-wing revolutionary terrorists and the drug
cartel found common ground: In exchange for protecting the members
of the cartel from the military, the FARC was allowed to levy “a 10 per
cent protection tax on all coca growers in areas under its control.”55 Both
sides profited greatly from the deal because their alliance led to a vast
expansion of the narco-business. Nevertheless, the fundamental differ-
ence between the drug mafia and its terrorist partners remained, in that
for the former the lucrative criminal activity was the ultimate objective,
whereas for the FARC and M19 involvement in and financial riches from
the drug business was a means to their political ends, namely to further
and one day realize their ideological agendas.

Notes
1 John Horgan and Max Taylor, “The Provisional Irish Republican Army:
Command and Functional Structure,” Terrorism and Political Violence 9:3
(Autumn 1997): 3.
230 Terrorism
2 Magnus Ranstorp, “Hizbollah’s Command Leadership: Its Structure, Decision
Making and Relationship with Iranian Clergy and Institutions,” Terrorism
and Political Violence 6:3 (Autumn 1994): 304.
3 Louis Beam, “Leaderless Resistance,” Seditionist 12 (February 1992). The
pamphlet is available on several websites.
4 Ibid.
5 Jessica Stern, “The Protean Enemy,” Foreign Affairs (July–August 2003): 28.
6 Ibid., 34.
7 Ibid., 34, 35.
8 See, for example, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar:
Analytical Background,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22:3 (July–
September 1999): 193–206.
9 Ibid., 193.
10 Michele Zanini, “Middle Eastern Terrorism and Netwar,” Studies in Conflict
and Terrorism 22:3 (July–September 1999): 247.
11 Michael Whine, “Cyberspace—A New Medium for Communication,
Command, and Control by Extremists,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism
22:3 (July–September 1999): 232.
12 Zanini, 250.
13 Constant Brand, “Suspect Convicted in Belgian Terror Trial,” Associated
Press, September 30, 2003 (retrieved from Yahoo! News on October 1, 2003).
14 Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 197.
15 This organizational structure was described in the National Commission on
Terrorism Attacks Upon the United States, “Overview of the Enemy,” Staff
Statement no. 15, 2–3.
16 For more on this, see Rohan Gunaratna, “Al-Qaeda’s Operational Ties with
Allied Groups,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, February 1, 2003.
17 Ibid.
18 “Overview of the Enemy,” 12.
19 Ibid., 11.
20 The Combating Terrorism Center, “Al-Qa’ida’s Five Aspects of Power,” CTC
Sentinel 2:1 (January 2009): 4.
21 Ibid.
22 Comey made the remark during an appearance at the Aspen Institute, www.
[Link]/about/blog/fbi-director-isil-not-your-parents-al-qaeda,
accessed July 24, 2015.
23 Christoph Reuter, “The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of
the Islamic State,” Der Spiegel, April 18, 2015, [Link]/international/
world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.
html, accessed June 30, 2015.
24 Ibid.
25 Comey at the Aspen Institute.
26 For a detailed analysis of the first stack of ISIS files, see Rukmini Callimachi,
“The ISIS Files,” New York Times, April 4, 2018, [Link]/interactive/
2018/04/04/world/middleeast/[Link], accessed May
22, 2018.
27 See Audrey Kurth Cronin, “How al-Qaida Ends,” International Security 31:1
(Summer 2006): 17–18. The author lists a total of seven factors and points out
that in some cases several of those events or conditions figure in the decline or
end of terrorist groups.
28 According to Marc Sageman, who compiled a biographical database of the
Al Qaeda network’s operatives. See Terence Henry, “Al-Qaeda’s Resurgence,”
Atlantic Monthly, June 2004, 54.
29 Ibid.
 Organizational Structures and Financing  231
30 U.S. Department of State, “Country Reports on Terrorism,” April 2008, www.
[Link]/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/[Link], accessed January 13, 2009.
31 Ibid.
32 Michael D. Shear and David E. Sanger, “Trump Returns North Korea to List
of State Sponsors of Terrorism,” New York Times, November 20, 2017, www.
[Link]/2017/11/20/us/politics/[Link], accessed
May 24, 2018.
33 Martha Crenshaw, “Why America? The Globalization of Civil War,” Current
History (December 2001): 425.
34 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, “Staff
Monographs,” [Link]
accessed July 20, 2015.
35 Loretta Napoleoni, Modern Jihad: Tracing Dollars behind the Terror
Networks (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 128.
36 Dan Murphy, “Saudi Crackdown on Charities Seen as Incomplete,” Christian
Science Monitor, June 9, 2004, [Link]/2004/0609/p07p02-
[Link], accessed January 31, 2004.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Napoleoni, 131.
40 Benedetta Berti, “Reassessing the Transnational Terrorism–Criminal Link in
South America’s Tri-Border-Area,” Terrorism Monitor 6:18 (September 22,
2008).
41 Mentioned in A. Brownfeld, “Terrorists in the Triple Frontier,” Jane’s Terrorism
and Security Monitor, February 12, 2003.
42 Nimrod Raphaeli, “Financing of Terrorism: Sources, Methods, and Channels,”
Terrorism and Political Violence 15:4 (Winter 2003): 60.
43 “Overview of the Enemy,” 4.
44 Peter Bergen, “The Bin Laden Trial: What Did We Learn?” Studies in Conflict
and Terrorism 24:6 (November–December 2001): 430.
45 Bin Laden is cited by Raphaeli, 61.
46 Martin S. Navias, “Finance Warfare as a Response to International Terrorism,”
in Lawrence Freedman, ed., Superterrorism: Policy Responses (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 68, 69.
47 Ibid., 68.
48 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999),
ch. 9.
49 Aurel Croissant and Daniel Barlow, “Following the Money Trail: Terrorist
Financing and Government Responses in Southeast Asia,” Studies in Conflict
& Terrorism 30 (February 2007): 135.
50 Ibid.
51 Berti. For more on the TBA’s importance as a source for terrorist financing,
see Matthew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of
Jihad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 71–72.
52 Raphaeli, 61.
53 Itai Zehorai, “The Richest Terror Organizations in the World,” Forbes
International, January 24, 2018, [Link]/sites/forbesinternational/
2018/01/24/the-richest-terror-organizations-in-the-world/#4340cf927fd1,
accessed December 1, 2018.
54 Abraham H. Miller and Nicholas A. Damask, “The Dual Myths of ‘Narco-
Terrorism’: How Myths Drive Policy,” Terrorism and Political Violence 8:1
(Spring 1996): 124.
55 Napoleoni, 40.
Part II

Counterterrorism
10 Terrorism and America’s
Post-9/11 National Security
Strategy

On September 11, 2001, at 8:30 p.m. EDT, a grave President George

W. Bush addressed a shocked nation from the Oval Office. At first, he
called that day’s devastating attacks on American soil by transnational
terrorists “acts of mass murder.” But toward the end of his short speech,
he declared, “America and our friends and allies join with all those who
want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the
war against terrorism.”1 Contrary to the reference to crime at the outset,
the war analogy was not meant as a rhetorical exclamation mark. Not
law enforcement, but the use of military force became the centerpiece of
Washington’s post-9/11 response to transnational terrorism and threats
that the administration linked to this kind of political violence. Simon
Dalby observed that after 9/11 there was “the immediate assumption
that the struggle against terror was a matter best prosecuted as a matter
of warfare rather than by diplomacy and police action.”2
Although the most deadly strikes in the history of modern terrorism,
the destruction of the World Trade Center and the partial demolition of
the Pentagon, symbols of America’s economic might and military supe-
riority, were not the first anti-American operations masterminded by
Osama bin Laden and carried out by Al Qaeda or like-minded groups or
cells. But the first World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the truck bomb-
ings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the strike against
the USS Cole in 2000, and violence against Americans in Saudi Arabia
and elsewhere did not register as manifestations of a major national secu-
rity threat. Instead, as Ian Lesser concluded in 1999 and thus before 9/11,
“most contemporary analyses of terrorism focus on terrorist political
violence as a stand-alone phenomenon, without reference to its geopoliti-
cal and strategic context.”3 This was hardly surprising because the realist
conceptualization of geopolitics with its focus on the nation-state and the
assumption that every state tries to maximize its national interest was the
guidepost of American security and foreign policy. In this understand-
ing, threats in the international context emanate from states—especially,
from powerful states. Threats from nonstate actors do not fit the realist
paradigm. As a result, international relations scholars ignored terrorism
as well. Martha Crenshaw observed,
236 Counterterrorism
[Before 9/11] the security studies and international relations fields were
not especially hospitable to scholars interested in terrorism precisely
because it was not considered an important problem for the discipline
or for the development of grand strategy. As an intellectual approach,
it did not lend itself to abstract theory or modeling. The study of ter-
rorism was too policy-oriented to be of serious academic significance.4

When experts warned of terrorism as a serious threat to America’s

national security and suggested that it needed to be integrated into the
national security strategy, they almost always thought of nightmare sce-
narios: Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of terrorists.
Identifying the preoccupation with body counts as the root of a limited
perception of the transnational terrorist threat, Paul Pillar concluded,

The underlying paradigm—that terrorism is to be measured in

the numbers of dead Americans, and that counterterrorism is thus
largely a matter of preparing for attacks (particularly CBRN attacks)
that could cause many such deaths—is shared by people with widely
different appraisals of the terrorist threat and of the priority and
resources that should be devoted to countering it.5

While the bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century

highlighted the danger of WMD in the hands of terrorists, it also pressed
for a national security strategy and policies that included threats from
nonstate actors. In its “Phase I Report on the Emerging Global Security
Environment for the First Quarter of the 21st Century” that was released
in September 1999, the commission made the following, utterly alarming
and—as 9/11 would show—prophetic assessment:

While conventional conflicts will still be possible, the most serious

threat to our security may consist of unannounced attacks on American
cities by sub-national groups using genetically engineered pathogens.
Another may be a well-planned cyber-attack on the air traffic control
system on the East Coast of the United States, as some 200 commercial
aircraft are trying to land safely in a morning’s rain and fog.6

The commission concluded that

Taken together, the evidence suggests that threats to American secu-

rity will be more diffuse, harder to anticipate, and more difficult to
neutralize than ever before. Deterrence will not work as it once did;
in many cases it may not work at all.7

Although the cochairs of the panel, former Senators Gary Hart, a Democrat,
and Warren Rudman, a Republican, as well as former U.S. Representative
Newt Gingrich, a commission member, testified before several congressional
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  237
committees, their alarming predictions received “scant attention” as the
Financial Times noted—belatedly—one day after 9/11.8 Because almost
all news organizations ignored the report completely, the public was not
informed about the commission’s dire conclusions.
The National Commission on Terrorism did not fare better when
it released its report three months before the kamikaze attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The political class and the news
media were simply not interested. In their executive summary, the com-
missioners warned of dangerous groups operating inside the United
States and abroad and that their objectives were more deadly than those
of previously active terrorists.9 The Omaha World-Herald, one of the
few news organizations that took notice of the report, editorialized that
the commission “envisioned a level of evil more pervasive than common
sense and experience suggest actually exists.”10 All of this changed on
September 11, 2001. Since then, as one observer noted, “American con-
cern for national security has been almost totally focused on, some might
argue transfixed by, the problem of international terrorism and its likely
reoccurrence on American soil.”11 And Crenshaw stated,

The attacks of September 11 propelled terrorism from obscurity to

prominence in the wider field of international relations and foreign
and security policy. It now took center stage in the grand strat-
egy debate. Scholars who had previously ignored terrorism now
acknowledged it was a major national security concern; in fact, some
saw the threat of terrorism as an occasion for a complete reorienta-
tion of post–cold war foreign policy.12

President Bush and his closest advisors did not wait for the foreign pol-
icy establishment and international relations scholars to fit what was
widely perceived as a novel type of catastrophic terrorism into a post-
9/11 national security strategy and the nation’s foreign policy priorities.
Instead, the president’s remarks on September 11, 2001, and his subse-
quent speeches signaled the end of piecemeal, case-by-case responses to
terrorist incidents and the beginning of a newly emerging national secu-
rity strategy built around the so-called war against terrorism, or what
the administration eventually came to call “global war on terrorism”
and still later “the long war.” This war was to be fought against terrorist
organizations, groups, cells, and individuals but also—and indeed most
of all—against state sponsors of terrorism. The goal was not simply to
defeat the perpetrators of terrorism and their state supporters but at the
same time to replace authoritarian and repressive regimes by democratic
ones and thereby rid the world of terrorism or at least reduce this threat.
Seven days after 9/11, the U.S. Congress authorized President Bush

to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organ-
izations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed,
238 Counterterrorism
or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,
or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any
future acts of international terrorism against the United States by
such nations, organizations or persons.13

Two days later, in his live televised address to a joint session of Congress
and the American people, the president equated conventional warfare
and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon when
he said,

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war

against our country. Americans have known wars—but for the past
136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday
in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war—but not at the
center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known
surprise attacks—but never before on thousands of civilians. All of
this was brought upon us in a single day—and night fell on a differ-
ent world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.14

It is noteworthy that both the congressional war authorization and the

presidential address mentioned not only terrorist organizations and indi-
viduals but also “nations” as targets for military action in the nation’s
new war against terrorism. “Every nation, in every region, now has a
decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,”
the president said. “From this day forward, any nation that continues to
harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a
hostile regime.”15 Although the 9/11 attacks were masterminded by Al
Qaeda’s leadership and carried out by nineteen of its followers, decision-
makers clung to the state-centric assessments and response options of the
past that were better suited for fighting against nation-states rather than
nonstate actors like Al Qaeda and the terrorist organization’s affiliates.
Neoconservative ideologues inside and outside the Bush administra-
tion recognized immediately that the war against terrorism offered an
ideal pretext to further their agenda, which listed the toppling of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein as a priority. In the earliest months of the
Bush presidency, the neocons had gained considerable influence in the
White House and the Department of Defense. As deputy secretary of
defense, Paul Wolfowitz in particular had pushed relentlessly for the
removal of Iraq’s president and the Baathist regime. According to Bob
Woodward’s account,

Wolfowitz had edgy, hawkish views. The reasons for getting

rid of Saddam were: It was necessary and it would be relatively
easy. Wolfowitz believed it was possible to send in the military to
overrun and seize Iraq’s southern oil fields—1,000 wells, which
had about two-thirds of Iraq’s oil production—and establish a
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  239
foothold . . . From the enclave, support would be given to the anti-
Saddam opposition, which would rally the rest of the country and
overthrow the dictator.16

Wolfowitz advocated an immediate attack against Iraq. He

Argued that if there were even a 10 percent chance that Saddam

Hussein had been behind the 9/11 attacks, maximum priority should
be placed on eliminating that threat. He also argued that the odds in
fact were far greater than one in ten.17

Wolfowitz and his boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, failed

to convince the president and other national security advisors to go to
war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq or simultaneously against Al Qaeda
and the Taliban in Afghanistan, but at the direction of the president the
Pentagon continued to plan for the invasion of Iraq. Just a few days after
9/11, “Bush told [Secretary of State] Rice that the first target of the war
on terrorism was going to be Afghanistan. ‘We won’t do Iraq now,’ the
president said, ‘we’re putting Iraq off. But eventually we’ll have to return
to that question.’”18
The neocons were instrumental in shaping the Bush Doctrine and its
codification in the 2002 “National Security Strategy of the United States
of America,” but their core ideas had been developed and expressed since
the end of the Cold War.19 In an assessment of the post-9/11 national
security strategy, Simon Dalby wrote,

Little of this geopolitical thinking is very new, although some innova-

tions were obviously needed in a hurry in September 2001 given the
novelty of Osama Bin Laden’s tactics. The key themes of American
supremacy, the willingness to maintain overwhelming military
supremacy over potential rivals and the proffered option of preventive
war to stop potential threats from even emerging, were all sketched
out in the first Bush presidency at the end of the cold war in the
period following the war with Iraq in 1991 when Dick Cheney was
Defense Secretary and Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz were at the
heart of Washington’s defense bureaucracy. The related key assump-
tion that America has the right to assert its power to reshape the rest
of the world to its liking also carries over from the early 1990s.20

The neocons’ American exceptionalism trumped the tenets of realists and

liberal internationalists so that the “neoconservative vision of American
foreign policy provided the theoretical and policy content of the Bush
doctrine which in turn underpinned the justification to invade Iraq in
2003 and depose the leadership of Saddam Hussein.”21 One expert noted
that “9-11 gave the neo-cons the pretext on which to make their strat-
egy of military primacy the operational code for the American state.”22
240 Counterterrorism
While a U.S.-led military coalition drove Al Qaeda and the Taliban out
of Afghanistan and into Pakistan, administration officials were already
planning the Iraq invasion and preparing the nation for the next front
in the war against terrorism. The news media not only reported but in
fact embraced the administration’s arguments in favor of both military
moves. Based on his content analysis of editorials and op-ed articles
in elite newspapers, one scholar concluded that the Bush administra-
tion gained support for both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars “by linking
security and moral indignation.”23 Presumably, the American public’s
strong support for both wars was influenced by media opinion-makers
who bought into the administration’s post-9/11 foreign policy and its
“heavy dose of moralist opinion that condemned evil enemies and touted
American virtues.”24

President Bush’s National Security Strategy

George W. Bush’s State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, his
graduation speech at West Point four months later, additional statements
by the president and other high administration officials, and the 2002
“National Security Strategy” contained the basic elements of America’s
new national security strategy, or what has been called the Bush Doctrine.
As far as national security strategy and foreign policy were concerned,
nothing changed in the following years. The principles enunciated in the
2002 document were also the most important components of the 2006
“National Security Strategy of the United States of America.”25 After
studying the 2006 document, one foreign policy expert concluded that
“one would be hard pressed to find much evidence that the president has
backed away from what has become known as the Bush doctrine.”26 The
following sections summarize the three most important components of
the Bush Doctrine that relate to terrorism and counterterrorism accord-
ing to the national security strategy.

I. Making the World Safer and Better

According to the preamble of the 2002 “National Security Strategy”
that the president signed, “The great struggles of the twentieth century
between liberty and totalitarianism ended with the decisive victory for the
forces of freedom—and the single sustainable model for national success:
freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.”27 The United States will use
its military, political, and economic might in the service of international
peace and the spread of freedom, democracy, and economic progress;
9/11 is seen as a wake-up call and an opportunity to reshape the world in
the American image. For this reason, the overriding premise and ration-
ale of the Bush Doctrine were articulated in distinctly upbeat passages, as
the following excerpt attests:
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  241
The United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the
benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring
the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to
every corner of the world. The events of September 11, 2001, taught
us that weak states like Afghanistan can pose as great a danger to our
national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor peo-
ple into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and
corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks
and drug cartels within their borders.28

The Bush administration stated explicitly that “the aim of this strategy is to
help make the world not just safer but better.”29 It was left to others to specu-
late how the president’s faith as a born-again Christian figured into his post-
9/11 foreign policy mission. One international relations expert wrote that

There is reason to believe that just as his [George W. Bush’s] coming

to Christ gave meaning to his previously aimless and dissolute per-
sonal life, so the war on terrorism has become, not only the defining
characteristic of his foreign policy, but also his sacred mission.30

II. Preemption before Threats Become Imminent

According to the Bush Doctrine, the United States and other democra-
cies were seriously threatened by terrorist organizations and rogue states
that sponsor political violence and could supply terrorists with WMD.
Acknowledging the dangers of asymmetrical warfare, the president said at
West Point, “Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial
capabilities to endanger the American people and our nation. The attacks of
September the 11th required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of
a few dozen evil and deluded men.”31 In the new geopolitical setting, deter-
rence along the lines of the Cold War’s mutual assured destruction (MAD)
assumptions was thought to be obsolete and in need of being replaced by
military preemption, if necessary. In President Bush’s words:

For much of the last century, America’s defense relied on the Cold
War doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those
strategies still apply. But new threats also require new thinking.
Deterrence—the promise of massive retaliation against nations—
means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation
or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced
dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weap-
ons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies. We cannot
defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot
put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign nonprolif-
eration treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for
242 Counterterrorism
threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. Our secu-
rity will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to
be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty
and to defend our lives.32

In the Bush Doctrine, then, threats were to be dealt with before they
became imminent. The 2006 “National Security Strategy” cited the
Iraq Survey Group’s finding that Saddam Hussein “continued to see
the utility of WMD” and could have reactivated his WMD program;
the document left no doubt that the invasion of Iraq and the removal
of Saddam Hussein was justified according to the preemption provision
of the Bush Doctrine.

III. Unilateral Use of Force

As the 2002 “National Security Strategy” put it, “While the United States
will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international commu-
nity, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right
of self-defense.”33 This position was hardly surprising, because a “com-
mitment to the maintenance of a unipolar international system and to
the doctrine of preemption is unilateralist to the core.”34 In the months
and years after 9/11, when Americans feared additional terror strikes,
the notion of going it alone against terrorists and their state sponsors, if
needed, was an easy sell for the administration.
However, unilateralism was not only part of the grand strategy that
the neoconservatives pushed in the 1990s but also George W. Bush’s pref-
erence before and after he became president. Once in the White House,

Bush displayed little willingness to cater to world public opinion or

to heed the cries of outrage from European countries as the United
States interpreted its interest and the interests of the world in its own
way. Thus, the Bush administration walked away from the Kyoto
treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the protocol imple-
menting the ban on biological weapons.35

In sum, then, the 9/11 attacks, the threat of further strikes, and the war
against terrorism were seized by the Bush administration as an oppor-
tunity to enshrine the principle of unilateralism along with the right to
preemptive action and the use of U.S. superiority to reshape the world
according to American values as the core components of America’s
national security strategy.
Concluding that “in its trial run, the Bush Doctrine has been found
wanting,” Andrew Bacevich suggested that there was an urgent need for
Congress “to abrogate that doctrine” and thereby reduce “the likelihood
that we will see more Iraqs in the future.”36
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  243
President Obama’s National Security Strategy
In early April 2009, Michael Leiter, director of the National Counter­
terrorism Center, signaled a more holistic approach to America’s national
security strategy that differed from the centrality of the war on terrorism
in the Bush Doctrine, when he said,

Counterterrorism is part of larger U.S. policy. Counterterrorism

rarely, if ever, should be the lead in that policy. The challenges we
face—the terrorism challenges we face are different in different
regions of the world and are interconnected to broader U.S. policy
interests. Counterterrorism should be, in most cases, the tail, and
we should not wag the broader policy dog. I think it is important
for me to say that because I want to make clear that the counterter-
rorism community understands its role. We should be influencing a
lot of policy, we should be informing a lot of policy, but ultimately
there are broader issues here. Whether or not it’s in Pakistan and
Afghanistan or Somalia, counterterrorism is not the only interest the
U.S. government has.37

A few weeks later, in his commencement address at the U.S. Military

Academy at West Point, President Obama outlined a new security doc-
trine that differed from the Bush Doctrine in two main points. First,
Obama did not mention at all the need and right for preemptive strikes
before threats become imminent that his predecessor had declared and
acted upon in the case of Iraq. This shift was hardly surprising since
Obama had repeatedly characterized the Iraq intervention “a war of
choice” in contrast to what he called “a war of necessity” in Afghanistan
against Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. Second, without mentioning
his name or referring to his doctrine, Obama repudiated his predecessor’s
go-it-alone strategy by emphasizing the need for multilateral cooperation
and alliances. At West Point, he said pointedly,

The burdens of this century cannot fall on our soldiers alone. It also
cannot fall on American shoulders alone. Our adversaries would like
to see America sap its strength by overextending our power. And in
the past, we’ve always had the foresight to avoid acting alone. We
were part of the most powerful wartime coalition in human history
through World War II. We stitched together a community of free
nations and institutions to endure and ultimately prevail during a
Cold War. Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our interna-
tional system. But America has not succeeded by stepping out of the
currents of cooperation—we have succeeded by steering those cur-
rents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meet-
ing their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t.38
244 Counterterrorism
Obama’s positions were detailed in the May 2010 “National Security
Strategy.” This document elaborated on the aforementioned remark from
Michael Leiter, namely that counterterrorism should mostly be the tail
on the whole national security policy dog. After a reference to the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, the following paragraph put the fight against
terrorism into the larger perspective of global threats:

Yet these wars—and our global efforts to successfully counter violent

extremism—are only one element of our strategic environment and
cannot define America’s engagement with the world. Terrorism is
one of many threats that are more consequential in a global age. The
gravest danger to the American people and global security contin-
ues to come from weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear
weapons. The space and cyberspace capabilities that power our daily
lives and military operations are vulnerable to disruption and attack.
Dependence upon fossil fuels constrains our options and pollutes
our environment. Climate change and pandemic disease threaten the
security of regions and the health and safety of the American people.
Failing states breed conflict and endanger regional and global secu-
rity. Global criminal networks foment insecurity abroad and bring
people and goods across our own borders that threaten our people.39

According to the Obama administration, a strong national security pos-

ture begins at home and includes a strong and competitive economy and
educational system, and a move toward energy independence. While not
surrendering the right to act unilaterally in defense of the nation and its
interests, the Obama Doctrine embraced international organizations and
actions within multilateral alliances. This remained President Obama’s
position. In his 2015 “National Security Strategy” document he reiter-
ated that sometimes military force is needed and that in such cases the
United States will resort to military deployment, if needed unilaterally
even though the preference is to act in concert with allies.
Although there was a notable rhetorical shift from the Bush Doctrine
to Obama’s national security strategy concerning unilateral and multilat-
eral actions, American forces outnumbered by far the combined coalition
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in both administrations. And while
the troop level in Iraq decreased steadily after a strong and successful
deployment surge in 2007, President Obama kept his campaign promise
to refocus the war in Afghanistan and bolster American troop strength
there significantly. A few weeks into his presidency, he summarized the
objectives in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan when he said,

I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and

focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan
and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  245
future. That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that
could not be more just.40

President Trump’s National Security Strategy

In the introduction of his administration’s first “National Security
Strategy” document of December 2017,41 President Donald Trump reit-
erated his campaign promises, namely, to “Make America Great Again”
and to enact “America First” policies. In particular, he wrote,

The American people elected me to make America great again. I

promised that my Administration would put the safety, interests, and
well-being of our citizens first. I pledged that we would revitalize the
American economy, rebuild our military, defend our borders, protect
our sovereignty, and advance our values. During my first year in office,
you have witnessed my America First foreign policy in action. We are
prioritizing the interests of our citizens and protecting our sovereign
rights as a nation. America is leading again on the world stage [. . .]
When I came into office, rogue regimes were developing nuclear
weapons and missiles to threaten the entire planet. Radical Islamist
terror groups were flourishing. Terrorists had taken control of vast
swaths of the Middle East. Rival powers were aggressively undermin-
ing American interests around the globe. At home, porous borders
and unenforced immigration laws had created a host of vulnerabili-
ties. Criminal cartels were bringing drugs and danger into our com-
munities. Unfair trade practices had weakened our economy and
exported our jobs overseas. Unfair burden-sharing with our allies
and inadequate investment in our own defense had invited danger
from those who wish us harm. Too many Americans had lost trust
in our government, faith in our future, and confidence in our values.
Nearly one year later, although serious challenges remain, we are
charting a new and very different course [emphasis added].

Although President Trump claimed that he and his administration had

embarked on a completely new foreign and security policy, this was hardly
the case with respect to actual actions taken in the name of counterterror-
ism. Although President Trump renounced President Obama’s counterter-
rorist policies, neither his administration’s declared security strategy nor
actual actions of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and
several African countries signaled fundamentally different approaches.
Indeed, Trump like Obama before him sent more troops to Afghanistan,
more into the fight against ISIS, and kept U.S. Special Forces engaged in
Yemen, African countries, and even more so in the fight against ISIS in Iraq
and Syria. The difference was mostly rhetorical in that Trump’s language
was far harsher and far more aggressive than Obama’s measured words.
246 Counterterrorism

Trump’s 2018 National Counterterrorism Strategy

Although President Trump writes in the introduction to his admin-
istration’s 2018 “National Strategy for Counterterrorism of the
United States of America” that “a new approach” to defeat terrorism
is necessary, the policies and tactics described in the twenty-five-
page document are not fundamentally different from those of his
predecessors.42 Instead, like Presidents Bush and Obama before
him, President Trump recognizes most of all the importance of
working with and even increasing the “range of partners” in the
fight against transnational terrorism.
Yet, there are also notable differences. To begin with, the 2018
strategy introduces and repeats over and over again President Trump’s
favorite terms “radical Islamist terrorists” and “radical Islamist
terrorist groups”—an obvious rejection of President Obama’s prefer-
ence for “violent extremism” and “violent extremists.”
There is no mentioning of banning Muslims from entering the
United States or of building a wall along the U.S.–Mexican bor-
der. But President Trump’s controversial promises and measures
seem implicit in the following bullet point: “This strategy places
America First and emphasizes protection of the homeland—building
strong borders, strengthening security at all ports of entrance into
the United States.”
Although the so-called “war on terrorism” has been fought for
close to two decades, the Trump administration’s Counterterrorism
Strategy claims that it “will achieve” several goals or “end states,”
among them one that asserts “the terrorist threat to the United
States [will be] eliminated.”

America’s Controversial “Drone War”

As President Obama noted in early 2015,

we have moved beyond the large ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
that defined so much of American foreign policy over the past dec-
ade. Compared to the nearly 180,000 troops we had in Iraq and
Afghanistan when I took office, we now have fewer than 15,000
deployed in those countries.43

Just as the troop withdrawal from Iraq had earlier, the drastic reduction of
U.S. troops in Afghanistan drew criticism, especially among Republicans.
At the time, the actual “war against terrorism” was mostly fought
via drones or Predators or what within the intelligence and military
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  247
community were benignly called UAVs for unmanned aerial vehicles. It
was during George W. Bush’s presidency that drones were first deployed
against terrorists, but there were far more such UAV strikes during the
Obama administration.
During the George W. Bush administration the CIA and U.S. military
launched a total of forty-nine drone strikes, most of them in Pakistan.
There was a dramatic increase during the Obama years, when a total of
583 drone launched missiles were carried out in Pakistan, Yemen, and
Somalia. In the first seventeen months of the Trump presidency, there
were ninety-eight such attacks in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. As Table
10.1 shows, in Yemen the number of U.S. launched drones went from
merely one during the Bush years to 183 under President Obama. There
were sixty-nine drone strikes in the first seventeen months of the Trump
administration—more than one-third of all such attacks in Yemen during
the eight years of the Obama presidency. The 353 drone strikes against
targets in Pakistan during the Obama years outpaced those during the
Bush presidency (forty-eight) and the first year-and-a-half of the Trump
administration (twelve) by far—as did the numbers of militants and civil-
ians killed (Table 10.2). There were no drone attacks against targets in
Somalia during the Bush presidency, forty-seven during the Obama years,
and twenty-five in the first seventeen months of the Trump presidency.
Statistics about the targeted strikes via drone delivered missiles are
difficult to come by because administrations tend to lack transparency
in this respect. Thus, the available numbers reflect in large part open
sources and the reports of human rights organizations. Furthermore, not
included in the statistical data are the many drone attacks during the
fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This much is known: Immediately

Table 10.1  Drone Strikes in Yemen (up to mid-2018)

Total Strikes Militants Killed Civilians Killed

George W. Bush 1 6 0
Barack Obama 183 968–1,235 89–101
Donald Trump 69 181–243 22–41
Source: New America Foundation

Table 10.2  Drone Strikes in Pakistan (up to mid-2018)

Total Strikes Militants Killed Civilians Killed

George W. Bush 48 218–326 116–137

Barack Obama 353 1,659–2,683 129–162
Donald Trump 12 32–60 2–4
Source: New America Foundation
248 Counterterrorism
upon taking office President Trump made a push for the CIA to arm its
drones to be deployed in Syria and Iraq.
The issue with unmanned Predators was and is that often not merely
terrorists and their supporters are killed but also innocent bystanders,
including children. President Obama addressed this problem in a speech
at the National Defense University, noting that the commando opera-
tion in Pakistan that led to the capture and death of Osama bin Laden
cannot be the norm because of the tremendous risks involved— including
the unintended killing of innocent civilians. He did not deny that drone
strikes, like other weapons of war, cause the death of civilians and that
he and others involved in these decisions were “haunted by the civilian
casualties.” But he also justified the continuation of drone warfare with
the following argument:

As Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies

against the alternatives. To do nothing in the face of terrorist net-
works would invite far more civilian casualties—not just in our cities
at home and our facilities abroad, but also in the very places like
Sana’a and Kabul and Mogadishu where terrorists seek a foothold.
Remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the
death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any
estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes. So doing nothing
is not an option.
Where foreign governments cannot or will not effectively stop ter-
rorism in their territory, the primary alternative to targeted lethal
action would be the use of conventional military options. As I’ve
already said, even small special operations carry enormous risks.
Conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones,
and are likely to cause more civilian casualties and more local out-
rage. And invasions of these territories lead us to be viewed as occu-
pying armies, unleash a torrent of unintended consequences, are
difficult to contain, result in large numbers of civilian casualties and
ultimately empower those who thrive on violent conflict.44

The efficacy of drone warfare in the fight against terrorists was demon-
strated in July 2015, when a missile fired from a UAV killed a prominent
Al Qaeda leader, Muhsin al-Fadhli, near Sarmada in Syria. Although not
as widely known and feared as ISIS, the small but very potent Al Qaeda
cell named Khorasan was considered the one terrorist group most capa-
ble of striking the United States and other Western countries. Reportedly,
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered al-Fadhli to form this cell
in Syria with a small number of men with American or European pass-
ports free to travel without problems into Western countries. According
to counterterrorism experts inside and outside the U.S. government, the
death of the Khorasan leader was a major blow for what was left of
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  249
Al Qaeda Central. But such successes cannot argue away the dark side of
the drone war. According to David Cole,

Drones are controversial for many reasons. They inflict intense anxi-
ety on those who live under their shadow, the vast majority of whom
are innocent civilians, and therefore they inspire deep resentment.
They are the ultimate imperialist weapon, projecting force in other
countries without risking vulnerability.45

While President Obama said publicly that he was troubled by civilian

deaths and injuries, his successor Donald Trump was not concerned
about killing civilians as collateral damage in attacks against terrorists.
On his first full day in office, during a visit to the CIA’s headquarters,
he urged the agency to get more drones ready to be deployed in the fight
against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. According to one account,

When the agency’s [CIA’s] head of drone operations explained that

the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties,
the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded
strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wan-
dered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why
did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.
On the campaign trail, Trump often said he would “take out” the
families of terrorists.46

In this respect, it seems that President Trump meant what he said during
the campaign. See Chapter 12 for a discussion of the killing and maiming
of civilians in drone attacks as human rights violations.

Notes
1 [Link]/news/releases/2001/09/[Link].
2 Simon Dalby, “Geopolitics, Grand Strategy and the Bush Doctrine,” IDSS dis-
cussion paper, October 2005, 12.
3 Ian O. Lesser, “Countering the New Terrorism: Implications for Strategy,” in
Ian O. Lesser et al., eds., Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA:
Rand, 1999), 140.
4 Martha Crenshaw, “Terrorism, Strategies, and Grand Strategies,” in Audrey
Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes, eds., Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a
Grand Strategy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 77.
Crenshaw’s analysis distinguishes between strategy that “typically refers to
military operations” and “is concerned with the relationship between means
and ends”; grand strategy, which “represents a more inclusive conception
that explains how a state’s full range of resources can be adapted to achieve
national security”; and “foreign policy defines the goals of strategy and
‘grand’ or high strategy” and “is a statement of purpose” (pp. 75, 76).
5 Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2001), 5.
250 Counterterrorism
6 [Link] accessed October 1, 2008.
7 Ibid.
8 Edward Alden, “Report Warned of Attack on American Soil,” Financial
Times, September 12, 2001, 5.
9 Report of the National Commission on Terrorism, “Countering the Changing
Threat of Terrorism,” Pursuant to Public Law 277, 105th Congress, 49.
10 “Secure, Yes, But Also Free,” Omaha World-Herald, June 12, 2000, 6.
11 Donald M. Snow, National Security for a New Era (New York: Pearson
Longman, 2007), 1.
12 Crenshaw, 82.
13 Authorization for Use of Military Force, September 18, 2001, Public Law
107-40 SJ Res. 23, 107th Congress, [Link]
terrorism/[Link], accessed September 30, 2008.
14 [Link]/news/releases/2001/09/print/[Link],
accessed September 29, 2008.
15 Ibid.
16 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 22.
17 Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy,
Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2006), 189.
18 Ibid., 26.
19 “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” September
2002, [Link]/nsc/[Link], accessed October 10, 2008.
20 Dalby, 3.
21 Brian C. Schmidt and Michael C. Williams, “The Bush Doctrine and the
Iraq War: Neoconservatives vs. Realists,” paper presented at the Annual
Conference of the British International Studies Association, Cambridge, UK,
December 17–19, 2007, 5.
22 Dalby, 15.
23 Andrew Rojecki, “Rhetorical Alchemy: American Exceptionalism and the
War on Terror,” Political Communication 25:1 (January–March 2008): 81.
24 Ibid.
25 “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” March
2006, [Link]/nsc/nss/2006/, accessed October 10, 2008.
26 Philip H. Gordon, “The End of the Bush Revolution,” Foreign Affairs (July/
August 2006), [Link]/20060701faessay85406/philip-h-
gordon/[Link]?mode=print, accessed October
11, 2008.
27 “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 2002.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 1.
30 Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine.” Political Science Quarterly
118 (3) (2003), 379.
31 [Link]/news/releases/2002/06/[Link], accessed
September 1, 2008.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 6.
34 Schmidt and Williams, 9.
35 Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” Political Science Quarterly
118:3 (2003): 366.
36 Andrew J. Bacevich, “Rescinding the Bush Doctrine,” Boston Globe, March
1, 2007, [Link]/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/
03/01/rescinding_the_bush_doctrine/, accessed October 11, 2008.
37 From a speech delivered at the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC, April 9,
2009. The transcript is available at [Link]/press_room/speeches/
2009-04-09_aspen-[Link], accessed May 12, 2009.
 America’s Post-9/11 National Security Strategy  251
38 The full speech is available at [Link]/the-press-office/remarks-
president-united-states-military-academy-west-point-commencement,
accessed June 22, 2010.
39 The full document is available at [Link]/sites/default/files/
rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf, 8, accessed June 24, 2010.
40 The full speech is available at [Link]/the_press_office/Remarks-
by-the-President-on-a-New-Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/, accessed
June 25, 2010.
41 The White House, “A New National Security Strategy for a New Era,”
December 2017, [Link]/articles/new-national-security-strategy-
new-era/, accessed January 14, 2018.
42 Ibid.
43 From the 2015 National Security Strategy, [Link]/sites/default/
files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf, accessed July 26, 2015.
44 The transcript of the speech was published by the New York Times, www.
[Link]/2013/05/24/us/politics/transcript-of-obamas-speech-on-drone-
[Link], accessed July 20, 2015.
45 David Cole, “The New America: Little Privacy, Big Terror,” New York Review
of Books, August 13, 2015, 20.
46 Greg Jaffe, “For Trump and his Generals, ‘Victory’ Has Different Meanings,”
Washington Post, April 5, 2018, [Link]/world/national-
security/for-trump-and-his-generals-victory-has-different-meanings/20
18/04/05/8d74eab0-381d-11e8-9c0a-85d477d9a226_story.html?utm_
term=.4a8c299d6592, accessed May 24, 2018.
11 The Utility of Hard and Soft
Power in Counterterrorism

Assessing the efficacy of several military strategies for America’s continued

counterterrorism efforts abroad at the beginning of the Trump adminis-
tration, political scientists Peter D. Feaver and Hal Brands noted, “The
tragedy of the United States’ war on terrorism is that it has no clean
solution.”1 Indeed, nearly sixteen years after 9/11 America’s longest war
in Afghanistan and enduring engagements elsewhere seemed far from
over. And this much was clear: Military might alone would not defeat
ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the violent tactics of affiliated groups or those of
like-minded autonomous cells and lone wolves. More promising was in
the view of some experts a multi-pronged mixture of hard and soft power
over a prolonged period.
Before Barack Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, Joseph
Nye criticized the Bush Doctrine (discussed in Chapter 10) as “based
on a flawed analysis of power in today’s world.” Looking ahead to a
different foreign policy approach by the incoming administration, Nye
wrote, “Obama’s election itself has done a great deal to restore American
soft power, but he will need to follow up with policies that combine
hard and soft power into a smart strategy of the sort that won the Cold
War.”2 Nye recommended a mix of hard and soft power as the basis for
America’s grand strategy in the post-Cold War era well before 9/11, but
his power concept was and remains particularly useful in the context
of the global terrorist threat and the need for effective counterterrorism
strategy and policy.
During her testimony as secretary of state designee before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee’s confirmation hearing, Hillary Clinton
spoke of the need for “soft power” and explained “smart power”:

The president-elect and I believe that foreign policy must be based

on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology. On
facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice. Our security, our vital-
ity, and our ability to lead in today’s world oblige us to recognize the
overwhelming fact of our interdependence.
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  253
We must use what has been called “smart power,” the full range
of tools at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, military, political,
legal, and cultural—picking the right tool, or combination of tools,
for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the van-
guard of foreign policy.3

In the post-Cold War world, asymmetric warfare that involved belliger-

ents of vastly different military strength, not symmetric warfare between
two sides of similar capacities, was most prevalent. This is unlikely to
change in the foreseeable future.

Defining Power: Hard and Soft

The German sociologist Max Weber defined politics as “striving for a
share of power or for influence in the distribution of power, whether
between states or between groups of people contained within a single
state.” For Weber, “Anyone engaged in politics is striving for power,
either power as a means to attain other goals (which may be ideal
or selfish), or power ‘for its own sake,’ which is to say, in order to
enjoy the feeling of prestige created by power.”4 Military power and
economic muscle are, as Joseph Nye has put it, “examples of hard
command power that can be used to induce others to change their
positions. Hard power can rest on inducements (carrots) or threats
(sticks).”5 Whereas hard power is unequivocal, soft power is subtle.
For Nye, soft power “co-opts people rather than coerces them. Soft
power rests on the ability to set the political agenda in a way that
shapes the preferences of others.”6
In the fall of 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called on
the U.S. government to invest more in the resurrection of America’s
soft power capacity, arguing that military force alone cannot defend
America’s interests around the world. Gates criticized as “short-
sighted” the post-Cold War

gutting of America’s ability to engage, assist, and communicate

with other parts of the world—the “soft power,” which had been
so important throughout the Cold War. The State Department
froze the hiring of new Foreign Service officers for a period of
time. The United States Agency for International Development

(continued)
254 Counterterrorism

(continued)

saw deep staff cuts—its permanent staff dropping from a high of

15,000 during Vietnam to about 3,000 in the 1990s. And the U.S.
Information Agency was abolished as an independent entity, split
into pieces, and many of its capabilities folded into a small corner
of the State Department.7

Lost in the process was America’s soft power expertise, especially

with respect to public diplomacy. During the Cold War era, informa-
tion about the United States, its values, and its citizens’ ways of life
was beamed into the communist world and there were cultural and
educational East–West exchanges as central soft power approaches.
Today’s global information and communication networks, especially
the Internet, offer new opportunities for new soft power approaches,
including public diplomacy, especially in efforts to counter the propa-
ganda of terrorist movements.

According to the National Intelligence Council’s projections, “Terrorism

is unlikely to disappear by 2025.”8 Instead, irregular forces—call them
terrorists or guerrillas or insurgents—will continue to challenge the
United States and/or other powerful nation-states directly or indirectly.
The experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere have shown
that overwhelming power will not succeed in the context of asymmet-
ric warfare—at least not without exercising soft power as well. As one
expert put it, such conflicts “require the application of all elements of
national power. Success will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and
more a function of shaping behavior—of friends, adversaries, and most
importantly, the people in between.”9 Others expressed the same ideas
more bluntly. Andrew Bacevich, for example, suggested that the “war
in Afghanistan (like the Iraq war) won’t be won militarily. It can be
settled—if imperfectly—only through politics.”10
President Obama, too, recognized the need for both hard and soft
power stating in his 2015 National Security Strategy,

Our military will remain ready to defend our enduring national inter-
ests while providing essential leverage for our diplomacy. The use of
force is not, however, the only tool at our disposal, and it is not the prin-
cipal means of U.S. engagement abroad, nor always the most effective
for the challenges we face. Rather, our first line of action is principled
and clear-eyed diplomacy, combined with the central role of develop-
ment in the forward defense and promotion of America’s interests.11
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  255
As presidential candidate Donald Trump left no doubt that, if elected, he
would negate, nullify, and wipe out policies enacted during the presidency
of his predecessor Barack Obama. High on Trump’s list was Obama’s and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “weak” foreign, security, and most of
all counterterrorist policy. In one radio advertisement aired shortly after
the 2015 multi-pronged terrorist attacks in Paris, Trump said,

The tragic attacks in Paris prove once again that America needs to
get tough on radical Islamic terrorism. President Obama and other
politicians have consistently failed us. Just hours before the attacks
in Paris, President Obama said ISIS has been contained. It’s amazing
that the United States can have a president who is so out of touch,
but it’s also dangerous. Obama has no strategy to defeat ISIS.12

In the same advertisement and at many other campaign stops Trump

promised that he would “beat the hell or s—t out of ISIS.”
A few months after taking office President Trump pledged to eradi-
cate all terrorism. During King Abdullah II of Jordan’s visit to the White
House in April 2017, he said,

As far as ISIS is concerned, the United States will work with whoever
it’s appropriate to work with, to totally eradicate ISIS and other ter-
rorists . . . And by the way, ISIS is one group. But others have formed.
Frankly, they’re all over the place. We will do what we have to do to
eradicate terrorists.13

For candidate and for President Trump, when it came to terrorists and
terrorism it was hard power, military power all the time. There was never
talk about soft power in this context. Indeed, by dismantling the U.S.
Department of State’s experienced reservoir of first-rate foreign affairs
experts and diplomats within the first year of his presidency, Trump showed
not only his disregard for the diplomatic service but for soft power as well.
To be sure, President George W. Bush, too, had talked about defeat-
ing all terrorism. But this pledge came nine days after 9/11, when he said
in his address to a Joint Session of Congress, “Our war on terror begins
with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every ter-
rorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” But
the Bush administration included the State Department’s personnel and
soft power resources in its counterterrorism strategy.
What, then, are hard and the soft power options in counterterrorism?

Military Hard Power

John Lewis Gaddis observed, shortly after the collapse of the World
Trade Center and the partial destruction of the Pentagon, “No one, apart
256 Counterterrorism
from the few people who plotted and carried out these events, could have
anticipated that they were going to happen. But from the moment they
did happen, everyone acknowledged that everything had changed.”14
Immediately after the kamikaze strikes on the territory of the world’s
most powerful (and, indeed, only) superpower, 9/11 was compared to
the attack on Pearl Harbor. But by pointing to the similarity of the two
sneak attacks, most commentators failed to mention the most obvi-
ous difference: In the case of Pearl Harbor, a government ordered the
aggression and targeted members of the military, but in the case of New
York and Washington, members of an international terrorist network
planned and carried out the attacks on defenseless civilians. By equat-
ing the two events, it seemed logical to invoke the war metaphor. What
political leaders and the media dubbed immediately as an “Attack on
America,” an act of war, called for a likewise rhetorical response—the
“war against terrorism” or the “war on terror” that President George
W. Bush promptly declared. Noting that, in the context of terrorism,
the noun war is more likely to be followed by on rather than against,
Geoffrey Nunberg explained,

The “war on” pattern dates from the turn of the century, when peo-
ple adapted epidemiological metaphors like “the war on typhus”
to describe campaigns against social evils like alcohol, crime and
poverty—endemic conditions that could be mitigated but not eradi-
cated. Society may declare a war on drugs or drunken driving, but
no one expects total victory.
“The war on terror,” too, suggests a campaign aimed not at
human adversaries but at a pervasive social plague.15

That was the way John Kerry understood the meaning of the “war on
terrorism.” During the 2004 presidential campaign, he said that “the
only realistic goal was to contain the problem, to reduce it to the sta-
tus of nuisance rather than a central, encompassing fixation; he drew an
analogy with containing prostitution and gambling.”16 Similarly, Paul
Pillar suggested that a “central lesson of counterterrorism is that terror-
ism cannot be ‘defeated’—only reduced, attenuated, and to some degree
controlled.”17 While President Obama limited his war against terrorism
to Al Qaeda and like-minded extremists, he also warned these “terrorists
who oppose us” that “we will defeat you.”18

Military Retaliation/Reprisal
To fight a real war in the context of terrorism and counterterrorism,
the enemy must be in control of a nation-state or parts thereof. The
Afghanistan war was such a case. The Taliban rulers who controlled
most of the country had allowed bin Laden to establish the Al Qaeda
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  257
headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan. This was a clear-cut
case of a symbiotic relationship between the quasi-rulers of a nation-state
and a terrorist organization that had plotted an unprecedented terror
attack against the United States. When the Taliban leadership refused
U.S. demands to expel or hand over bin Laden and his associates in the
aftermath of 9/11, there was significant international support for remov-
ing Al Qaeda and its sponsors by waging war because “much of the
world was prepared to accept our expanded definition of national self-
defense—the standard required by Article 51 of the UN Charter.”19 The
Afghanistan war was fought after an attack against the United States and
was rationalized as both retaliation and prevention. For Paul Pillar, the
“option of military force arises when there is a clear offense of a major,
recent attack for which a state has been proven responsible. Day-to-
day support for terrorist groups and terrorist-related activity lacks such
clarity.”20 This strict requirement was not quite met in the case against
the Taliban in that Taliban leaders or followers had neither planned nor
carried out the 9/11 attacks. Still, the Taliban leadership had very close
ties to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and may well have been aware
of the 9/11 plot.
Retaliation or reprisal refers to punitive action taken after the fact, or,
as Neil Livingstone put it, “Reprisals involve the extraction of punish-
ment on those who have committed an illegal act for which there is no
other form of peaceful redress.”21 When it comes to terrorism, the targets
of military retaliation can be the terrorists themselves if they can be pin-
pointed in a particular location or a nation-state if its government can be
identified as the perpetrators’ sponsor. Theoretically, there is a distinc-
tion between reprisal and preemption, but in reality the boundaries are
often blurred. Thus, the U.S. air strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi,
Libya, in 1986 were in swift retaliation for Libya’s involvement in the
bombing of a West Berlin nightclub that was frequented by American
GIs. But the military measures were also preemptive in that they were
thought to discourage Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi from spon-
soring further acts of terror. The Afghanistan war against Al Qaeda and
the Taliban was both retaliatory and preemptive.
For reprisals to be legal and as such recognized under international
law, they “cannot be capricious and open-ended and must conform to
certain carefully defined conditions and limitations.”22 First, efforts to
find peaceful redress must have failed. Second, the retaliatory measures
must be proportional to the initial act of aggression and must not harm
innocents. Finally, many experts believe that there is only a limited
time period after a terrorist strike for military reprisal to be “effectively
linked to a precipitating terrorist incident. Under normal circumstances,
such a window for military action is probably no more than seventy-
two hours.”23 This last condition explains why the Israelis tend to
retaliate very quickly to terrorist attacks. But limiting the time frame
258 Counterterrorism
for legitimate retaliation reduces the chances of coming to a peaceful
solution, which, admittedly, is very remote in most cases of terrorism.
Pillar warns of “revenge for the sake of revenge,” but he recognizes that
“striking back may help to sustain the national morale” and suggests
“this has probably been the principal consideration in most of Israel’s
retaliatory strikes against terrorist foes.”24 Reprisals must be overt, not
covert, “if they are to have a cathartic effect on the victimized nation or
serve as a deterrent to future attacks.”25
Although precision-guided bombs and missiles have increased the accu-
racy of surgical air strikes and reduced the risk of harming innocents,
this option is not foolproof. Civilians continue to be killed and injured in
these sorts of strikes. When these casualties (known as “collateral casual-
ties” or “collateral damage”) occur, the retaliating government will be
condemned abroad and sometimes at home as well. After Hezbollah mem-
bers crossed into Israel to capture Israeli soldiers in the summer of 2006,
Israel responded with massive military attacks on terrorist strongholds in
Lebanon. While Israel justified the war against Hezbollah as reprisal for
the kidnapping of Israeli Defense Force members and as a means to pre-
vent further terrorist rocket attacks from South Lebanon against Israeli
civilians, critics condemned Israel for not first trying to redress the border
incident peacefully and for harming large numbers of Lebanese civilians.
The problem is, of course, that fighting terrorists is very different from
fighting a country’s army, in that terrorists tend to operate from and hide
in civilian neighborhoods. But if the objectives of retaliatory and/or preven-
tive actions are not fully achieved—as was the case for Israel in the 2006
conflict with Hezbollah—the effects can be detrimental to national morale
and unity, while not necessarily a deterrent to future terrorist strikes.
After seemingly won by U.S.-led coalition forces, the Afghanistan war
became a prolonged case of asymmetrical warfare between Al Qaeda ter-
rorists and Taliban insurgents on the one hand and U.S. military units as
part of NATO forces on the other. However, one proponent of what he
calls “offensive action and offensive military capabilities” has argued that
“even unsuccessful offensive actions, which force terrorist units or ter-
rorist cells to stay perpetually on the move to avoid destruction, will help
reduce their capability” and that the “threat of offensive action is critical
to exhausting the terrorists, whether they are with units in the field in
Afghanistan or hiding out in cities and empty quarters across the world.”26
But targeting terrorists who fight within military units, not exactly
typical for terrorist organizations, is very different from using offensive
military force against terrorists or insurgents who hide among civilians in
cities, towns, or villages. One of many tragic examples of high-risk offen-
sive actions against terrorists or insurgents during the “war on terrorism”
was an August 2008 ground operation in the Afghan village of Azizabad
by U.S. Special Operation Forces (SOF) backed by air strikes. When
the dust settled, more than ninety civilians—most of them women and
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  259
children—were dead along with three dozen or so insurgents.27 The dam-
age to America’s reputation in the Afghan village, in all of Afghanistan,
and in the international community was once again far greater than the
benefit of eliminating a few terrorists or insurgents. Military actions,
especially when they involve the death of innocent bystanders, tend to
rally supporters and recruit new ones. Thus, surgical strikes against the
Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives were often followed by a surge in vio-
lence in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists.

Military Preemption
As part of his post-9/11 foreign policy, President Bush proclaimed the
United States’ right to wage preemptive wars against rogue states that
threaten the national security of the country and that cannot be deterred.
Preemption means “striking in advance of hostile action to prevent its
occurrence and to avoid suffering injury.”28 Crucial here is the availability
of reliable intelligence about a strike or strikes planned against a nation-
state. If such evidence exists, preemptive military actions can be justified.
But the bar of proof is high to justify all-out preemptive action. Discussing
this in the context of terrorism, Neil C. Livingstone wrote long before 9/11,

In fact, a nation carrying out a preemptive attack may appear to the

rest of the world as an aggressor rather than a potential victim, and
in order to win acceptance of its action, the nation engaged in the
preemptive attack will have to make a strong and persuasive public
case to justify its action. This, however, can be exceedingly difficult
and in some instances impossible.29

Indeed, as Robert Jervis has pointed out,

The very nature of preventive war means that the evidence is ambigu-
ous and the supporting arguments are subject to rebuttal. If Britain and
France had gone to war with Germany before 1939, large segments
of the public would have believed that the war was not necessary.30

For this reason, governments have by and large been reluctant to fight
preemptive wars.
For the United States, this attitude toward preemption changed in
terms of Iraq. By invading and occupying Iraq, the United States lost in
many parts of the world the moral high ground that had motivated a
large number of countries to join the military coalition against Al Qaeda
and the Taliban in Afghanistan. With few exceptions, the international
community did not buy Washington’s premier reasons for going to war
against Iraq: the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in
Iraq and the threat of Saddam Hussein providing terrorists—namely
260 Counterterrorism
Al Qaeda—with these weapons. If this was the reason for invading
Iraq, then North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan posed at the time greater
and more immediate threats. But, as explained in Chapter 10 in some
detail, for President Bush the decisive factor in favor of preemptive war
was not whether a threat was imminent. As he explained during a TV
interview,

I believe it is essential—that when we see a threat, we deal with those

threats before [emphasis added] they become imminent. It’s too late
if they become imminent. It’s too late in this new kind of war, and so
that’s why I made the decision I made [to go to war against Iraq].31

If the United States claims the right to wage war “against . . . emerging

threats before they are fully formed,” as the president did, this would
justify preemptive strikes against many nation-states. Moreover, other
countries could insist on the same right. Whatever the rationale for and
against preemptive war may be, military might can defeat the armies of
terrorism-sponsoring states and topple their regimes, but it cannot defeat
globally dispersed terrorism networks.
The Iraq war was a case in which an invasion in the name of prevent-
ing catastrophic terrorism paved the way for groups and cells loyal to
Al Qaeda or like-minded groups to flock into the country and unleash
a wave of terrorism. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, Iraq itself was
not a breeding ground of jihadi terrorists and did not allow foreign
extremists from all over the Arab and Muslim world to enter the coun-
try and unleash lethal violence against civilians. Ironically, the years
following Iraq’s initial defeat witnessed Iraqi and foreign militants car-
rying out waves of terrorist attacks—not only against members of the
occupation forces but most of all against the civilian population in
many parts of the country. If Iraq became indeed the most important
front in the so-called Global War on Terror, as the Bush administra-
tion claimed, it was the direct result of the resentment and anger in the
Arab and Muslim world triggered and nourished by the invasion and
occupation of Iraq.
Summing up, then, wars against state sponsors of terrorism can be
waged and won but even the mightiest military forces are unlikely to
defeat transnational terrorist organizations or networks. As Secretary
Gates wrote just before President Obama’s inauguration, “Direct mili-
tary force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against
terrorists and other extremists. But over the long-term, the United States
cannot kill or capture its way to victory.”32
When it comes to transnational terrorism and in particular global
terrorist networks, good old police work may be more promising than
military action. Opting for a terrorism-as-crime understanding rather
than the terrorism-as-war paradigm, one student of terrorism suggests,
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  261
Terrorism is a phenomenon that is global in its range, constant in
its presence, and inevitably involves the commission of crime. Any
national or international mechanism to counter it must be predicated
on that understanding. Liberal democracies have well-developed leg-
islation, systems, and structures to deal with crime; consequently, the
criminal justice system should be at the heart of their counterterror-
ism efforts.33

A study of all terrorist groups that were active around the world from
1968 through 2006 found that 7 percent ended because of military force,
40 percent because of policing, and 10 percent because they realized their
typically very limited objectives. According to the same research, 43 percent
of all these organizations terminated their violence because of political
solutions or settlements.34 In other words, traditional criminal justice
approaches and efforts to bring terrorist groups into the political process
were far more successful in ending terrorism than military actions. Yet,
as mentioned earlier, there are cases in which military force is an option
and, at times, the best option.

Commando Raids
Short of going to war against state sponsors or conducting air strikes
against terrorist sponsor states and terrorist groups, commando attacks
on terrorist homes and training grounds, the use of commandos to hunt
down terrorists, and the utilization of surrogates to attack terrorists are
options chosen by various target countries. Using commandos increases
the accuracy of attacks and minimizes the risk of harming innocents. But
sending special forces teams into a hostile environment entails also the
risk of members being captured, injured, and killed. Using surrogates,
on the one hand, eliminates the risk of a country’s own personnel being
harmed and allows officials to deny responsibility if an attack fails or
results in collateral damage. On the other hand, however, the sponsor-
ing government may lose control over proxies. This was rumored in
1985 when a car bomb exploded in Beirut and killed innocent Lebanese
bystanders. Allegedly, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had hired
indigenous operatives for the attack but lost control over their operation.
More recently, during the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, members
of U.S. Special Forces paid Afghan tribesmen to assist in the hunt for bin
Laden, Al Qaeda members, and Taliban leaders. But the Afghans were
reportedly also taking bribes from the other sides and warned them of
impending actions by the U.S.-led coalition. Before the highly skilled
SEAL commando of the U.S. Special Forces succeeded in neutralizing
bin Laden in 2011, decision-makers in Washington were well aware of
the high-risk nature of the mission. This assessment did not change after
the operation. As President Obama said after the success,
262 Counterterrorism
Our operation in Pakistan against Osama bin Laden cannot be the
norm. The risks in that case were immense. The likelihood of capture,
although that was our preference, was remote given the certainty that
our folks would confront resistance. The fact that we did not find our-
selves confronted with civilian casualties, or embroiled in an extended
firefight, was a testament to the meticulous planning and profession-
alism of our Special Forces, but it also depended on some luck.35

Generally, the governments and citizens of democratic countries are not

in favor of eliminating terrorists by assassination. Yet, in certain predica-
ments, some experts recommend fighting ruthless terrorists with equally
ruthless campaigns that “must be highly selective, fought in secret, tar-
geting only those responsible and never acknowledging guilt.”36
The model for retribution campaigns remains Israel’s response to an
attack on the country’s athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
Prodded by then Prime Minister Golda Meir, the best and brightest of
Israel’s military and intelligence elite formed a commando unit with the
code name “Mivtzan Elohim,” meaning “Wrath of God.” Members were
charged with hunting down every member of Black September, the group
responsible for the Munich operation. For years, Wrath of God com-
mandos tracked down leaders and followers of Black September in the
Middle East and in Europe, killing them one by one until the job was
done in 1979. Along the way, mistakes were made—for example, when
an Arab in Scandinavia was falsely identified as the Palestinian leader of
the Munich attack and killed. But, as one observer wrote approvingly,
“Despite some spectacular foul-ups . . . Mossad [Israel’s intelligence
agency] has racked up a deadly record of hits on Palestinian terrorists
without ever bragging about it. The terrorists know who did it, and that’s
enough for the Israelis.”37 Others recommended that the United States
should establish a counterterrorist commando unit along the lines of the
Wrath of God model as one more aggressive option in its counterterror-
ism posture.

Assassinations
“Wrath of God” was an assassination campaign. Governments typically
do not speak about, or deny, their involvement in the assassination of ter-
rorists. But in some situations, officials admit to such targeted killings as
preventive and retaliatory actions, if only to satisfy a fearful populace’s
demand for more protection. Thus, in the fall of 2000, Israeli officials
acknowledged publicly that their military was targeting and killing indi-
vidual Palestinians accused of actual attacks on Israeli citizens or of
planning such deeds. While Palestinians spoke of “state terrorism” and
“assassinations,” a highly placed government official in Israel explained
these acts as countermeasures and said that the “most effective and just
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  263
way to deal with terror is the elimination or incarceration of the people
who lead these organizations.”38 After Israeli forces targeted an alleged
mastermind of a Palestinian terror attack but killed several civilians in
the process, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Perez reacted angrily when
an interviewer used the term assassination to characterize the action.
“Suicide bombers cannot be threatened by death,” he argued. “The only
way to stop them is to intercept those who sent them.”39 And Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon made clear that “actions to prevent the killing of
Jews” would continue.40 Indeed, Israel intensified its campaign to kill
the leaders of terrorist groups. But whether taking out Hamas leader
Sheik Yassin, his successor, and a host of others in the higher circles of
Palestinian terror groups reduced violence against Israel in the long run
was far from sure. Even more than terrorist foot soldiers, their leaders
become martyrs in death and attract new recruits.
After 9/11, there was a debate in the mass media in the United States
on the best outcome of the ongoing hunt for Osama bin Laden. To arrest
or to “neutralize” (i.e., assassinate) the Al Qaeda leader was the ques-
tion. There was fear of a wave of terror attacks inside the United States
if bin Laden was arrested and tried by the American judiciary. There
was also concern that the United States could lose influence over the
procedures if bin Laden was caught and brought before an international
tribunal. As for neutralizing the Al Qaeda boss, assassinations were out-
lawed by the United States following the disclosure that the CIA was
involved in assassination plots against foreign leaders during the 1960s
and 1970s. To be sure, bin Laden was not a head of state or leader in a
nation-state. Nevertheless, after 9/11, the issue was whether the president
and Congress should lift the ban on assassination when known terrorists
were the targets. Michael Ignatieff proposed three conditions for targeted
assassination in the fight against terrorism: “Only as a last resort, only
when capture is impossible without undue risk to American lives and
only where death and damage to innocent civilians can be avoided.”41
President Bush did not repeal the executive order banning assassinations,
nor did Congress introduce legislation to allow targeted assassinations of
terrorists. But after 9/11, President Bush issued a finding that authorized
the CIA to kill or capture terrorist leaders.42 Indeed, in the fall of 2002,
a pilotless Predator plane operated by the CIA fired a Hellfire antitank
missile at a car in Yemen and killed a key Al Qaeda leader and five oth-
ers. This operation was, no doubt, a targeted assassination coup. Similar
Predator attacks targeted Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan,
albeit without success. Still, after 9/11 the assassination of terrorists was
part of the American arsenal in the fight against terrorism and became
especially under President Obama part and parcel of what I described in
the previous chapter as drone war.
Even a U.S. citizen turned terrorist was put on the CIA’s assassination
list in the spring of 2010 after the National Security Council approved
264 Counterterrorism
the targeted killing of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was
hiding in Yemen. Al-Awlaki, a charismatic preacher, called for violence
against Americans and recruited jihadis for attacks in the United States.
Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre in the fall of
2009, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas Day
(2009) bomber, were disciples of al-Awlaki as were several other known
terrorists. When asked by Jake Tapper of ABC News whether al-Awlaki
was on the CIA’s assassination list, CIA director Leon Panetta answered,

Awlaki is a terrorist and yes, he’s a US citizen, but he is first and

foremost a terrorist and we’re going to treat him like a terrorist. We
don’t have an assassination list, but I can tell you this. We have a
terrorist list and he’s on it.43

Al-Awlaki was killed in 2011 by a missile fired from an unmanned

Predator in Yemen.

Hostage Rescue Missions

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when hostage-taking was the most
popular terrorist tactic, military and police experts began to discuss suit-
able rescue methods. But, as Pillar has recalled, it was the “unsuccessful
German attempt to rescue the Israeli athletes kidnapped at the Olympic
Games in Munich in 1972 [that actually] led major European govern-
ments to develop highly skilled commando units with this mission.”44
Germany, for example, established a counterterrorist commando called
Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG-9) within its border patrol, and the United
Kingdom designated the special commandos of the Special Air Service
(SAS) as a counterterrorist force. Israeli commandos were the first to
stage a spectacular rescue mission in 1976 after terrorists hijacked an Air
France airliner en route from Tel Aviv to Paris and forced the pilot to
land at Entebbe, Uganda. Although the Ugandan authorities supported
the hijackers, who threatened to kill their Israeli hostages, an Israeli
C-130 plane with eighty-six highly trained commandos aboard landed at
the airport. Within a few minutes, the paratroopers struck down the ter-
rorists and rescued ninety-five passengers. Although two passengers were
killed in the crossfire and the leader of the rescue commandos, Jonathan
Netanyahu, died in the exchange, the raid on Entebbe became “a world-
wide sensation—a clearcut victory against terrorism.”45
Delta Force, perceived as counterterrorist commandos, was already in
the planning stage when officially established as a counterterrorism unit
in November 1977 during the Carter presidency. In the previous months,
commandos of Germany’s GSG-9 had stormed a hijacked Lufthansa
plane at the airport of Mogadishu, Somalia, rescuing all eighty-six pas-
sengers. Delta Force, under the command of Colonel Charles Beckwith,
became a formidable counterterrorist asset—especially after becoming
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  265
part of the so-called SOF that combined special units from each of the
military services after the failure of the rescue mission during the Iran
hostage crisis, which had been partially blamed on poor coordination
between the various military services. (However, unlike Mogadishu,
where the government of Somalia had welcomed the rescue raid by
German commandos, the American rescue force flew into an extremely
hostile environment in Iran. To be sure, Israeli commandos faced hostil-
ity at Entebbe as well—and succeeded—but without taking away from
the brilliant execution of their coup, they had the benefit of surprise on
their side because this was the first rescue of its kind.)
In recent times, foreigners have been typically taken hostage one at a
time or in small groups and held in hideouts in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere by transnational terrorists, which has made
rescue attempts highly unlikely or impossible.
Although domestic rescue operations tend to be less problematic, they
are not unlike efforts to free hostages held abroad when the captors control
territory within a state. Colombia is an instructive example. For years, the
FARC kidnapped and held hundreds of hostages, many of them for long
periods of time and in spite of many attempts by Colombian security forces
to free them. But the combined efforts of military intelligence and com-
mandos eventually pulled off one of the most stunning, nonviolent hostage
rescue coups on July 2, 2008, when they freed fifteen hostages from a FARC
jungle camp—among them former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid
Betancourt and three Americans. After they had infiltrated the terrorist/
guerrilla organization for months, the rescuers posed as FARC fighters
and convinced guards that they had come with an order to gather the hos-
tages from three different locations and march them to a centrally located
place from where they would fly to a meeting with an international delega-
tion. Camouflaged rescuers, real FARC fighters, and the hostages marched
ninety miles through the jungle. When a helicopter landed, Colombian secu-
rity forces disguised as FARC operatives got off, handcuffed the hostages,
and ordered them aboard, along with two of the FARC guards. As the
latter were overpowered soon after lift-off, the hostages learned that they
were finally free. Betancourt had spent more than six years, and the three
American defense contractors more than five years, in captivity.
The high risks involved in rescue missions were demonstrated in a
tragic way in 2014, when U.S. Special Forces made two failed attempts to
rescue American photo-journalist Luke Sommers who was held hostage
and whose life was threatened by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
After the failure of the first attempt in November, there was a second try
one month later. This time, American commandos reached the terrorist
compound, but while they were involved in a fierce firefight, terrorists
managed to kill Sommers and South African hostage Pierre Korkie.
In sum, then, hostage rescue missions are more likely to succeed when
they are attempted in domestic and “permissive environments” rather
than in foreign and “nonpermissive environments.” A number of hostage
266 Counterterrorism
rescue missions conducted by different counterterrorism commandos in
various countries and in different parts of the world have affirmed this
rule of thumb.

From the Obama Administration’s 2011

“Counterterrorism Strategy”
U.S. CT [counterterrorism] efforts require a multidepartmental
and multinational effort that goes beyond traditional intelligence,
military, and law enforcement functions. We are engaged in a
broad, sustained, and integrated campaign that harnesses every
tool of American power—military, civilian, and the power of our
values—together with the concerted efforts of allies, partners, and
multilateral institutions.
These efforts must also be complemented by broader capabili-
ties, such as diplomacy, development, strategic communications,
and the power of the private sector. In addition, there will con-
tinue to be many opportunities for the Executive Branch to work
with Congress, consistent with our laws and our values, to further
empower our counterterrorism professionals with the tools and
resources necessary to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts.

From the Trump Administration’s 2017

“Counterterrorism Strategy” Draft
In May 2017 some news organizations got hold of a draft of President
Trump’s “Counterterrorism Strategy.” A year later, the White House
still had not publicized a document explaining its strategy for coun-
terterrorism. The draft stated that the United States would avoid
“costly, large-scale U.S. military interventions to achieve counterter-
rorism objectives” and would instead “increasingly look to partners
to share the responsibility for countering terrorist groups.”46 This
stated goal seemed to be contradicted by decisions taken early on in
Trump’s presidency when he gave the Pentagon permission to send
thousands more troops to Afghanistan. At the same time, he gave the
military the authority to intensify attacks on terrorist targets in Iraq,
Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. The rough copy fell short
with respect to supporting “soft power tools” which Washington
included in the past in counterterrorism strategies.47

Nonmilitary Hard Power: Economic Sanctions

Like military actions, economic sanctions are imposed by governments in
order to affect the behavior of the targets of such measures. Trade and
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  267
foreign aid sanctions are meant to change the behavior of governments,
whereas financial sanctions can be imposed against both states and non-
state actors. Trade sanctions prohibit the exporting and importing of
goods to and from target countries; foreign aid sanctions stop financial
and other assistance, such as loans, to targeted governments; financial
sanctions concentrate typically on the freezing of financial assets of for-
eign governments or organizations so that they cannot be moved from
the frozen bank accounts. All of these economic sanctions have been
imposed as counterterrorist measures by the U.S. government.
Indeed, when the U.S. Department of State identifies states as spon-
sors of terrorism, this designation triggers automatically a multitude of
U.S.-imposed sanctions that include the prohibition of certain exports
and access to a variety of foreign assistance programs. In addition, spe-
cific sanctions tend to be legislated against sponsor states. But sanctions
require careful consideration. While they inflict costs on the targeted
states and in some cases on organizations, they also result in losses to the
businesses and workers of exporting sectors in the country that imposes
sanctions. Moreover, unless other countries decide in favor of sanctions,
unilaterally imposed measures of this kind tend to be less harmful than
intended. In the past, even the United States’ allies in Europe were not at
all eager or willing to join the former in a multilateral sanction regime.
This was true with respect to Iran, Syria, and Cuba.
Whatever the reason for sanctions, the “scholarly literature on eco-
nomic statecraft is generally skeptical, portraying the use of economic
sanctions and other strategies as ineffective or even counterproductive.”48
Robert Pape, for example, concluded that based on the evidence “eco-
nomic sanctions are not likely to achieve foreign policy objectives.”49
However, Pillar points to Libya as probably the “best case of sanc-
tions helping to shape a state sponsor’s behavior on terrorism-related
matters.”50 In the Libyan case, as a study by Stephen D. Collins revealed,
unilateral economic sanctions by the United States (and the bombing of
Libyan cities) did not discourage the Gaddafi government from sponsor-
ing terrorism, but UN-backed multilateral economic sanctions did reduce
Libyan-supported terrorist attacks markedly.51 The multilateral sanctions
imposed by the UN Security Council were particularly intended to press
Libya to surrender the suspects in the terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight
103. Thus, “the evidence clearly demonstrates that following the appli-
cation of multilateral sanctions Libyan support for terrorism declined
precipitously.”52 Similarly, when Muammar Gaddafi signaled in late 2003
his willingness to dismantle WMD, this decision seemed influenced by his
desire to end all sanctions in order to improve his country’s economy.

Drying Up Financial Resources

Money has been identified as the most important fuel of terrorism.
President George W. Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called
268 Counterterrorism
money the oxygen and lifeblood of terrorism as they ordered measures
to dry up the financial resources of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups
in the wake of 9/11. To be sure, terrorists need money to support them-
selves, their training facilities, their weaponry, and the planning and
execution of their terrorist actions. But Pillar has correctly pointed out
that efforts to defeat terrorism by imposing financial controls encounter
two major problems in that (1) terrorism in terms of killing innocents
is cheap and (2) “the money that does flow in the terrorist world is
extremely difficult to track.”53 Tracking terrorists’ financial resources is
severely hampered by several factors, among them their habit of using
false names and their preference for using unorthodox financial transac-
tions—among them money laundering—and getting involved in criminal
activities, such as drug trafficking. Moreover, actual terrorist attacks
are rather cheap. Although prepared for many months in advance and
involving dozens of people besides the actual suicide bombers, the whole
9/11 plot did not cost more than $400,000. The Madrid train bombings
that required two years of preparations were staged for an estimated
$10,000. And even the most devastating explosive belts for single suicide
bombers can be assembled for around $100. Following the money trail
may be more successful in identifying the members of terrorist cells and
thereby increasing law enforcement officials’ chances of hunting down
and arresting terrorists, and less successful at putting terror organizations
once and for all out of business.

Soft Power and Counterterrorism

Besides hard power, namely military and economic measures, there are
also less drastic options available in response to specific terrorist inci-
dents and terrorism threats in general. In assessing the utility of soft
power, one needs to distinguish between state sponsors and terrorist
groups or networks.

Deterrence
Like many other leading international relations scholars and policy-
makers, Robert Jervis believes that contemporary terrorist threats
“cannot be contained by deterrence” because “terrorists are fanatics,
and there is nothing that they value that we can hold at risk; rogues
like Iraq [under Saddam Hussein] are risk-acceptant and accident prone.
The heightened sense of vulnerability increases the dissatisfaction with
deterrence.”54 Richard Betts concludes that deterrence has a “limited
efficacy” for countering today’s major terrorist threats.55 But Robert F.
Trager and Dessislava P. Zagorcheva argue that “the claim that deter-
rence is ineffective against terrorists is wrong.” According to these two
political scientists,
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  269
Even seemingly fanatical terrorists, intensely motivated by reli-
gious beliefs, are not irrational in a sense that makes them impos-
sible to deter.
Some essential elements of terrorist support systems are likely to
be less motivated and therefore vulnerable to traditional forms of
deterrence, particularly at early decision nodes in the lengthy process
of preparation required for major attacks.
Even the most highly motivated terrorists, however, can be
deterred from certain courses of action by holding at risk their politi-
cal goals, rather than life and liberty.

For Trager and Zagorcheva, “the ability to hold political ends [of ter-
rorist groups] at risk . . . stands by far the best chance of fracturing the
global terrorist network, one of the most important objectives of coun-
terterrorism policy.”56

Diplomacy
The prospect for deterrence is different with respect to state sponsors
of terrorism. But without diplomatic contacts, without talking to the
sponsors of terrorism and terrorist groups it is impossible to figure out
whether there are prospects for deterrence or not.
For over four decades, the United States has insisted that it will not
negotiate with terrorists and will not give in to terrorists’ demands. This
policy was put in place during the Nixon administration and officially
embraced by all administrations thereafter. Yet, diplomacy represents
a useful instrument in efforts to solve specific terrorist situations, to
convince other governments to join counterterrorist measures, and to
suspend their support of terrorists. Diplomatic efforts tend to be espe-
cially urgent during hostage situations, when the wellbeing and even
the lives of victims are at stake. During the Iran hostage crisis, there
were many attempts to find diplomatic solutions to the deadlock—even
though the United States and Iran had broken off their diplomatic ties.
In this case, members of the Swiss embassy in Tehran and officials of the
United Nations were among the third parties that negotiated on behalf
of the United States, and, eventually, Algerian officials were instrumental
in brokering the agreement that led to the end of the crisis. Diplomacy
had a chance because Iranian authorities had great influence over the
hostage-holders. During the TWA hijacking crisis in 1985, there was also
a great deal of media diplomacy that involved Washington officials and
Lebanese individuals explaining their positions and responding to each
other’s suggestions and demands on television. More importantly, con-
tacts between Washington officials and the Israeli government and the
role of the Red Cross were crucial in negotiating the release of Arab pris-
oners by Israel and the freeing of the hostages by their Hezbollah captors.
270 Counterterrorism
Going the diplomatic route does not guarantee satisfactory solutions.
Although the United States and the Taliban did not have diplomatic rela-
tions, the military actions against both Al Qaeda and Taliban facilities in
Afghanistan were preceded by indirect diplomatic exchanges facilitated
by third parties, especially Pakistan. But failed efforts in some instances
should not discourage diplomatic initiatives in other cases. In the words
of the National Commission on Terrorism,

Diplomacy is an important instrument, both in gaining the assistance

of other nations in particular cases and convincing the international
community to condemn and outlaw egregious terrorist prac-
tices . . . The United States should strengthen its efforts to discour-
age the broad range of assistance that states provide to international
terrorists. A key focus of this initiative must be to reduce terrorists’
freedom of movement by encouraging countries to stop admitting
and tolerating the presence of terrorists within their borders.57

Finally, diplomacy is “linked with all the [other] elements of coun-

terterrorism,” as Paul Pillar observed, whether one thinks of military
measures, international cooperation in the areas of intelligence and law
enforcement, efforts to dry up terrorists’ financial resources, or eco-
nomic sanctions.58
Severing diplomatic relations with terrorist sponsors, an option
repeatedly chosen by the United States, demonstrates a targeted coun-
try’s determination to punish state sponsors of terrorism. But this option
eliminates direct diplomacy as a counterterrorist instrument aiming at
the exploration of incentives that could weaken a government’s willing-
ness to support terrorism.
Of course, even without formal diplomatic ties, direct government-to-
government contacts are not out of the question and can be one factor
in paving the way for policy changes on the part of a state sponsor of
terrorism. Again, Libya is the most obvious case in point. In 2003, the
country was taken off the U.S. State Department’s list of state spon-
sors of terrorism after American–Libyan contacts resulted in Muammar
Gaddafi’s decision to discontinue his WMD program and any involve-
ment in terrorism; he furthermore agreed to compensate the families
of victims that perished in Libyan-sponsored terrorist incidents. By the
end of 2008, twenty-eight years after diplomatic ties were broken off
between Washington and Tripoli, the two countries were ready to restore
full relations. As mentioned before, Gaddafi’s desire to end his coun-
try’s economic and political isolation influenced his decision greatly, but
diplomacy was instrumental in sealing the ultimate outcome.
Whether the U.S. president should directly negotiate with Iranian lead-
ers or not was a major bone of contention during the 2008 presidential
campaign, with Barack Obama agreeing to talk to America’s adversaries,
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  271
including Iran, without prior conditions, and John McCain rejecting
direct and highest-level diplomacy. At the same time, the Bush admin-
istration sent contradictory signals. In May 2008, President Bush said
in a speech before the Knesset and immediately after mentioning Iran’s
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and
radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have
been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before.
As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator
declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might
have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is—
the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discred-
ited by history.59

Two months after the president categorically rejected a dialogue with

Iranian leaders and attacked those who recommended direct talks, the
U.S. State Department’s third-ranking official, William J. Burns, trave-
led to Geneva to participate in talks, along with representatives of the
European Union, with Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. During the
Obama presidency, the long negotiation about Iran’s nuclear program in
Vienna between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
the European Union, Russia, and China on the one hand and Iran on
the other hand were all along strictly about the most pressing problem,
namely the threat of the latter possessing nuclear weapons. Iran’s support
of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups were not part of these
negotiations. In the spring of 2018, President Donald Trump announced
the United States’ withdrawal from the nuclear agreement. Nevertheless,
however imperfect the agreement was, the Vienna negotiations demon-
strated that when nation-states are involved, diplomacy has a chance.

Talking to Terrorist Groups

Whether to talk to and negotiate with terrorist groups depends first of
all on the particular circumstances. Hostage situations are the most likely
cases when governments are willing to deal directly or indirectly with
terrorists in order to save the lives of fellow citizens. In the Iran hostage
crisis, in the arms-for-hostages deals between Washington and Tehran
for the sake of Americans held hostage by Hezbollah in Lebanon, and
in many other less prominent cases, governments and corporations have
negotiated and struck deals with terrorists, without admitting it, to free
hostages. This practice continues to this day.
Giving in to the demands of terrorists in order to free hostages is prob-
lematic because such bargains might encourage further hostage-takings
by the same groups or by other organizations.
272 Counterterrorism
It is far more difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate the abandonment
of terrorism and bringing groups into the domestic and/or international
political process. Northern Ireland serves as an excellent example.
After decades of bloody violence and a long, protracted peace process,
Northern Ireland finally turned the corner in early 2007, when Sinn
Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the
Democratic Unionist Party, representing the Protestant majority, formed
a government in which Ian Paisley, the longtime Protestant opponent
of any meaningful political role for the Catholic minority, became the
first minister (or prime minister) and Martin McGuinness, a former IRA
commander, the deputy first minister. As the case of Northern Ireland
demonstrates, negotiated peace agreements rarely hold after the first try;
instead, it is far more likely that the road to peace is paved with bro-
ken accords and renewed outbreaks of violence. Cease-fire agreements
between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers, between
Spain’s government and the Basque ETA, and between the Israeli gov-
ernment and Hamas have been repeatedly negotiated and broken. Yet,
given the poor track record of military actions in ending terrorism, the
negotiation route may well be the most promising option in certain cases.
In the rare Sri Lankan case, however, the Tigers were defeated totally by
the overwhelming force of the military.
One needs to recognize that the goals and ideologies of organiza-
tions determine whether there are opportunities for common ground
and compromises. Separatist groups may be inclined to settle for a sig-
nificant degree of political, economic, and social autonomy short of full
independence, if only because they risk otherwise the support of their
constituencies. Organizations with uncompromising objectives, on the
other hand, will not move from their ultimate goals. While it was pos-
sible to negotiate with Marxist militants, such as the Baader-Meinhof
terrorists in Germany, about the release of their hostages in return for
freeing some of their imprisoned comrades, it did not make sense to talk
about the group’s categorical stand on its final objective: The destruc-
tion of capitalism and democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany
and elsewhere in the West. Religious terrorists, too, tend to have abso-
lute demands and goals that defy compromise. A comparison between
the secular Palestinian al-Fatah, a terrorist organization before—at least
officially—it abandoned terrorism, and the religious Palestinian Hamas
is instructive. While al-Fatah has been open to settling for a compromise
two-state solution with Israel, Hamas has not retreated from its ultimate
objective—the removal of Israel from the map of the Middle East.
Aware that suggestions to actually talk to Al Qaeda might be con-
sidered “tantamount to treason,” Louise Richardson seems to reject
the profound difference between “traditional” terrorists with more
realistic goals and utopian terrorists with apocalyptic objectives, when
she suggests,
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  273
If anything, we appear to know less about the nature of our adversar-
ies in the war on terrorism than we did when we began. We take as a
given that their demands are so extreme as to be nonnegotiable, but
it would be worth finding out if that is, in fact, the case.
Ayman al-Zawahiri has clearly emerged as the chief spokesman
and strategist of the al-Qaeda leadership, and while it is far from
clear that he has the authority to carry his followers with him, the
opportunity to engage him is one that should not be missed, no mat-
ter how much opprobrium we hold for him.60

For those who reject talks with al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor, or
ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, such negotiations would elevate Al Qaeda, ISIS,
and their affiliated groups and like-minded, unorganized followers to
legitimate political actors without any incentive to abandon violence. As
for Al Qaeda, one expert noted,

There is no sign that al Qaeda has changed its thinking on the util-
ity of violence. And it is hard to conceive of a viable process of pri-
mary negotiations in which Al Qaeda could be included. Al Qaeda
has global aspirations and no firm territorial base, and there is no
clearly defined territory in which its aims could be satisfied through
constitutional means. Under these conditions, opening negotiations
would be a counterproductive move: it would provide al Qaeda with
political legitimacy.61

Similarly, negotiations with ISIS were off the table from the outset.
Perhaps the situation is somewhat different with respect to the Afghan
Taliban since the group has mostly or only interest in domestic poli-
tics. The U.S. and NATO-backed Afghan plan aimed at winning over
lower-level fighters, negotiating with Taliban leaders’ participation in
the legitimate political process, and enlisting the support of neighboring
governments for this kind of peace process. However, even as the peace
assembly, or jirga, approved the plan, Taliban fighters intensified their
attacks on targets in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.
Scott Atran and Robert Axelrod, two academics who examined the util-
ity of negotiating with terrorist groups by actually talking to the leaders of a
number of organizations on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups,
noted that “there are groups, like Al Qaeda, that will probably have to be
fought to the end.”62 But they also made the following argument:

It’s an uncomfortable truth, but direct interaction with terrorist

groups is sometimes indispensable. And even if it turns out that nego-
tiation gets us nowhere with a particular group, talking and listening
can help us to better understand why the group wants to fight us, so
that we may better fight it.63
274 Counterterrorism
In June 2010 the Supreme Court ruled in Holder v. Humanitarian Law
Project that even such expert contacts with terrorist groups constitute
“material support,” lend “legitimacy” to an organization, and were
therefore illegal.64

Public Diplomacy
Unlike traditional, government-to-government diplomacy, public diplo-
macy is conducted by one government and aimed at foreign publics. So
far, the record of American post-9/11 public diplomacy in the Arab and
Muslim world has been a fiasco and thus a far cry from the success story
during the Cold War. The three pillars of American public diplomacy of
the Cold War era—the spread of information via foreign language broad-
casts into the communist world, cultural exchanges, and educational
exchanges—need to be adapted to the global realities of the twenty-first
century.65 In the age of information, when a multitude of global television
and radio networks and the Internet provide instant news, information,
and communication, the successful broadcast strategies of the past will
no longer work. There are more vehicles and opportunities to reach and
engage larger audiences overseas than ever before—but only with inno-
vative programs conceived, produced, and presented by professionals
who speak the languages and know the cultures of the target audiences
and, of course, the public relations goals of the United States.
Although well financed in the years after 9/11, the U.S. government’s
Arab-language television network al-Hurra and radio station al-Sawa,
for example, neither displayed the excellence of their Cold War predeces-
sors, such as “Voice of America” or “Radio Free Europe,” nor founded
promising new approaches for a completely different media and commu-
nication environment. As for the Internet, Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates was right on target when he said the following:

Public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miser-
able at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about
as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our
policies and our goals. It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is
better at communicating its message on the internet than America.
As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one
man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest
communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are
not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic
communications.66

While a modernized public diplomacy model must focus on the Internet’s

ample opportunities for virtual cultural and educational exchanges, it
should never do so at the expense of direct exchanges since surveys reveal
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  275
that many Arabs and Muslims are in favor of such interactions. However,
while far from satisfactory during the Bush administration and making
strides during the Obama presidency, the Department of State’s public
diplomacy section took a hit in terms of qualified personnel and financial
resources as the Trump White House and even Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson shrank severely the government’s diplomatic arm.
Of course, public diplomacy should also target moderate Muslim
clerics and opinion-makers, such as media personnel, particularly news
analysts, editorial writers, and columnists, and encourage and even press
them to speak out against terrorism that is carried out in the name of
Islam. In the wake of the 2004 terrorist attack by Chechen separatists on
a Russian school in Beslan, a number of Muslim clerics condemned the
attacks—but such condemnations were often not categorical but permit-
ted explicitly or implicitly such lethal strikes against Israelis and other
infidels who had not, like Russia, supported the Palestinian cause. Other
Muslim leaders have pointed out that most of the deadly and gruesome
terrorism attacks at the dawn of the twenty-first century have been per-
petrated by Muslims. At the height of the violent uproar over the Danish
cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, some Arab opinion-
makers questioned the Muslim world’s mass protests against drawings
and its collective silence about jihadis who beheaded their Western hos-
tages and posted the videotapes of these executions on the Internet. After
a Jordanian military pilot was cruelly burned to death by ISIS execution-
ers in 2015, many Muslims around the world condemned the group.
Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque said the
militants “deserve the Quranic punishment of death, crucifixion or the
chopping off of their arms for being enemies of God and the Prophet
Muhammad.”67
Since these voices are the best hope for promoting movements toward
nonviolence and the ultimate failure of violence in their own communi-
ties, countries, and regions, they should be the particular targets of mass
media and personal communication efforts.

Conciliation and Peace

One option—the effort on the part of stable democratic governments
to offer conciliation, compromise, and peace to individuals or organiza-
tions instead of fighting and repressing them—is frequently omitted from
responses to terrorism. As Peter C. Sederberg has pointed out,

We tend to underestimate the possibility that the democratic princi-

ples themselves may suggest effective response. Negotiations, com-
promise, and conciliation rest at the heart of democratic processes,
but commentators usually dismiss them as irrelevant or even danger-
ously ineffective.68
276 Counterterrorism
A chance for conciliation and compromise may exist if individual terror-
ists recognize the hopelessness of their struggle and if organizations are
not dead set on totally destroying the state they fight. Italy’s “repentance”
law of 1980, for example, was an effort to lure individual terrorists away
from the Red Brigades, win their collaboration, and thereby weaken and
defeat the terror organization. To be sure, the time was right, in that the
growing brutality of the Red Brigades’ terror strikes horrified an increas-
ing number of its members, some of whom no longer believed that their
armed struggle could succeed. But while some terrorists took the oppor-
tunity, many others did not. Identifying “group dynamics” as keeping
terrorists in the fold, Donatella della Porta found that

many of the militants who were in the process of quitting terrorism

were in fact compelled to react to the “betrayal” of some of their
fellow comrades by confirming their loyalty to the organization.
Solidarity toward comrades also influenced the process of quitting
underground organizations. Interviews expressed such sentiments as
“You do not give up on the basis of an individual decision.”69

In June 2004, after a series of deadly terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, King
Fahd called on militant followers of Al Qaeda to turn themselves in to
the law enforcement authorities within a one-month period in which “the
door of forgiveness” would be open. This limited amnesty was offered
with the warning that unless militants surrendered, they would face the
full might of state wrath. Shortly after the amnesty was announced, two
of Saudi Arabia’s most wanted terrorists surrendered. But a Saudi group
linked to Osama bin Laden predicted in an online news release that the
initiative would end in “utter failure . . . to stop the jihad.”70 There was
no threat in this particular case, but would-be defectors might not have
left their groups for fear of being punished. The limited amnesty was not
successful at all.
Just like conciliation efforts directed at individuals, peace initiatives
aimed at bringing governments and organizations together and finding
nonviolent compromises have had mixed results in the past. In South
Africa, a long process of peace involving the minority government and
the African National Congress (ANC) was successful in that it led to the
establishment of a democratic government in 1994. After the “getting-
to-know-each-other” phase, the parties set a negotiation agenda and
agreed on visible compromises: The government released ANC prison-
ers, and the ANC terminated its armed struggle. This was followed by
actual negotiations, the implementation of the negotiated agreement,
and, finally, a process of “truth and conciliation.”71 The willingness of all
parties to participate in negotiations to resolve the century-old conflict in
Northern Ireland in the 1990s peacefully moved them toward a lasting,
nonviolent, political solution. In the Middle East, a negotiated solution
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  277
of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict seemed repeatedly on track in the last
decades, but opponents of compromise on both sides derailed the peace
process at crucial junctures. Although negotiations between the Spanish
government and the Basque separatist group ETA resulted in a cease-fire
agreement in the 1990s, in the long run the terrorists rejected a compro-
mise solution and resumed their campaign of terror.
It seems that conflicts between states and domestic groups that com-
mit terrorism are more susceptible to conciliation and compromise than
are clashes between a nation-state on the one hand and foreign terror-
ist groups or an international terrorism network on the other. Secular
groups may be more willing than religious organizations to partake in
negotiations. Individual followers of Osama bin Laden may be lured
away from their terrorist activities by amnesty offers, but it is unlikely
that the leaders of the global Al Qaeda terror network and their princi-
pal foe—the United States—would travel the road of reconciliation and
compromise. And yet, conciliation should never be discounted as one of
many options for responding to terrorism. Indeed, governments can use
a stick and carrot at the same time or, as Sederberg suggested, “combine
conciliatory and repressive elements.”72

Notes
1 Peter D. Feaver and Hal Brands, “Trump and Terrorism: U.S. Strategy after
ISIS,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2017, [Link]/articles/
2017-02-13/trump-and-terrorism, accessed May 29, 2018.
2 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Obama’s Foreign Policy Must Combine Hard and Soft
Power,” Huffington Post, December 3, 2008, [Link]/
joseph-nye/obamas-foreign-policiesm_b_147108.html?view=print, accessed
December 11, 2008.
3 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made these remarks during her testi-
mony as secretary of state designee before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee’s confirmation hearing on January 13, 2009. For the transcript,
see [Link]/templates/story/[Link]?storyId=99290981, accessed
January 14, 2009.
4 The quotes are from Max Weber’s lecture “The Profession and Vocation of
Politics,” [Link]/~polisci/syllabi/[Link], accessed December 11,
2008.
5 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 8.
6 Ibid., 9.
7 Defense Secretary Robert Gates made these remarks in his Landon Lecture at
Kansas State University, November 26, 2007. The text of the lecture is avail-
able at [Link]/speeches/[Link]?speechid=1199, accessed
December 1, 2008.
8 National Intelligence Council, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,”
[Link]/nic/NIC_2025_project.html.
9 Defense Secretary Robert Gates made these remarks in his Landon Lecture at
Kansas State University, November 26, 2007.
10 Andrew J. Bacevich, “Think Again: What’s Our Definition of Victory?”
Newsweek, December 8, 2008, 38.
278 Counterterrorism
11 From the 2015 National Security Strategy, [Link]/sites/
default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf, accessed July 26,
2015.
12 Jenna Johnson, “Donald Trump Promises to ‘Bomb the Hell out of ISIS’ in
New Radio Ad,” Washington Post, November 18, 2015.
13 As reported on the Newsmax web site: [Link]/Newsfront/trump-
eradicate-isis-terrorists/2017/04/05/id/782715/, accessed May 26, 2018.
14 John Lewis Gaddis, “And Now This: Lessons from the Old Era for the New
One,” in Strobe Talbot and Nayan Chanda, eds., The Age of Terror (New
York: Basic Books, 2001), 3.
15 Geoffrey Nunberg, “How Much Wallop Can a Simple Word Pack?” New
York Times, July 11, 2002, sec. 4, 7.
16 Donald M. Snow, National Security for a New Era (New York: Pearson
Longman, 2007), 299.
17 Paul Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2001), 218.
18 From President Obama’s remarks on his new strategy on Afghanistan
and Pakistan, March 27, 2009. The full speech is available at www.
[Link]/the_press_office/Remarks-bythe-President-on-a-New-
Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/, accessed June 27, 2010.
19 Ibid., 15.
20 Pillar, 168.
21 Neil C. Livingstone, “Proactive Responses to Terrorism: Reprisals, Preemption,
and Retribution,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., ed., International Terrorism (New
York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 220.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Pillar, 101.
25 Livingstone, 222.
26 Barry R. Posen, “The Struggle against Terrorism: Grand Strategy, Strategy,
and Tactics,” International Security 26:3 (Winter 2001–2002): 47.
27 Carlotta Gall,“Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid,” New York Times,
September 9, 2008, [Link]/2008/09/08/world/asia/08afghan.
html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print, accessed September
9, 2008.
28 Ibid.
29 Livingstone, 223.
30 Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” in Demetrios James
Caraley, ed., American Hegemony: Preventive War, Iraq, and Imposing
Democracy (New York: Academy of Political Science, 2004), 9.
31 From a transcript of NBC News, Meet the Press, February 8, 2004 (retrieved
from the LexisNexis electronic archive).
32 Robert M. Gates, “A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a
New Age,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2009): 29.
33 Lindsay Clutterbuck, “Law Enforcement,” in Audrey Kurth Cronin and
James M. Ludes, eds., Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 141.
34 Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for
Countering al Qa’ida (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008), ch. 2.
35 [Link]/2013/05/24/us/politics/transcript-of-obamas-speech-on-
[Link], accessed July 20, 2015.
36 Holger Jensen, “The United States Should Retaliate against Terrorist Groups,”
in Laura K. Egendorf, ed., Terrorism: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, CA:
Greenhaven Press, 2000), 164.
 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power  279
37 Ibid.
38 Deborah Sontag, “Israel Acknowledges Hunting Down Arab Militants,” New
York Times, December 22, 2000, A12.
39 Perez was quoted in Clyde Haberman, “In the Mid-East This Year, Even
Words Shoot to Kill,” New York Times, August 5, 2001, sec. 4, 3.
40 Ibid.
41 Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, May
2, 2004, [Link]/2004/05/02/magazine/[Link]?scp=
1&sq=michael%20ignatieff,%20lesser%20evils&st=cse, accessed May 20,
2009.
42 For more on the CIA authority, see James Risen and David Johnson, “Threats
and Responses: Hunt for Al Qaeda; Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to
Kill Terrorists,” New York Times, December 15, 2002, 1.
43 Panetta made this remark during his appearance on the ABC News program
This Week, June 27, 2010.
44 Pillar, 98.
45 David C. Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of
America’s War against Terrorism (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 35.
46 The Reuter story “Trump Counterterrorism Strategy Urges Allies to Do
More” of May 6, 2017 was posted on the website of MSNB, [Link].
com/2017/05/06/[Link], accessed May
27, 2018.
47 Ibid.
48 Stephen D. Collins, “Dissuading State Support of Terrorism: Strikes or
Sanctions?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27:1 (January/February 2004): 3.
49 Robert Pape, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International
Security 22 (Fall 1997): 110.
50 Pillar, 167.
51 Collins.
52 Ibid., 15.
53 Pillar, 94, 95.
54 Jervis, 7.
55 Richard Betts, “The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy,” in Demetrious
James Caraley, ed., September 11, Terrorist Attacks, and U.S. Foreign Policy
(New York: Academy of Political Science, 2002), 46.
56 Robert F. Trager and Dessislava P. Zagorcheva, “Deterring Terrorism: It Can
Be Done,” International Security 30:3 (Winter 2005/2006): 88–89.
57 Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism: Report of the
National Commission on Terrorism, Pursuant to Public Law 277, 105th
Congress, 17, 18.
58 Pillar, 73.
59 The transcript of President George W. Bush’s speech on May 15, 2008, is
available at [Link]/news/releases/2008/05/[Link].
60 Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy,
Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2006), 212.
61 Peter R. Neumann, “Negotiating with Terrorists,” Foreign Affairs 86:1
(January/February 2007): 136.
62 Scott Atran and Robert Axelrod, “Why We Talk to Terrorists,” New York
Times, June 29, 2010.
63 Ibid.
64 The Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruling is available at www.
[Link]/opinions/09pdf/[Link], accessed July 1, 2010.
65 For public diplomacy in the information age, see Geoffrey Cohen and
Amelia Arsenault, “Moving from Monologue to Dialogue to Collaboration:
280 Counterterrorism
The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy,” in Geoffrey Cohen and Nicholas J.
Cull, eds., Public Diplomacy in a Changing World, Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science Series, Vol. 616 (Philadelphia, PA:
SAGE, March 2008), 46–52.
66 The remarks were made during the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University,
November 26, 2007.
67 Reported by the Associated Press, [Link]
[Link];_ylt=A0LEVzu
WmrZVCg8AOh1XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzb2k0bmQ5BGNvbG8DYmY
xBHBvcwM3BHZ0aWQDVklQNDQyXzEEc2VjA3Ny#, accessed July 27,
2015.
68 Peter C. Sederberg, “Conciliation as Counter-Terrorist Strategy,” Journal of
Peace Research 32:3 (1995): 298.
69 Donatella della Porta, “Left-Wing Terrorism in Italy,” in Martha Crenshaw,
ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania State University,
1995), 153.
70 Reuters, “Qaeda Says Saudi Militant Amnesty Will Fail,” Yahoo! News, June
30, 2004, [Link], accessed July 6, 2004.
71 For more, see “Reconciliation and Community: The Future of Peace in Northern
Ireland,” Conference Report, Project on Justice in Times of Transition, June
6–8, 1995, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
72 Sederberg, 299.
12 Balancing Security, Liberty, and
Human Rights

A government’s first duty is to protect the lives and property of its citizens.
Therefore, political leaders tend to take extraordinary measures during
times of crisis in the name of providing security. But after devastating
terrorist strikes, democratic governments must resist the temptation to go
too far—otherwise, they play into the hands of the very same terrorists
they set out to defeat. Terrorists want to change the behavior of the socie-
ties they attack. When they strike democracies, they want to scare their
targets into weakening or abandoning their most esteemed values: their
respect for civil liberties and for human rights. This was precisely what
bin Laden wanted to accomplish with the attacks of 9/11, and he believed
in fact that he succeeded. In an interview with Al Jazeera, bin Laden said,

The values of this Western civilization under the leadership of

America have been destroyed. Those awesome symbolic towers that
speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have been destroyed.
They have gone up in smoke.
The proof came, when the U.S. government pressured the media
not to run our statements that are not longer than a few minutes.
They felt that the truth started to reach the American people, the
truth that we are not terrorists as they understand it but because
we are being attacked in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia,
Kashmir, the Philippines, and everywhere else.1

While he overstated by far what was happening in the United States and
elsewhere in the West, bin Laden left no doubt that he was delighted
about his enemies’ reactions. Earlier terrorists anticipated also that gov-
ernments would overreact and, as a result, frustrate and infuriate their
own citizens. Well before 9/11, Paul Wilkinson warned against “overre-
action” and repressive measures that “could destroy democracy far more
rapidly and effectively than any campaign by a terrorist group.” But he
also cautioned against “underreaction” in the face of terrorist threats.2 In
other words, governments must strive for a balance between providing
security on the one hand and respecting civil liberties and human rights
282 Counterterrorism
on the other, between effective anti- and counterterrorist measures on
one side and highly esteemed societal values on the other.
What is the distinction between anti- and counterterrorism? In the
1980s, Marc A. Celmer wrote that “antiterrorist actions are designed as
defensive measures to prevent the occurrence of terrorism as opposed to
counterterrorist measures, which are offensive in nature and are designed
to respond to a terrorist act.”3 While antiterrorism is still understood
as defensive in nature, the common meaning of counterterrorism tran-
scends offensive measures. When threatened by terrorism, governments
adopt and implement a whole range of policies and measures in order
to prevent further terrorist strikes. Hunting down terrorists, punishing
supporters of terrorist activities, launching retaliatory strikes, tightening
security measures, and strengthening preparedness programs are all parts
of an overall counterterrorism strategy. Typically, a host of governmen-
tal institutions and actors as well as the private sector get involved in
counterterrorist measures. Counterterrorism, then, encompasses strat-
egies and tactics adopted in response to terrorism. According to one
encyclopedia entry,

Counter-terrorism is not specific to any one field or organization, it

involves entities from all levels of society. For instance, businesses
have security plans and sometimes share commercial data with
government. Local police, fire fighters, and emergency personnel
(often called “first responders”) have plans for dealing with terrorist
attacks. Armies conduct combat operations against terrorists, often
using special forces.4

Antiterrorist policies and actions, then, are part of the overall counterter-
rorist approaches that a country adopts in response to terrorism and the
threat thereof.
Years before the U.S. government adopted its first comprehensive
anti- and counterterrorism laws, European democracies, such as Germany,
Greece, and the United Kingdom, enacted many measures in response to
frequent terrorist strikes within their borders. Between 1970 and 1989,
the Federal Republic of Germany adopted ten amendments to its crimi-
nal code that provided the judiciary and police with more justifications
for investigating and arresting suspects. After 9/11, “Rasterfahndung,”
a combination of profiling and data mining that had been used in
the Federal Republic’s struggle against the Red Army Faction and its
successor groups, was revived. Describing the earlier practice, Peter
Katzenstein wrote,

A newly developed “computer matching” (Rasterfahndung), tailored

to the fight against terrorism, scans large data sets to identify over-
lapping clusters of what are regarded as suspicious traits, in the hope
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  283
of targeting police work more efficiently and effectively. For exam-
ple, in the 1970s the police got access to the files of the West German
utility companies and identified those customers who paid their bills
in cash or through third parties. This group of potential suspects
was narrowed down further through checks with data on residence
registration, which is compulsory in West Germany, automobile reg-
istration, receipt of social security or child care payments as well as
other data sources. What remained was a list of names of potential
terrorist suspects: those who did not receive pensions or child allow-
ances, who were not registered, had no automobiles and who paid
their utility bills in cash or through third parties. Traditional police
investigation, including surveillance and house searches, was concen-
trated on this list of potential suspects.5

The post-9/11 Rasterfahndung concentrated on Muslims and Arabs

in their twenties and thirties and data assembled by travel agencies,
telecommunication companies, universities, and other public and pri-
vate institutions. In early 2006, Germany’s Constitutional Court
(Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled in the case of a Moroccan plaintiff that
Rasterfahndung is legal only in the face of a “real threat” to the security
of the country or the life of a citizen.
Within months after 9/11, Germany enacted two comprehensive
antiterror laws with many far-reaching provisions that, for example,
expanded jurisdiction of law enforcement agencies beyond German
borders, allowed authorities to ban religious groups if they promoted
violence, and expanded the power of border patrol agents to screen and
search persons and their belongings. In 2006, following the botched plot
to bomb two German trains by Lebanese students, Chancellor Angela
Merkel and her government pushed for expanded closed-circuit camera
systems in train stations and other public places. A camera at the Cologne
main terminal had provided the grainy images of two young men board-
ing a train and led to the quick arrest of one of the would-be bombers.
Beginning with the Northern Ireland Act of 1973 that toughened
emergency provisions to deal with terrorism in Northern Ireland, the
United Kingdom enacted several antiterrorism laws, like Germany, in
reaction to 9/11 and the multiple suicide attacks on London’s transit sys-
tem in July 2005: The Crime and Security Act of 2001, the Prevention of
Terrorism Act of 2005, and the Terrorism Act of 2006. Even before the
events of 2001, when British authorities were mostly concerned about
terrorism in the context of the conflict in Northern Ireland, British intel-
ligence and law enforcement agencies were authorized by the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 and the 2001 Crime and Security
Act “to evaluate communications data for patterns suggestive of ter-
rorist activities.”6 Moreover, to monitor communications data, a law
enforcement or intelligence agency need only to complete a written
284 Counterterrorism
application, which is considered by a designated individual within the
body or agency.7 As John Yoo testified before a U.S. Senate Committee,

The British have greater power [than American law enforcement]

to detain a terrorist without criminal charge. Section 23 of the
Terrorism Act of 2006 sets forth a procedure under which a suspect
may be detained for up to 28 days before he must be charged with a
crime or released. After 48 hours, judicial approval is required, and
is required a second time if the authorities wish to detain the suspect
beyond 7 days. The judge does not need to find probable cause, but
must be satisfied that “there are reasonable grounds for believing that
the further detention of the person to whom the application relates is
necessary to obtain relevant evidence whether by questioning him or
otherwise or to preserve relevant evidence,” and “the investigation in
connection with which the person is detained is being conducted dili-
gently and expeditiously.” The suspect has access to counsel and may
make written or oral communications before the judge; however, the
suspect and his counsel may also be excluded from portions of the
hearing. The British government has already invoked this power to
detain the individuals arrested in conjunction with the August, 2006
plot to blow up airliners departing Britain. This allowed the plot to
be halted, but also allows more evidence to be gathered prior to for-
mally charging the suspects with crimes.8

Coming on the heels of successful and failed suicide bombings in London,

the Antiterrorism Act of 2006 made it a crime to glorify or encourage
political violence. But just like earlier German and Greek laws that pro-
hibited the glorification of terrorism in news reports or the publication of
communications by terrorists during a terrorist incident, this particular
provision was too broad to be effective.
More recently, in reaction to several terrorist shootings on Parliament
Hill in Ottawa the Canadian government proposed and adopted the 2015
Anti-Terrorism Act to strengthen the ability of the Canadian Intelligence
Service to counter terrorism within and prevent Canadian nationals
from joining terrorist groups abroad. After terrorists stormed into the
offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in early 2015 killing eleven
persons, the French government reacted immediately by writing broader
new laws on phone-tapping, planning to hire 3,000 new employees for
the surveillance of persons with suspected ties to jihadists, and ordering
prosecutors to crack down on hate speech and “glorifying terrorism.”
Since the terrorist duo that carried out the massacre claimed that they
killed because Charlie Hebdo was guilty of blasphemy in depicting the
Prophet Muhammad, several European countries reconsidered their
blasphemy laws. In the case of Germany, for example, there were loud
voices demanding the strengthening of the anti-blasphemy law; others
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  285
opposed such changes as curbing freedom of expression. Although intro-
duced in Parliament in the fall of 2014, the United Kingdom’s 2015
Counterterrorism and Security Act gained momentum in the wake of the
Charlie Hebdo shooting and was adopted within weeks. The new law
expanded the authority of border personnel and police in the investiga-
tion of terrorist suspects and placed responsibility on the educational,
penal, and health sector as well as on localities to “have due regard to
the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism” when exer-
cising their functions.

U.S. Anti- and Counterterrorism Laws

Just as foreign governments reacted to particular terrorist incidents
and threats in the past, so did U.S. presidents and members of the U.S.
Congress. Beginning in the 1980s, the United States responded with
legislative and executive initiatives to each major anti-American act of ter-
rorism. But until 1996, when Congress and President Bill Clinton reacted
to the Oklahoma City bombing, antiterrorism laws did not intrude
markedly on the civil liberties of individuals. During the 1980s, when
Americans abroad as well as diplomatic and private American facilities in
foreign countries were frequently the targets of terrorism, presidents and
both houses of Congress were eager to demonstrate that they were doing
something. Typically, presidents established commissions and asked
them for recommendations and congressional committees held hearings.
Administration officials and members of Congress, regardless of whether
they were Democrats or Republicans, were eager to claim that they had
initiated or sponsored legislation to tighten security in the air, on water,
and on foreign soil. During this period, the Omnibus Diplomatic Security
Act of 1986 became the most comprehensive package of new or revised
security laws. For example, this act directed the State Department to
establish a Diplomatic Security Service, intensify the protection of U.S.
embassies and other governmental facilities abroad, and expand a facility
construction program to harden diplomatic missions overseas. The act
(Public Law 99-399) also established a reward program for the capture
of terrorists, a program to provide for greater security at U.S. military
bases abroad, measures for seaport and shipboard security, initiatives
to combat nuclear terrorism, and a framework for the compensation of
terrorism victims.
Strongly affected by the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993
and introduced in Congress two months before the Oklahoma City
bombing, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(Public Law 104-132) was in some respects a softened version of what
President Clinton had asked for. For example, a provision that would
have given police more authority in the surveillance of suspected terror-
ists was scratched. Still, opponents rejected the measure as containing
286 Counterterrorism
“some of the worst assaults on civil liberties in decades.”9 The law made
it a crime for individuals or groups, whether citizens or noncitizens, to
provide money or material support to groups designated by the Secretary
of State as foreign terrorist organizations; another section provided for
the establishment of a special court to handle the deportation of aliens
suspected of terrorist activities while protecting classified information.
The Antiterrorism Act required for the first time that plastic explosives
must contain chemical “taggents” that allow law enforcement to track
their sources. Acknowledging the pleas of victims of terrorism and their
families, this law allowed U.S. citizens to bring civil actions against the
governments of countries that the Secretary of State had designated as
state sponsors of terrorism.
None of the previously adopted laws, executive orders, and other
government initiatives came close to the burst of post-9/11 measures
taken by the White House, the Congress, the Department of Justice, and
other parts of the U.S. government. According to Laura Donohue, in the
eight weeks following the events of 9/11, “the President issued dozens of
Proclamations and Executive Orders and the Executive Branch engaged in
a widespread antiterrorist campaign. Congress introduced 323 bills and
resolutions and adopted 21 laws and resolutions relating to the attacks
and the war against terrorism.”10 Within days of the terror attacks on New
York and Washington, DC, the Bush administration presented Congress
with proposals to expand police and prosecutorial powers to enhance the
fight against terrorism. Some six weeks later, both houses of Congress
voted in overwhelming majorities for the Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism Act, which is better known by its catchy name: The
USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-56). Few lawmakers, if any,
were familiar with the details of the hastily written provisions of the bill
when they cast their votes. In the absence of news reports that described
and scrutinized the most important provisions of either the legislative pro-
posals or the final version of the bill that the president signed into law, the
public remained clueless as to the content of the new law.
The USA PATRIOT Act vastly increased the authority of government
agents to track and gather information by conducting “sneak and peek
searches” in homes, offices, or other private places without informing the
targets of such searches in advance. The government’s wiretap author-
ity was expanded, as was information sharing among various federal
agencies. By simply certifying a need for the material sought in an inves-
tigation of international terrorism, government agents got the authority
to subpoena any individual’s records at places such as libraries, book-
stores, telephone companies, Internet providers, and universities. The
act directed the U.S. Attorney General to hold foreigners who were sus-
pected terrorists for up to seven days before charging them with a crime
or beginning deportation procedures. As Laura Donohue put it,
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  287
The USA PATRIOT Act not just allowed but required the deten-
tion of anyone the AG [Attorney General] had reasonable grounds
to believe was connected to terrorism or was a threat to national
security. The statute did not specify a time period. Detention without
trial could continue until the suspect was either deported or deter-
mined no longer a threat.11

Furthermore, the law stipulated the establishment of a system to finger-

print and photograph foreigners at their entrance point into the United
States, a controversial measure that was in place by the beginning
of 2004.
Supporters of the act emphasized that many of its most controversial
provisions would expire in 2005 unless renewed by congressional and
presidential actions. But this did not pacify conservative and liberal crit-
ics, who—as they became aware of the details in the USA PATRIOT
Act—rejected a number of provisions as assaults on constitutionally
guaranteed civil liberties. Pointing to the vastly different reactions to the
massive antiterrorism law, Charles Doyle of the Congressional Research
Service wrote, “Although it is not without safeguards, critics contend
some of its provisions go too far. Although it grants many of the enhance-
ments sought by the Department of Justice, others are concerned that it
does not go far enough.”12
David Cole and James Dempsey concluded that “the PATRIOT Act
radically transformed the landscape of government power, and did so in
ways that virtually guaranteed repetition of some of law enforcement’s
worst abuses of the past.”13 Such fears were justified. The inspector gen-
eral of the U.S. Department of Justice found dozens of cases in which the
civil liberties and civil rights of detained terrorism suspects were violated
in the enforcement of the PATRIOT Act. One of the cases described in
the inspector general’s report concerned “allegations that during a physi-
cal examination a Bureau of Prisons physician told the inmate, ‘If I was
in charge, I would execute every one of you, because of the crimes you all
did.’”14 The same physician was accused of treating other inmates “in a
cruel and unprofessional manner.”15 After a Bureau of Prisons investiga-
tion substantiated the allegations, the physician was reprimanded—not
fired. Far more troubling than this mistreatment of individuals was the
inspector general’s conclusion that many of the foreign detainees “lan-
guished in unduly harsh conditions for months, and that the department
had made little effort to distinguish legitimate terrorist suspects from
others picked up in roundups of illegal immigrants.”16 Most of these
detainees in detention centers in the United States were held for immigra-
tion violations—in many cases for many months without an opportunity
to have their cases reviewed by an independent judiciary authority.
In April 2005, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives held the
first in a series of oversight hearings in a prolonged debate on whether
288 Counterterrorism
to renew the sixteen provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act set to expire
at the end of the year. There was wide agreement that most parts of the
comprehensive law were uncontroversial tools for law enforcement agen-
cies in their efforts to prevent terrorism. But loud voices on the left and
right of the political spectrum demanded the removal or modification
of those parts of the act that went too far in allowing the FBI and other
agencies to curb political dissent and spy on Americans. Particularly con-
troversial were those sections allowing the government to get access to
medical, library, and other personal records and to search a person’s
home—in both cases without notifying individuals of such actions.
While the original USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 was passed by huge
majorities in both houses of Congress (98–1 in the Senate and 356–56 in
the House), there was more opposition four years later, when the Senate
voted 89–11 and the House 280–138 for the USA PATRIOT Improvement
and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and the USA PATRIOT Additional
Reauthorization Amendments Act of 2006. Still, overwhelming majori-
ties of both parties cast their votes in favor of these bills—perhaps
because they strengthened congressional and judicial oversight in several
areas, especially with respect to wiretapping, access to personal records,
and “sneak and peek” search warrants. But when President Bush signed
both acts into laws (Public Law 109-177 and Public Law 109-178) in
March 2006, his signing statement made clear that he reserved the right
to ignore such oversight provisions.

President’s Statement on H.R. 3199, the “USA

PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization
Act of 2005”
Today, I have signed into law H.R. 3199, the “USA PATRIOT
Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005,” and then S. 2271,
the “USA PATRIOT Act Additional Reauthorizing Amendments Act of
2006.” The bills will help us continue to fight terrorism effectively and
to combat the use of the illegal drug methamphetamine that is ruining
too many lives.
The executive branch shall construe the provisions of H.R. 3199 that
call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch,
such as sections 106A and 119, in a manner consistent with the
President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive
branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair
foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the
Executive, or the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties.
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  289

The executive branch shall construe section 756(e)(2) of H.R.

3199, which calls for an executive branch official to submit to the
Congress recommendations for legislative action, in a manner con-
sistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the
unitary executive branch and to recommend for the consideration of
the Congress such measures as he judges necessary and expedient.

George W. Bush
The White House, March 9, 2006.

Several months before the second version of the USA PATRIOT Act
became the law of the land, President Bush confirmed news reports that
the National Security Agency (NSA) was eavesdropping without war-
rants on international telephone and email communications of American
citizens and noncitizens in this country who were suspected of being in
contact with terrorists. This NSA practice violated the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 that excluded U.S. citizens and resident
aliens from electronic surveillance and requires authorization by a special
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for such surveillance of suspected
foreign intelligence agents inside the United States. Shortly after 9/11,
President Bush authorized the NSA to wiretap U.S. citizens and foreign
nationals without warrants issued by the FISA court. When the warrant-
less wiretap practice was revealed, some of President Bush’s harshest
critics suggested that he had broken the law and should be impeached.
But, as Eric Lichtblau reported, nothing really changed in the year fol-
lowing the eavesdropping revelations: “For all the sound and fury in the
last year, the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program continues
uninterrupted with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts
on what, if anything, to do about it.”17
President Bush, however, pushed for and won the legalization of
greater spying powers in the last year of his second term. On July 2008,
he signed the FISA Amendment Act (FAA) of 2008 into law after enough
Democrats (including then Senator Barack Obama) and Republicans in
both congressional chambers voted in favor of significantly “updat-
ing” the original FISA law. In the first place, the new FISA version
expanded (1) the administration’s power for up to seven days to under-
take emergency wiretapping of foreigners without court warrants in
“exigent” national security circumstances and (2) the emergency wire-
tapping of citizens to seven days without court warrants as long as the
Attorney General certifies the wiretap target’s connection to terrorism.
Moreover, the new law provided legal immunity to telecommunication
290 Counterterrorism
companies that carried out illegal wiretaps for the Bush administration
in the post-9/11 years.
Less than twenty-four hours after the FAA of 2008 was signed into
law, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a
number of plaintiffs who challenged the constitutionality of the new law.
It was once again left to the courts to decide whether the constitu-
tion was on the side of proponents or opponents of the FAA provisions.
Just like the Bush administration, the Obama administration tried to
fend off legal actions against warrantless wiretaps by invoking the “state
secrets” doctrine. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
in California rejected the government’s appeal to dismiss a suit by the
al-Haramain Islamic Foundation that alleged that the organization had
been the target of illegal wiretaps by the NSA. The three-judge panel
did not embrace the Justice Department’s argument that the proceed-
ings would reveal state secrets but gave green light to the plaintiffs’ legal
proceedings. In the second case, the Obama administration repeated the
“state secrets” claim of the Bush administration in a suit filed by AT&T
customers against the telecommunication company for cooperating with
the NSA’s wiretap program. This was one of about forty suits against
telecoms filed around the country after President Bush acknowledged in
2005 that he had allowed the NSA to monitor communications between
U.S. residents and suspected terrorists abroad without warrants. In short,
then, in the first weeks and months of the Obama administration there
were more similarities than differences in the positions taken on these
wiretapping cases.

Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?

In early June 2013, after Edward Snowden spilled the beans about the
NSA’s massive post-9/11 eavesdropping program, Daniel Ellsberg, the
leaker of the Pentagon Papers, called Snowden a hero and wrote,

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more

important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA mate-
rial . . . Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll
back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against
the US constitution. Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but
increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this
country fought over 200 years ago . . . That is what Snowden has
exposed, with official, secret documents. The NSA, FBI, and CIA
have, with the new digital technology, surveillance powers over our
own citizens that the Stasi—the secret police in the former “demo-
cratic republic” of East Germany—could scarcely have dreamed
of. Snowden reveals that the so-called intelligence community has
become the United Stasi of America.18
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  291
Jay Rosen defined what he called “the Snowden effect” as “direct and
indirect gains in public knowledge from the cascade of events and further
reporting that followed Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified informa-
tion about the surveillance state in the U.S.” Media critic Rosen pointed
to “journalists who were not a party to the transaction with Snowden”
but who were now beginning to report on these matters.19
Snowden was considered a hero by some and a traitor by others. But
there was no denying that he had laid bare U.S. intelligence agencies’
widespread eavesdropping programs which violated basic civil liberties.
According to the leaked information the NSA broke into communica-
tions links of major data centers around the globe enabling the agency
to spy on hundreds of millions of American and foreign user accounts.
What agents learned from intercepted conversations resulted in certain
instances of charges of assisting terrorist organizations, plotting terrorist
acts, or planning other terrorist-related wrongdoings and thus threaten-
ing America’s national security. But in the vast majority of cases, innocent
citizens were spied upon.
As noted above, during his first term in office and beyond President
Obama followed the footsteps of his predecessor concerning the surveil-
lance activities of the NSA and his administration’s positions when legal
challenge against the surveillance regime arose. In May 2011, Obama
praised the Congress for reauthorizing three strong provisions for three
years, namely,

1 Section 206 which provides authority for roving surveillance of tar-

gets who take steps that may thwart Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) surveillance;
2 Section 215 which provides authority to compel production of busi-
ness records and other tangible things with the approval of the FISA
court;
3 Section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention
Act, which provides authority under FISA to target non-U.S. persons
who engage in international terrorism or activities in preparation
therefore, but are not necessarily associated with an identified terror-
ist group (the so-called “lone wolf” provision).

The shocker of Snowden’s leak revelations, however, ignited a lively

debate on the right balance between legitimate security arrangements on
the one side and the protection of civil liberties on the other side. More
importantly, less than three months after the Snowden leaks, President
Obama charged an expert panel to make recommendations

designed to protect our national security and advance our foreign

policy while also respecting our longstanding commitment to privacy
and civil liberties, recognizing our need to maintain the public trust
292 Counterterrorism
(including the trust of our friends and allies abroad), and reducing
the risk of unauthorized disclosures.20

Released in December 2013, the 308-page report and its forty-six spe-
cific recommendations were intended to rein in what critics called the
National Security State.

The USA Freedom Act: From President Barack

Obama’s “Weekly Address,” May 30, 2015
As President and Commander in Chief, my greatest responsibility is
the safety of the American people. And in our fight against terrorists,
we need to use every effective tool at our disposal—both to defend
our security and to protect the freedoms and civil liberties enshrined
in our Constitution.
Today, when investigating terrorist networks, our national secu-
rity professionals can seek a court order to obtain certain business
records. Our law enforcement professionals can seek a roving wire-
tap to keep up with terrorists when they switch cell phones. We
can seek a wiretap on so-called lone wolves—suspected terrorists
who may not be directly tied to a terrorist group. These tools are
not controversial. Since 9/11, they have been renewed numerous
times. FBI Director James Comey says they are “essential” and that
losing them would “severely” impact terrorism investigations. But if
Congress doesn’t act by tomorrow at midnight, these tools go away
as well.
The USA Freedom Act also accomplishes something I called for a
year and a half ago: it ends the bulk metadata program—the bulk col-
lection of phone records—as it currently exists and puts in place new
reforms. The government will no longer hold these records; telephone
providers will. The Act also includes other changes to our surveillance
laws—including more transparency—to help build confidence among
the American people that your privacy and civil liberties are being
protected. But if Congress doesn’t act by midnight tomorrow, these
reforms will be in jeopardy, too.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The USA Freedom Act reflects ideas
from privacy advocates, our private sector partners and our national
security experts. It already passed the House of Representatives
with overwhelming bipartisan support—Republicans and Democrats.
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  293

A majority of the Senate—Republicans and Democrats—have voted

to move it forward.
So what’s the problem? A small group of senators is standing in
the way. And, unfortunately, some folks are trying to use this debate
to score political points. But this shouldn’t and can’t be about politics.
This is a matter of national security. Terrorists like al Qaeda and ISIL
aren’t suddenly going to stop plotting against us at midnight tomor-
row. And we shouldn’t surrender the tools that help keep us safe. It
would be irresponsible. It would be reckless. And we shouldn’t allow
it to happen.21

Note: Three days later and the same day the U.S. Senate had passed
the bill following the example of the U.S. House of Representatives
President Obama signed the 2015 USA Freedom Act into law.

Because of the inter- and intra-party conflicts in both chambers of

Congress, where some conservative members insisted on retaining strong
surveillance measures and libertarians and liberals insisted on meaning-
ful changes, it took a year and a half for the 2015 USA Freedom Act
finally to be adopted by both houses of Congress and signed into law by
President Obama. It was, as one observer noted,

the first legislative overhaul passed in response to the 2013 dis-

closures of former National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden, who revealed the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone
“metadata” and the legal rationale for it—the little-noticed Section
215 of the USA Patriot Act, passed in the months after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks.22

Most importantly, the 2015 law bans the bulk collection of data of
Americans’ telephone records and Internet metadata. It limits the gov-
ernment’s data collection to the “greatest extent reasonably practical,”
meaning security agencies cannot collect all the data from a particular
service provider or broad geographic region, say a local jurisdiction or
area code. Instead of bulk data collection, the government is authorized
to collect from phone companies up to “two hops” of call records related
to a suspect, if there is “reasonable” suspicion that someone is linked to
a terrorist organization. Also, three Patriot Act provisions reauthorized
in 2011 allowing roving wiretaps and the surveillance of so-called lone
wolves were extended through 2019.
294 Counterterrorism
The Rights of “Enemy Combatants”
Controversies arose also over the legal rights of so-called enemy com-
batants, who were held in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military base in
Cuba, and over the torture and abusive treatment of foreign nationals
held in American-controlled detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Guantanamo, and elsewhere. By characterizing hundreds of foreigners
and a few American citizens as enemy combatants—not prisoners of war
or criminals—President Bush and his administration denied these men the
protections afforded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention
and the civil liberties that the U.S. Constitution extends to accused
criminals. To be sure, post-9/11 terrorism did not fit the familiar threats
associated with war and crime. But, as Ronald Dworkin pointed out,

The fact that terrorism presents new challenges and dangers does
not mean that the basic moral principles and human rights that the
criminal law and the laws of war try to protect have been repealed
or become moot. We must instead ask what different scheme—what
third model—is appropriate to respect those principles while still
effectively defending ourselves.23

The more than 600 foreign nationals held for years in Guantanamo Bay
were either captured in Afghanistan as Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters or
turned over to American authorities by foreign governments. Yet, accord-
ing to international agreements, it was not up to the American side to
decide unilaterally their legal status by declaring them “enemy combat-
ants” or “unlawful combatants.” Instead, as Anthony Lewis explained,

The Third Geneva Convention, which the United States has signed
and ratified, says that when there is doubt about a prisoner’s sta-
tus, the question is to be determined by a ‘competent tribunal.’ That
means an independent one. The Bush Administration has refused to
comply with the Geneva Convention.24

For other observers, the issue was not as clear-cut. Assuming that the
terrorist threat against the United States was, is, and will remain terribly
serious, Michael Ignatieff outlined a “necessity of lesser evils” position in
the fight against terrorism and suggested that

to defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of sus-

pects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive
war. These are evils because each strays from national and international
law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without
due process. They can be justified only if they prevent the greater evil.25

But the outcome of this approach requires, too, that the formal and infor-
mal democratic institutions discharge their responsibilities and control
the “lesser evils.” As Ignatieff put it,
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  295
Only if our institutions work properly—if Congress reviews legisla-
tion in detail and tosses out measures that jeopardize liberty at no
gain to security, if the courts keep executive power under consti-
tutional control and if the press refuses to allow itself to become
“embedded” with the government—can the moral and constitutional
hazards of lesser evils be managed.26

During major crises, especially when national security is at stake, U.S.

presidents tend to claim extraordinary powers. Past presidents were
rarely checked by other actors and institutions inside and outside of
government when they suspended fundamental civil liberties. For nearly
three years that seemed the case after 9/11. While perhaps expected from
Congress, where the president’s party controlled both houses, that still
left the judiciary. However, as Lewis remarked,

The Supreme Court has usually been reluctant to intervene. When

the Japanese relocation program [that removed 120,000 Americans
of Japanese descent from their homes and confined them to camps
on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s order] reached the Court,
a majority declined to look past the military judgment that
Japanese-Americans might be disloyal, though events had proved
them false.27

However, with respect to the post-9/11 enemy combatants, the U.S.

Supreme Court did rein in the president and the executive branch
in several cases. First, a 6–3 majority ruled that foreign detainees in
Guantanamo Bay had the right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus,
the ancient right of prisoners to challenge the lawfulness of their
detention.28 Second, the Court decided that a U.S. citizen—although
declared an enemy combatant by the executive branch—was entitled to
his or her constitutional right of due process and that even the president
did not have the power to deprive U.S. citizens of their Fifth Amendment
rights to “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In a
rare occurrence, the probably most liberal justice (John Paul Stevens) and
the perhaps most conservative member of the Supreme Court (Antonin
Scalia) were in the 7–1 Court majority in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi,
a U.S. citizen who was captured during hostilities in Afghanistan. In the
prevailing opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote,

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance

to the nation during this period of on-going combat. But it is equally
vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this
country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship.
It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our
nation’s commitment to due process is most severely tested; and we
must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which
we fight abroad.29
296 Counterterrorism
Taken together, these decisions made clear that, as Justice O’Connor
put it, “a state of war is not a blank check for the president.”30 Rather
than allow Hamdi’s lawyers to challenge his detention in court, the
U.S. Departments of Justice and Defense decided in a complete turna-
round that the suspected terrorist Hamdi was not a threat at all. After he
renounced his U.S. citizenship as a condition of his release, Hamdi was
flown to Saudi Arabia and became a free man.31
As the administration pondered how to translate the Supreme
Court’s decisions into practice with respect to the Guantanamo prison-
ers, any satisfactory solution would still leave in limbo an unknown
number of foreign nationals who were held, as human rights organi-
zations charged, in secret U.S. detention facilities abroad. According
to Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee on Human
Rights), nearly three years after 9/11 the U.S. government was “holding
prisoners in a secret system of off-shore prisons beyond the reach of
adequate supervision, accountability, or law.”32 These detainees were
being held for extended periods of time without access to legal counsel,
without a right to have their imprisonment reviewed by an independent
authority, and without visits by the International Red Cross, Human
Rights Watch, or other organizations. This policy was and is indefensi-
ble. Even though he endorsed “lesser evils” against the terrorist threat,
Ignatieff also insisted that

no detainee of the United States should be permanently deprived of

access to counsel and judicial process, whether it be civilian federal
court or military tribunal. Torture will thrive wherever detainees are
held in secret. Conduct disgracing the United States is inevitable if
suspects are detained beyond the reach of the law.33

The issue of how to try “enemy combatants” seemed finally decided in

June 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
that military commissions set up by the Bush administration violated the
Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Thus,
the 5–3 decision in favor of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who had worked
in Afghanistan as Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard, held that
“enemy combatants” are protected by the Geneva Conventions and,
additionally, that the congressional Authorization for Use of Military
Force against Terrorists of September 2001 did not grant President Bush
the authority to create new tribunals without congressional mandate.34
Within a few months, the Congress adopted and President Bush signed
into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Public Law 1009-366),
which contained provisions that reestablished the very military tribunals
that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
and denies aliens detained by the U.S. government and determined to be
enemy combatants the right of habeas corpus.
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  297
On December 14, 2006, Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Military Commissions
Act did not allow Hamdan to contest his detention before a federal court.
A year earlier, the same judge had granted Salim Ahmed Hamdan’s
habeas petition and thereby stopped his war crime trial at Guantanamo.
But according to Judge Robertson, the Military Commissions Act “was
unambiguous in denying Guantanamo detainees the use of a habeas cor-
pus statute.”35
Hamdan challenged the constitutionality of the congressional stat-
ute, but in October 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his
case. Charged with conspiracy and providing material support for ter-
rorism, Hamdan’s military commission trial took place in summer 2008
at Guantanamo. The six-member commission acquitted him of the more
serious charge (conspiracy) and found him guilty of the lesser charge
(providing material support). The prosecution asked for a thirty-year
prison term to life imprisonment but the commission opted for a sixty-
six-month prison term—sixty-one months of which had been served
already. In November 2008, Hamdan was sent to Yemen, where he was
to serve the last month of his sentence.
At the time of Hamdan’s release, about 250 “unlawful enemy com-
batants” remained in the Guantanamo facility—about 100 of them
citizens of Yemen. It was left to the Obama administration to decide
what to do with those detainees and the Guantanamo prison. During his
presidential campaign, Obama said that Guantanamo was a sad chapter
in American history and promised “we’re going to close Guantanamo.
And we’re going to restore habeas corpus . . . We’re going to lead
by example—by not just word but by deed. That’s our vision for the
future.”36 Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an
executive order for the prompt closing of the facility after an immediate
review of all detainees’ records.37 But in the face of relentless attacks
by critics in Congress and elsewhere, the White House retreated from
its promise to close the prison, transfer the remaining detainees to pris-
ons in the United States, and try them in the regular court system. In
the eyes of the president’s detractors, bringing terrorists or suspected
terrorists into the United States, even if in maximum security facili-
ties, endangered homeland security. There was a massive and sustained
protest, when the Justice Department announced that 9/11 mastermind
Khalid Sheik Mohammed would be tried in a Federal Court in down-
town Manhattan. Again, the administration retreated and searched for
alternative venues.
A day before he left office President Obama informed the U.S. Congress
that, of the once close to 800 detainees in the U.S. facility at Guantanamo
Bay, forty-one remained. During the eight years of his presidency Obama
had failed to get congressional approval to close the prison. In his letter
he stated with regret,
298 Counterterrorism
For 15 years, the United States has detained hundreds of people at
the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, a facility that never should
have been opened in the first place. Terrorists use it for propaganda,
its operations drain our military resources during a time of budget
cuts, and it harms our partnerships with allies and countries whose
cooperation we need against today’s evolving terrorist threat.38

Torture: Leaders and Followers

At Abu Ghraib prison, outside of Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner 
. . . Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had
been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-
like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic
pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated.39

In the fall of 2007, during his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate’s
Judiciary Committee, Attorney General designate Michael Mukasey
claimed to be clueless as to the nature of waterboarding. He said that he
did not know whether this interrogation technique constituted torture.
In a letter to the committee, he seemed to side with the administration’s
position that CIA interrogations of terrorists or suspected terrorists are
exempt from antitorture laws that the military and others must follow.40
He was confirmed as the highest U.S. official to enforce the laws of the
land. Once in office, Mukasey did not change his position. Instead, dur-
ing an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said that he
would not rule out the use of torture in the future.41
Waterboarding has been used as a method of torture for hundreds of
years. In more recent times, it has been practiced by state and nonstate
human rights violators. According to one account, “in some versions
of the technique, prisoners are strapped to a board, their faces covered
with cloth or cellophane, and water is poured over their mouths to simu-
late drowning; in others, they are dunked headfirst into water.”42 In the
past, U.S. authorities considered this particularly gruesome interrogation
method to be torture and punishable as a war crime. Thus, following
World War II, “U.S. military commissions successfully prosecuted as war
criminals several Japanese soldiers who subjected American prisoners
to waterboarding. A U.S. army officer was court-marshaled in 1968 for
helping to waterboard a prisoner in Vietnam.”43
But that changed after 9/11. Waterboarding and other torture tech-
niques were no longer off-limits in the “war on terror.” A few reports
about “aggressive interrogation” methods of so-called enemy combat-
ants in U.S.-run prisons abroad had been published earlier, but most
Americans learned about such gross human rights violations in the spring
of 2004, when CBS News on 60 Minutes and Seymour Hersh in the New
Yorker revealed the torturous treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  299
Administration officials blamed the isolated incidents on rogue soldiers,
but eventually evidence showed that “harsh” interrogation practices—
indeed, torture—were backed by opinions written and approved by legal
experts in the White House and the Departments of Justice and Defense
in express violation of the United Nations Convention against Torture,
the U.S. Constitution, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.44
Referring to what administration critics called “Torture Memos,”
Donald P. Gregg, national security advisor from 1982 to 1988 to then
Vice President George H. W. Bush, wrote in 2004:

Recent reports indicate that Bush administration lawyers, in their

struggles to deal with terrorism, wrote memos in 2003 pushing aside
longstanding prohibitions on the use of torture by Americans. These
memos cleared the way for the horrors that have been revealed in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo and make a mockery of admin-
istration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpe-
trated the vile abuse of prisoners.
I can think of nothing that can more devastatingly undercut
America’s standing in the world or, more important, our view of our-
selves, than these decisions. Sanctioned abuse is deeply corrosive—
just ask the French, who are still seeking to eradicate the stain on their
honor that resulted from the deliberate use of torture in Algeria.45

But in spite of evidence to the contrary, the administration denied that

detainees were being or had been tortured. After the U.S. Congress
adopted and the president signed a bill with antitorture provisions in
October 2006, President George W. Bush insisted in his signing state-
ment that the new law “will allow the Central Intelligence Agency to con-
tinue its program for questioning key terrorist leaders and operatives.”46
He claimed that it was the president’s prerogative to decide what meth-
ods CIA interrogators were allowed to use. But in the same breath, he
continued to tell Americans and the rest of the world, “The United States
does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have
not authorized it.”47 Similarly, right after Vice President Richard Cheney
stated in a radio interview the “dunk in water” (meaning waterboard-
ing) in the interrogation of detainees was a “no-brainer,” he added, “We
don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”48
The White House clung to the “we-do-not-torture” line even after
CIA director Michael V. Hayden admitted in early 2008 that water-
boarding had been used during the interrogations of three leading Al
Qaeda figures: Abu Zabaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid
Sheik Mohammed.49 In reaction, a White House spokesperson said
that President Bush would “authorize waterboarding future terror-
ism suspects if certain criteria are met.”50 And Vice President Cheney
“vigorously defended the use of harsh interrogation techniques on a
300 Counterterrorism
few suspected terrorists, saying that the methods made up ‘a tougher
program, for tougher customers.’”51 Neither the president nor the
vice president considered waterboarding or “harsh interrogation tech-
niques” to be torture. Not surprisingly, on March 8, 2008, President
Bush announced during his regular Saturday morning radio address
that he had vetoed legislation that would have prohibited the CIA from
using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics. He justified
his veto by stating that the prohibitions “would take away one of the
most valuable tools on the war on terror.” And he added that “this is
no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track
record of keeping America safe.”52 In other words, torturing terrorists
and suspected terrorists remained part of Bush’s “war on terrorism.”
Besides prohibiting torture altogether, the vetoed bill would have
banned the following:

•• Forcing a prisoner to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a

sexual manner;
•• Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a prisoner, and using duct
tape over the eyes;
•• Waterboarding;
•• Using military working dogs;
•• Inducing hypothermia or heat injury;
•• Depriving a prisoner of necessary food, water, or medical care.

On December 11, 2008, the Senate Armed Services Committee released

the executive summary of its eighteen-month inquiry into the treatment
of detainees held in U.S.-run prison facilities abroad. The committee
found “that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques
by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and con-
veyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees
in U.S. custody.”53 The detailed conclusions of the document attrib-
uted responsibility for the mistreating and, yes, torturing of detainees to
President Bush, members of his cabinet (in particular Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld), the National Security Council, and military leaders.
Addressing Abu Ghraib in particular, the Senate committee concluded
that the abuse there was not just a case of “a few soldiers acting on
their own” but rather the result of policies approved by “senior military
and civilian officials.”54 Nevertheless, only a handful of the lowest-level
soldiers were convicted for the mistreatment of detainees, while the only
officer charged, a lieutenant colonel in command of the interrogations at
the Abu Ghraib prison, was acquitted by a military court.
If there were any heroes in this dark chapter, they were the lawyers in
the military services who questioned proposed “aggressive interrogation”
policy and defended and judged Guantanamo prisoners in a professional
fashion. As David Cole noted,
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  301
Documents disclosed in the course of the [Senate] hearings now show
that when the coercive measures were under consideration, top law-
yers for every branch of the military—Army, Navy, Air Force, and
Marine Corps—objected that the tactics might be illegal.55

But when the legal counsel to General Richard Myers, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, began to review the legal questions involved here,
the general “ordered that the legal inquiry be quashed” at the request of
the Defense Department’s general counsel.56

Human Rights Violation in the Name of

Counterterrorism
The United Nations Convention against Torture that prohibits
along with torture other “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”
was adopted in 1984 and four years later ratified by the United
States. The following is a summary of humanitarian laws against
torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross:

There is an absolute ban on torture and other cruel, inhuman or

degrading treatment and outrages upon personal dignity under
international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human
rights law (IHRL). The prohibition of torture and other forms
of ill-treatment derives from the Geneva Conventions of 1949,
their Additional Protocols of 1977, the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment of 1984, and other international instruments.
Both IHL and IHRL converge and complement each other
in establishing a comprehensive legal framework for the pre-
vention and punishment of acts of torture and other forms of
ill-treatment.57

Accordingly, the gross mistreatment of prisoners, whether one

calls it torture, abuse, humiliation, or cruel treatment, is prohib-
ited and punishable according to international human rights laws.
In the post-9/11 years, the Bush administration refuted claims of
torture or in the benign language of officialdom “enhanced inter-
rogation” techniques in U.S.-run detention centers abroad—even
in the face of unspeakable images of mistreated detainees at Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In an interview shortly after the Abu Ghraib revelations William
F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International, warned

(continued)
302 Counterterrorism
(continued)
that in their fight against terrorism governments “have resorted
to many of the same tactics [as terrorists]” and that “by violating
human rights themselves, those governments lend a degree of cred-
ibility to the use of those kinds of tactics in the first place.”58

Obama on Torture and Rendition

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive
order that:

1 Reversed the torture policies of the previous administration and

banned the inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees by
requiring the use of the U.S. Army Field Manuals as guide for terror
interrogations;
2 Ordered the closing of secret CIA prisons;
3 Provided the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all
U.S. held detainees;
4 Established an interagency task force to conduct a review of deten-
tion policies and procedures.59

But although the president banned torture, his administration supported

what came down to the outsourcing of it during the Bush administra-
tion and did not ban rendition altogether. The Obama administration’s
position in the case of Maher Arar was particularly troubling. Arar,
a Syrian-born Canadian, was wrongly suspected of being a terrorist,
arrested in 2002 by U.S. authorities during a stopover in New York,
and sent by the CIA in another “extraordinary rendition” procedure
to Syria, where he was tortured for about a year during interrogation.
After a Federal District Judge dismissed Arar’s suit designed to hold offi-
cials responsible for his torment accountable, the Second Circuit Court
of Appeals upheld the Federal District Court’s dismissal. Subsequently,
the Supreme Court refused to consider the case and thereby shut the
door on an innocent victim of the U.S. government’s post-9/11 prac-
tice of outsourcing torture. Like the Bush administration earlier, the
Obama administration asked the court not to accept the case for
national security considerations and the protection of diplomatic rela-
tions (presumably with Syria and other countries at the receiving end
of extraordinary rendition practices). Moreover, the Obama adminis-
tration warned that the case could question “the motives and sincerity
of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be
removed to Syria.”60
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  303
The Obama administration did not ban the CIA from continuing ren-
dition practices but promised to put better safeguards in place to prevent
torture. But if the humane treatment of rendered terrorists or alleged
terrorists was indeed a concern, why move these interrogations to tough
foreign government agents in the first place?
As for President Trump, during a Republican primary debate he said,
“Can you imagine these animals, over in the Middle East that chop off
heads, sitting around and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with
waterboarding? We should go for waterboarding and we should go
tougher than waterboarding.”61 Shortly after he moved into the White
House, Trump said in an interview that “waterboarding is a viable
interrogation technique” and added hesitantly that he would defer to
members of his cabinet who opposed torture.62

The Drone War and Human Rights Violations

As described in Chapter 10, the number of drone launched missiles
increased drastically during the Obama presidency. Human rights and
civil liberties organizations at home and abroad expressed their concern
over civilian victims of drone strikes frequently. Thus, in 2015, ten NGOs
stated the following in a letter to President Obama:

Based on a review of a wide range of civilian casualty estimates, we are

especially concerned that the administration may be consistently under-
counting and overlooking civilian casualties. Moreover, the adminis-
tration may be employing an overbroad definition of “combatant” or
“militant” that would lead it to undercount civilian casualties. These
concerns heighten the need to ensure there are effective mechanisms to
track and respond to civilian harm. Moreover, in the context of armed
conflict, a track record of undercounting civilian casualties may cause
the United States to make an inaccurate assessment of the proportion-
ality element of lethal action—itself a violation of the laws of war.63

The customary rules of International Humanitarian Law prescribe that

there must be always a distinction between civilians and combatants in
armed conflicts and that civilians must not be attacked.64 Substantial
and perhaps undercounted numbers of civilian victims can and do raise
doubts about the observation of human rights in the deployment of
drones. Most of all, the drone war turned people in the targeted countries
against the United States as the following excerpts from a news report
aired on the CBS Evening News on May 23, 2013 attest to:

SCOTT PELLEY:  Most drone deaths are happening in Pakistan, the figures
can’t be completely reliable but it is estimated that since 2004 as
many as twenty-seven hundred militants have died in drone strikes.
304 Counterterrorism
Estimates of civilian deaths range from two hundred and fifty to eight
hundred. Elizabeth Palmer looked at all of this for us in Islamabad.
(Begin VD)
ELIZABETH PALMER:  A vast majority of Pakistanis resent American drone
strikes. Shazad Ackbar, a former prosecutor turned human rights
lawyer, has collected hard evidence of civilian casualties from drone
strikes.
ELIZABETH PALMER:  These are what’s left of the missile that’s fired from
the drone?
SHAZAD ACKBAR:  Yeah, yeah.
ELIZABETH PALMER: . . . Ackbar told us the drone strikes have killed
more than a thousands [sic] of civilians—a figure the U.S. disputes.
SHAZAD ACKBAR:  This is a Pakistani child. He was sleeping in the court-
yard. So — a shrapnel hit him, so he died.
ELIZABETH PALMER:  At a funeral for two of Ackbar’s clients, a police-
man and a pharmacist, killed in a strike near the Afghan border, the
crowd chanted “any friend of America is a traitor.”
(Crowd protesting)
ELIZABETH PALMER: Critics have long argued that drones make more
enemies for the U.S. than they kill.

The last sentence was then and remains the most important one: Human
rights violations in drone warfare (as in torture) may not reduce the ter-
rorist threat at all but create more enemies and possibly more supporters
of terrorism and recruits.
As for President Donald Trump, just weeks into his presidency he
reportedly “pressed to roll back some of those checks [put in by his pre-
decessor]” including a “lowering of the threshold on acceptable civilian
casualties.”65

Notes
1 “Transcript of bin Laden’s October Interview,” with Al Jazeera correspondent
Tayseer Alouni, [Link]/2002/world/asiapcf/south/ 02/05/binladen.
transcript/[Link].
2 Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response
(London: Frank Cass, 2001), 94, 95.
3 Marc A. Celmer, Terrorism, U.S. Strategy, and Reagan Policies (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1987), 13.
4 [Link]/wiki/counter-terrorism, accessed January 30, 2005.
5 Peter J. Katzenstein, “West Germany’s Internal Security Policy: State and
Violence in the 1970s and 1980s,” Occasional Paper number 28, published by
the Center for International Studies, Cornell University, 1990.
6 John Yoo in his testimony before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security
(Senate Appropriation Committee), September 18, 2006, 4, [Link].
com/focus/f-news/1705339/posts.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 2.
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  305
9 David Cole and James X. Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution (New
York: New Press, 2002), 117.
10 Laura K. Donohue, “Fear Itself: Counter-Terrorism, Individual Rights, and
U.S. Foreign Relations Post 9/11,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the International Studies Association, March 24–27, 2002, New Orleans.
11 Ibid.
12 Charles Doyle, “The USA PATRIOT ACT: A Sketch,” Congressional Research
Service, April 18, 2002.
13 Cole and Dempsey, 167.
14 Kevin Bohn, “Patriot Act Report Documents Civil Rights Complaints,” CNN.
com/Law Center, July 31, 2003.
15 Ibid.
16 Philip Shenon, “Report on USA PATRIOT Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations,”
New York Times, July 21, 2003, 1.
17 Eric Lichtblau, “Despite a Year of Ire and Angst, Little Has Changed on
Wiretaps,” New York Times, November 25, 2006, [Link]
search/restricted/article?res=FA0A10F9385A0C768EDDA8099.
18 Daniel Ellsberg, “Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of
America,” Huffington Post, June 10, 2013. The post is available at www.
[Link]/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-united-
stasi-america, accessed March 20, 2015. For the “hero” remark, see
[Link]/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-daniel-ellsberg-
whistleblower-history_n_3413545.html, accessed March 20, 2015.
19 Jay Rosen, “The Snowden Effect: Definition and Examples,” PressThink, July
5, 2013, [Link]
examples/, accessed March 17, 2015.
20 “Liberty and Security in a Changing World: Report and Recommendations of
the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technology,”
December 12, 2013, [Link]
documents/930353/[Link], accessed July 29, 2015.
21 [Link]/the-press-office/2015/05/30/weekly-address-pass-usa-
freedom-act, accessed July 25, 2015.
22 Mike DeBonis, “Congress Turns Away from Post-9/11 Law, Retooling U.S.
Surveillance Powers,” Washington Post, June 2, 2015, [Link].
com/politics/senate-moves-ahead-with-retooling-of-us-surveillance-powers
/2015/06/02/28f5e1ce-092d-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html, accessed
July 28, 2015.
23 Ronald Dworkin, “Terror and the Attack on Civil Liberties,” New York
Review of Books, November 6, 2003.
24 Anthony Lewis, “The Justices Take on the President,” New York Times,
January 16, 2004, A21.
25 Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 2,
2003, [Link]/2004/07/25/books/review/[Link]?scp=1&
sq=Ignatieff%20the%20lesser%20evil&st=cse, accessed May 20, 2009.
26 Ibid.
27 Lewis.
28 See Rasul v. Bush, No. 03–334. The 6–3 decision was announced on June 29,
2004.
29 See Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, No. 03–6696.
30 Ibid.
31 Since the Supreme Court handed down a rather narrow decision with respect
to the foreign detainees at Guantanamo, cases on behalf of these “enemy com-
batants” continued to be heard.
32 Human Rights First, press release of June 17, 2004.
306 Counterterrorism
33 Ignatieff.
34 Chief Justice John Roberts, who had ruled against Hamdan while serving on
the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, recused himself from the Supreme Court
case.
35 Neil A. Lewis, “Judge Sets Back Guantanamo Detainees,” New York Times,
December 14, 2006, 32.
36 Elizabeth White, “Obama Says Gitmo Facility Should Close,” Washington
Post, June 24, 2007, [Link]/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/
06/24/[Link], accessed December 30, 2008.
37 For the text of the Executive Order, see [Link]/the_press_
office/ClosureOfGuantanamoDetentionFacilities/, accessed May 14, 2009.
38 The text of the letter is available at [Link]/documents/
[Link], accessed May 30, 2018.
39 Jane Mayer, “A Deadly Interrogation,” New Yorker, November 14, 2005,
[Link]/archive/2005/11/14/051114fa_fact, accessed May 20,
2009.
40 [Link]/docs/mukasey-dems/?resultpage=1&.
41 Philip Shenon, “Mukasey Will Not Rule Out Waterboarding,” New York
Times, January 31, 2008, [Link]/2008/01/31/washington/
[Link], accessed February 2, 2008.
42 [Link]
43 Ibid.
44 The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids the use of “cruel and
unusual punishments,” which is widely interpreted as a prohibition of the use
of torture. The Uniform Code of Military Justice forbids torture outside the
United States.
45 Donald P. Gregg, “After Abu Ghraib; Fight Fire with Compassion,” New York
Times, June 10, 2004.
46 [Link]/news/releases/2006/10/[Link].
47 [Link]/news/releases/2006/09/[Link].
48 [Link]/news/releases/2006/10/[Link].
49 [Link]/2008/02/06/washington/[Link]?scp=11&sq=waterb
oarding&st=nyt.
50 Dan Fromkin, “We Tortured and We’d Do It Again,” [Link],
February 6, 2008, [Link]/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/
02/06/BL2008020602244_pf.html, accessed February 11, 2008.
51 David Stout and Scott Shane, “Cheney Defends the Use of Harsh Interrogation,”
New York Times, February 7, 2008, [Link]/2008/02/07/
washington/[Link]?hp.
52 Presidential radio address on March 8, 2008, [Link]/news/
releases/2008/03/[Link], accessed March 9, 2008.
53 From U.S. Senator Carl Levin’s news release, [Link]
[Link]?id=305735, accessed December 28, 2008.
54 From the summary of the “Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into
the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” [Link]
[Link]/Publications/EXEC%20SUMMARYCONCLUSIONS_For%20
Release_12%20December%[Link], accessed December 30, 2008.
55 David Cole, “What to Do about the Torturers?” New York Review of Books,
January 15, 2009, 22.
56 Ibid.
57 The International Committee of the Red Cross’s document is available at
[Link]
oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYw
 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights  307
Nzcg--/RV=2/RE=1493691111/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%[Link]
%2fen%2fdownload%2ffile%2f1025%2fprohibition-and-punishment-of-
[Link]/RK=0/RS=w6iJXgP7xpemQcQGrwNb7eWuN8k-,
accessed May 1, 2017.
58 Newsweek Staff, “The War on Terror is Not Working,” [Link], www.
[Link]/war-terror-not-working-128307, accessed May 29, 2018.
59 For the full text of the executive order, see [Link]/the-press-
office/background-president-obama-signs-executive-orders-detention-and-
interrogation-polic, accessed July 12, 2010.
60 “No Price to Pay for Torture,” New York Times, June 15, 2010.
61 Tessa Berenson, “Donald Trump Defends Torture at Republican Debate,”
Time, March 3, 2017, [Link]
ing-torture/, accessed May 20, 2018.
62 Reena Flores, “Trump Says Intelligence Officials Tell Him Torture Works,”
CBS News, January 25, 2017, [Link]/news/trump-says-intelli-
gence-officials-tell-him-torture-works/, accessed April 15, 2018.
63 The letter is available on the website of the Human Rights Institute of Columbia
University at [Link]
human-rights-institute/files/Letter%20to%20President%20and%20
Statement%20on%20Targeted%[Link], accessed May 1, 2017.
64 For The Laws of War, see [Link]
war/, accessed May 2, 2017.
65 Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung, “Trump Administration Reviewing Ways to
Make it Easier to Launch Drone Strikes,” Washington Post, March 13, 2017,
[Link]/world/national-security/trump-administration-
reviewing-ways-to-make-it-easier-to-launch-drone-strikes/2017/03/13/
ac39ced0-07f8-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-
more-top-stories_drones-8pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.
64a548555398, accessed May 21, 2017.
13 The Crucial Role of Intelligence

In March 2011, Russia’s Federal Security Service informed the FBI that
Tamerlan Tsarnaev of Boston was a follower of radical Islam and might
join underground groups in Dagestan. FBI agents investigated and inter-
viewed the young man and his family without finding evidence of terrorist
links. Tamerlan’s name was nevertheless put into a customs and border
protection watch list so that authorities would be alerted if he crossed
U.S. borders. In September 2011, Russia’s Federal Security Service alerted
the CIA with the same information emphasizing Tsarnaev’s intention to
travel overseas. These tips were not shared within or between the agen-
cies. The Boston police department was not informed. When Tsarnaev
flew to Dagestan in early 2012 and returned within six months, no FBI
agent was notified. Tsarnaev’s misspelled name and an erroneous date of
birth on some documents prevented his name coming up on the watch
list. It was only after he and his younger brother carried out the deadly
Boston bombings in April 2013 that FBI and CIA agents looked again
into the Russian alerts.
Afterward critics blamed the FBI, CIA, and other agencies for not pre-
venting the devastating attack. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), a senior
member of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee complained,

There still seem to be serious problems with sharing information,

including critical investigative information. That is troubling to me,
that this many years after the attacks on our country in 2001 that
we still seem to have stovepipes that prevent information from being
shared effectively, not only among agencies but also within the same
agency in one case.1

The House Committee on Homeland Security wrote in its report on the

Boston bombings that the committee was “concerned that officials are
asserting that this attack could not have been prevented, without compel-
ling evidence to confirm that is the case.”2
An earlier, lethal attack raised troubling questions about the ability of
government agencies to recognize and act on warning signals for likely
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  309
terrorist threats against the U.S. homeland. Thus, before he killed thir-
teen persons and injured another twenty-eight at the Fort Hood Army
base in late 2009, U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan had openly
expressed his growing opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on
religious grounds. Although email exchanges between Hasan and Anwar
al-Awlaki, an extremist imam in Yemen who preached jihad against
Americans, were intercepted before the Fort Hood incident, “a Defense
Department analyst examined them and decided the queries were part
of Major Hasan’s research and warranted no further investigation.”3
Addressing the findings of a Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shooting
spree, Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted that

as a department, we have not done enough to adapt to the evolving

domestic internal security threat to American troops and military
facilities that has emerged over the past decade. In this area, as in so
many others, this department is burdened by 20th-century processes
and attitudes mostly rooted in the cold war.4

In spite of these shortcomings on the part of the FBI, CIA, and other
agencies there were also many success stories of plots stopped by law
enforcement and intelligence agencies.5 One of those cases involved a
plot that targeted highly populated places in New York City. The three
plotters communicated through internet messaging applications. Their
conversations revealed, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, that
they planned to carry out bombings and shootings in heavily populated
areas of New York City during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan
in 2016, all in the name of ISIS. One of the three, Abdulrahman El
Bahnasawy, a Canadian, traveled to New Jersey to scout targets; a sec-
ond man, Talha Haroon, was in Pakistan planning to travel to New York
in time for the attack; the third plotter, a medical doctor, was in the
Philippines sending money to Bahnasawy for the purchase of firearms
and material for suicide belts. Unbeknown to the plotters, a fourth man
who had joined in their conversations was an FBI agent, not the fellow
jihadist he pretended to be. The plot was foiled when the FBI arrested the
18-year old Canadian in May 2016; soon thereafter his would-be accom-
plices were taken into custody by police in their respective countries.6
Contrary to actual terrorist attacks that always receive a great deal
of media, elite, and public attention, failed and foiled attacks are not at
all or not prominently covered by the news media. In many cases, law
enforcement and intelligence agencies do not reveal busted plots because
they do not want to give away their counterterrorism tactics; in other
cases, they do not want to warn plotters still at large.
In the past, a few foiled attacks were heavily publicized because they
involved dramatic actions by attentive civilians. Thus, in December 2001
the would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid was prevented from igniting
310 Counterterrorism
the explosives hidden in his shoes by fellow passengers on an American
Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. Similarly, on Christmas Day 2009
one passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit
jumped the young Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he could
set off the explosives hidden in his underpants. Such spectacular preven-
tion efforts remain rare.
Since most foiled plots do not receive publicity, most people are
not aware of how many terrorist plots against U.S. targets have been
thwarted. Nor do most people know that the prevention rate increased
significantly after the 9/11 attacks compared to the pre-9/11 years.
Researchers at the Rand Homeland Security and Defense Center exam-
ined a total of 150 successfully executed and foiled terrorist plots against
U.S. targets by secular homegrown terrorists and jihadists. When they
compared the data for the seven years before 9/11 with that of the seven
post-9/11 years, they found that “from 1995–2001, only 31.9% of
plots were foiled. Following the 9/11 attacks, from 2002 through 2012,
80.6% of plots were thwarted prior to reaching execution.”7 This was
a rather stunning increase in the success rate concerning halted plots
that were predominantly planned against domestic targets and in fewer
cases directed at American facilities or places with a significant number
of U.S. citizens.
Of all 150 cases, federal, state, and local law enforcement, including
informants of those agencies, foiled more than one-third (36 percent) of
all those terrorist plots. Intelligence agencies were responsible for thwart-
ing 10 percent of the plots. This means that nearly half (46 percent) of
the plots were stopped by law enforcement and intelligence communities.
Community policing aimed at improving relations between officers and
people in communities they serve and perhaps the enduring post-9/11
public service announcements, “If you see something, say something!”
may have contributed to the fact that nearly one-fifth (19 percent) of all
plots were foiled based on information coming from the public.8
Unsurprisingly, not the successes but the failures get the greatest
attention—if only to prevent the same mistakes being repeated. When
failures occur, they cannot be blamed on the lack of resources. Pointing
to the failures discussed earlier, two investigative reporters wrote that

lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort
Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb
attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find
lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke com-
ing from his seatmate.9

To be sure, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have very diffi-

cult tasks. Whereas terrorists need to be successful only once to pull off a
catastrophic attack, the FBI, police, CIA, and other agencies are expected
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  311
to be successful in preventing terrorist attacks all the time—although
common sense tells us that this will not be the case. The following sec-
tions discuss America’s post-9/11 intelligence community, reform efforts
to improve collaboration within and between U.S. agencies, the impor-
tance of international cooperation, and preparedness for man-made and
natural disasters.

The U.S. Intelligence Community

At the time of the 9/11 attacks, there were sixteen separate federal agen-
cies charged wholly or partially with collecting and analyzing intelligence
to protect the country’s national security. While there was a certain
degree of interagency cooperation pre-9/11, the system still worked
largely along the design prescribed by the 1947 National Security Act.
That act, signed into law by President Harry Truman after World War II
and during the early stages of the Cold War, focused almost exclusively
on intelligence concerning foreign foes.
As one expert noted, the National Security Act of 1947 assigned four
responsibilities to the intelligence community, namely,

supporting the president, engaging in clandestine activities abroad in

support of national policy goals, protecting the United States against
Soviet penetration, and supporting strategic military operations. The
director of central intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) are [were] given responsibility over the first two, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the third, and military intelligence
units over the fourth.10

In the post-Cold War years the act was no longer in tune with the
geopolitical realities but remained the legal underpinning of a system
with a clear distinction between foreign and domestic intelligence. Most
importantly, while there were vertical reporting requirements, there were
none prescribing horizontal interagency intelligence sharing. Indeed, as
one expert noted,

At the time of the act’s passing, little thought was given to the need
for a national-level intelligence apparatus in Washington that could
synthesize information from across the government to inform policy-
makers and help support real-time tactical decisions. That reality, cou-
pled with practices that led to a “stovepiping” of intelligence, arrested
the growth of information sharing, collaboration, and integration.11

The lack of vertical and horizontal intelligence sharing among agencies

impeded opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot. Investigations found
afterward that various agencies possessed bits of intelligence that perhaps
312 Counterterrorism
could have led to the discovery of the hijacking plot and its terrible con-
sequences. As Philip Heymann pointed out,

The FBI and the CIA were unwilling or unable to exchange infor-
mation quickly and effectively; this applied even more to furnishing
information to the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS].
The INS did not learn from the CIA what identified terrorists were
entering the United States and where they were.12

The FBI seemed slow in tracking suspects inside the country when the
CIA provided intelligence about their identity.
Perhaps more shocking was the disclosure that higher-ups at the FBI
headquarters in Washington ignored the leads and thwarted the investi-
gations of FBI agents in field offices that should have led to the arrests of
the 9/11 plotters before they could strike. Agents in the field reported to
their Washington superiors that foreign flight school students insisted on
learning how to pilot commercial jetliners but were not at all interested in
takeoffs and landing procedures. Coleen Rowley, an agent and lawyer in
the Minneapolis field office of the FBI, testified before the Senate Judiciary
Committee that she and her colleagues were frustrated because FBI head-
quarters had obstructed their efforts to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui,
allegedly the designated twentieth hijacker in the 9/11 plot and one of
the suspicious flight school students. According to one account, Rowley
was particularly incensed because FBI headquarters rejected a warrant
request to examine Moussaoui’s computer. It was only after 9/11 that
the FBI got the warrant and reportedly found information related to
commercial planes and crop dusters on the computer’s hard drive. The
government grounded crop-dusting planes temporarily because of what
it found.13 Some observers concluded that the Minneapolis investigation,
if not hampered by FBI higher-ups, could have produced evidence about
the identity of foreigners and their suspicious interest in piloting com-
mercial jets in flight. The likelihood of discovering the plot before it was
too late should have been enhanced by an alert agent in the FBI’s Phoenix
field office whose memo informed superiors in Washington about several
Arabs who were training in a flight school in Arizona. But again, officials
at the FBI headquarters showed no particular interest.
Besides serious problems in the culture of individual agencies and turf
battles between different agencies, a multitude of other deficiencies had
been identified well before 9/11. In a June 2000 report to President Clinton
titled “Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism,” the
National Commission on Terrorism warned that its members had “iden-
tified significant obstacles to the collection and distribution of reliable
information on terrorism to analysts and policymakers” and that “these
obstacles must be removed.”14 Among the identified problems before and
after 9/11 were the following:
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  313
•• Lack of information sharing. The most glaring problem was the fail-
ure of the various members of the intelligence community to share
information. “Law enforcement agencies are traditionally reluctant
to share information outside of their circles so as not to jeopardize
any potential prosecution. The FBI does promptly share informa-
tion warning about specific threats with the CIA and other agencies.
But the FBI is far less likely to disseminate terrorist information that
may not relate to an immediate threat even though this could be
of immense long-term or cumulative value to the intelligence com-
munity . . . The problem is particularly pronounced with respect to
information in the FBI’s field offices in the United States, most of
which never reaches the FBI headquarters, let alone other U.S. gov-
ernment agencies or departments.”15 An investigation by the staff
of the 9/11 Commission came to the same conclusion: “The [intel-
ligence] Community lacked a common information architecture that
would help to ensure the integration of counterterrorism data across
CIA, NSA, DIA, the FBI, and other agencies.”16
•• Insufficient human intelligence. The National Commission on
Terrorism stated, “Inside information is the key to preventing attacks
by terrorists. The CIA must aggressively recruit informants with
unique access to terrorist plans. That sometimes requires recruiting
those who have committed terrorist acts or related crimes, just as
domestic law enforcement agencies routinely recruit criminal inform-
ants in order to pursue major criminal figures.”17 Therefore, the
Commission recommended, the CIA must act on the recognition that
“the aggressive recruitment of human intelligence sources on terror-
ism is one of the intelligence community’s highest priorities.”18
•• Lack of state-of-the-art information technology. One reason why the
FBI and other intelligence agencies failed in the past to connect the
dots of the available intelligence to pinpoint the connections between
suspected terrorists and the targets of terrorist plots was the lack of
state-of-the-art information technology—although, as the National
Commission on Terrorism concluded well before 9/11, “The abil-
ity to exploit information collected—process it into understandable
information and prioritize it—is essential to an effective global coun-
terterrorism program.”19 The lack of sufficient financial resources
delayed the modernization of information technology in all intelli-
gence agencies. As far as the FBI was concerned, its “ability to exploit
the increasing volume of terrorism information has been hampered
by aging technology.”20 At the CIA, the Counterterrorism Center in
particular was “suffering from inadequate resources” and therefore
“had to cut back or eliminate plans for an increased operational
tempo to meet the globalization of terrorism and for develop-
ment and acquisition of technology designed to assist in combating
terrorists.”21 With respect to the NSA, the National Commission on
314 Counterterrorism
Terrorism concluded that the NSA, because of its inability to “keep
pace with the information revolution . . . is losing its capability to
target and exploit the modern communication systems used by ter-
rorists, seriously weakening the NSA’s ability to warn of possible
attacks.”22

Finally, the FBI Gets an Adequate Computer System

In early 2005, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded
that the failure to upgrade its computer system hampered the FBI’s
“ability to prevent terrorism and combat other serious crimes.”23 More
than three years after 9/11, it was clear that Trilogy, a $581 million
three-pronged program to bring the FBI’s information system into the
twenty-first century, was far from becoming reality. One part of the
$170 million effort to establish a so-called Virtual Case File (VCF)
program that agents could access via computers was not performing
as needed.
During a U.S. Senate Appropriation Subcommittee hearing on
February 3, 2005, in which FBI Director Robert S. Mueller testified,
Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) made the following remarks with
respect to the FBI’s lagging information and communication ability:

It is unbelievable, given the years that have gone by, the

advances in technology that have marched on in the meantime,
that we’re here today to discuss whether or not to completely
scrap a key component of the Trilogy Project, the long antici-
pated Virtual Case File.
This unraveling of the Trilogy Project or—as some FBI agents
have told me privately, the Tragedy Project—bringing the FBI’s
information technology into the 21st century, that shouldn’t be
rocket science.
We have a classic example of too many cooks with unpredict-
able results. The initial contract for VCF was modified 36 times.
During this period, the FBI had five different chief information
officers; I am told, 10 different project managers.
We have to protect the American people. To do this effec-
tively, the FBI has to have state-of-the-art technology that works.
It’s a vital task.
Now, we’re going to have to spend more money to buy what
we thought we had bought.24
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  315

A few weeks later, in early March 2005, the FBI officially abandoned
its $170 million VCF project that had been considered critical to assist-
ing agents in investigating terrorism. The agency aimed at developing
a new software system within three and a half years that would satisfy
the needs of the agency. But in late 2008, the Justice Department’s
inspector general revealed that the new system, named Sentinel,
would cost $451 million rather than the projected $425 million and be
completed by June 2010 rather than in late 2009 as promised. And
even before the latest deadline came around in mid-2010, yet another
delay was announced.
In mid-2012, though, more than a decade after 9/11, the FBI had
finally a sophisticated computer network that was reportedly working
well. After years of failure and hundreds of millions of dollars lost on
a system that didn’t work, the FBI deployed its $451 million computer
system called Sentinel. According to the agency,

Sentinel moves the FBI from a paper-based case management

system to a digital system of record. Sentinel uses a modern
web-based application for entry, review, approval, and research
of case and intelligence information. It enhances FBI’s ability
to link cases with similar information through expanded search
capabilities. It also streamlines administrative processes through
“electronic workflow,” making new case information and intelli-
gence available more quickly to agents and analysts.25

Director Robert S. Mueller said, “The deployment of Sentinel is an

important step forward for FBI’s information technology.”26

•• Shortage of linguists. The NSA in particular, but the rest of the intel-
ligence community as well, “face a drastic shortage of linguists to
translate raw data into useful information.”27 At a time when the
global network of terrorists presided over or inspired by bin Laden
represents the most serious terrorism threat to the United States, the
NSA collects vast amounts of raw data in a multitude of languages
and even unique dialects. Without qualified linguists translating this
material into English, intelligence of this kind is not at all useful for
analysts and policy-makers. But since the translation of highly sensi-
tive intelligence information can only be entrusted to persons eligible
for the highest level of security clearance, the hiring of additional
linguists has been slow—even after 9/11.
316 Counterterrorism
Perhaps all of these problems were not aggressively attacked before 9/11
because, as Heymann pointed out, terrorism “posed a minimal risk at
home.”28 The result was complacency. “We were focused on attacks on
Americans abroad, although we should have been able to imagine terri-
ble attacks at home, even of the sort that took place [on 9/11].”29

Post-9/11 Changes
The Bush administration and Congress decided that changes in gather-
ing, coordinating, and analyzing intelligence were needed. Following the
adoption of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of
2004 (Public Law 108-458), the most drastic reorganization of the intelli-
gence community since the adoption and implementation of the National
Security Act of 1947 was undertaken. Most importantly, the act created
the new position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as the head
of the intelligence community, a cabinet-level position. The primary task
of the DNI is to enforce collaboration between the sixteen existing intel-
ligence agencies and, most importantly, to improve cooperation between
those concentrating on foreign intelligence on the one hand and domestic
intelligence on the other.
When President George W. Bush nominated John Negroponte as the
first DNI, he characterized the new office and its occupant’s role this way:

John will lead a unified intelligence community, and will serve as the
principle [sic] advisor to the President on intelligence matters. He
will have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence,
to ensure the sharing of information among agencies, and to estab-
lish common standards for the intelligence community’s personnel.
It will be John’s responsibility to determine the annual budgets of all
national intelligence agencies and offices and direct how these funds
are spent. Vesting these authorities in a single official who reports
directly to me will make our intelligence efforts better coordinated,
more efficient, and more effective.30

In addition to creating the DNI position the law prescribed the estab-
lishment of a National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC). Staffed by
analysts from all intelligence agencies, the NCTC is part of the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence and, according to its website, has the
mission to “lead and integrate the national counterterrorism (CT) effort
by fusing foreign and domestic CT information, providing terrorism anal-
ysis, sharing information with partners across the CT enterprise, and driv-
ing whole-of-government action to secure our national CT objectives.”31
Given the perennial turf battles among various agencies and depart-
ments, however, it proved difficult for the DNI and the NCTC to
discharge their awesome responsibilities. It was probably no coincidence
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  317
that President Bush selected a longtime diplomat, John Negroponte, as the
first DNI, and a career Air Force intelligence officer and director of
the NSA, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, as deputy DNI. Their most crucial
task was clear—to unify the intelligence community and keep it unified.
The Department of Defense in particular resented a strong DNI who
would be able to meddle in its several intelligence agencies. This reaction
was hardly surprising. The Pentagon, after all, receives about 80 percent
of the total funds allotted to the intelligence community. When the new
position was created, it was far from certain what authorities the DNI
would really have. Although the president said that the DNI would have
centralized intelligence-gathering and budgetary authorities, he seemed to
assure others in the intelligence community, especially the civilian and
military leadership in the Department of Defense, that there would be
continuity rather than change when he said,

The law establishing John’s [Negroponte’s] position preserves the

existing chain of command and leaves all our intelligence agencies,
organizations, and offices in their current departments. Our military
commanders will continue to have quick access to the intelligence
they need to achieve victory on the battlefield.32

Negroponte, a career diplomat with no previous experience in any of the

intelligence agencies, left his cabinet-level post in early 2007 after only
nineteen months to become deputy secretary of state—a subcabinet posi-
tion. At the time, observers in Washington wondered,

whether Mr. Negroponte was there long enough to lay the founda-
tion of real change and whether his transfer suggested that the Bush
administration was less committed than it claimed to be to an intelli-
gence overhaul that President Bush had billed as the most significant
restructuring of American spy agencies in half a century.33

President Bush nominated an experienced intelligence specialist to

succeed Negroponte as DNI: Retired Admiral Mike McConnell, a for-
mer director of the NSA. One of the challenges of his new job was, as he
wrote, that the DNI

needs to transform the culture of the intelligence community, which

is presently characterized by a professional but narrow focus on indi-
vidual agency missions. Each of the sixteen organizations within the
intelligence community has unique mandates and competencies. They
also have their own cultures and mythologies, but no one agency can
be effective on its own. To capture the benefits of collaboration, a
new culture must be created for the entire intelligence community
without destroying unique perspectives and capabilities.34
318 Counterterrorism
President Obama followed his predecessor’s lead in that he appointed
men with stellar careers in the military and the intelligence community:
First, Dennis C. Blair, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, and, upon his resigna-
tion in the wake of the Christmas Day would-be underwear bombing,
Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper. President Donald Trump appointed
Daniel Coats, U.S. Senator from Indiana and former Ambassador to
Germany, to be the fifth Director of National Intelligence.
Although perceived as a coordinating entity, the Office of the DNI
has become a new, large intelligence bureaucracy with the National
Counter Terrorism Center, the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration
Center, the National Counterproliferation Center, and the National
Counterintelligence and Security Center under its roof. As Table 13.1
shows, of the sixteen members of the national intelligence community, the
Department of Defense has by far the largest number of intelligence agen-
cies under its umbrella: The DIA, the NSA, the National Reconnaissance
Office, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the intelligence
arms of each of the four military branches. In other words, eight of the
seventeen members are parts of the Department of Defense.

Domestic Intelligence in Post-9/11 America

Most of the intelligence agencies, the intelligence arms of the military
services, and intelligence sections of departments listed in Table 13.1
above are solely or mostly involved in foreign intelligence. But in post-
9/11 America the domestic intelligence apparatus grew enormously,
especially with respect to the FBI and the newly established Department
of Homeland Security.
The FBI is at the core of U.S. domestic intelligence. Established in 1908
as the Bureau of Investigation, largely in response to anarchist terrorism,
the FBI (thus renamed in 1935) grew steadily during World War II and
the Cold War. The agency, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, was

Table 13.1  Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community

Member Agencies or Intelligence Arms of Member Departments

Air Force Intelligence Coast Guard Intelligence

Army Intelligence Central Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency Department of Energy
Marine Corps Intelligence Department of Homeland Security
National Geospatial Intelligence Agency Department of State
National Reconnaissance Office Department of the Treasury
National Security Agency Drug Enforcement Administration
Navy Intelligence Federal Bureau of Investigation
Source: U.S. Intelligence Community ([Link]
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  319
through the decades involved in investigating domestic cases of terror-
ism. Its involvement in anti-American transnational terrorism began in
the 1980s during the Reagan administration. Following a wave of deadly
terrorist attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic targets in the Middle
East, Congress expanded the FBI’s investigative authority and the right to
make arrest to foreign venues in cases that involved American victims of
terrorism. But most of all the FBI was a law enforcement agency.
The widely perceived failures in the pre-9/11 period led to post-9/11
calls for the establishment of a new domestic intelligence agency that was
not part of any department but was a freestanding creature like the CIA,
the major foreign intelligence agency. The most often mentioned model
abroad was that of the United Kingdom with MI5 or the Security Service
responsible for domestic intelligence but without police and arrest pow-
ers, and MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service responsible for foreign
intelligence. A host of other countries, most of them unitary coun-
tries with centralized governmental powers, have similar models. But
Germany, like the United States, a federal republic with sixteen states,
also has two central intelligence agencies, the Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution (Amt fuer Verfassungschutz) for domestic
intelligence, with offices in each of the states, and the Federal Intelligence
Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst) for foreign intelligence.
In the end, the idea of a new domestic spy agency was rejected. Yet,
even without it, there was a robust growth of domestic or homeland
security intelligence efforts. Most of all, the FBI morphed into a major
domestic intelligence agency, so that today, according to the agency,

the mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the U.S. against ter-
rorism and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the
criminal laws of the U.S., and to provide leadership and criminal
justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agen-
cies and partners.35

In other words, preventing terrorism became the FBI’s priority. In the

process, the bureau’s personnel grew by roughly 10,000 and hundreds
of agents were switched from criminal investigation to counterterrorist
intelligence. At headquarters the agency established in 2005 a “National
Security Service” that united its intelligence, counterintelligence, and
counterterrorism divisions. Finally, the agency established through-
out the country more than 100 Joint Terrorism Task Forces plus Field
Intelligence Groups located within the fifty-six FBI field offices in all parts
of the United States.
The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
was a direct result of 9/11. The new department brought together, under
one umbrella, twenty-two entities that had been either independent or
part of larger departments and agencies (see Figure 13.1). Along with
 Chief of Staff

Military Advisor

Figure 13.1  Organization of the Department of Homeland Security

Source: [Link]/DHS_OrgChart.pdf
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  321
the creation of the DNI and ODNI the establishment of the DHS was the
major initiative in the post-9/11 reforms.
By 2018, the DHS had 240,000 employees and was the third larg-
est department behind the Department of Defense (DOD) and the
Department of Veteran Affairs. Its budget for the fiscal year 2017 came
to $40.4 billion. An essential part of DHS resources is devoted to intel-
ligence. As Erik J. Dahl revealed,

Within the Department of Homeland Security there are at least nine

separate intelligence elements, including the Office of Intelligence and
Analysis and intelligence organizations of six separate DHS compo-
nents: Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Transportation
Security Administration, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service.36

In addition, the DHS established seventy-nine so-called “fusion centers”

around the country which were in 2011 praised by then DHS Secretary
Janet Napolitano

as focal points where information about threats can be gathered,

analyzed, and shared among federal, state, local, tribal, territorial,
and private sector partners. Fusion centers also support and interact
regularly with FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which
coordinate resources and expertise from across the federal govern-
ment to investigate terrorism cases.37

A year later, however, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Govern­
mental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
issued a critical report that revealed that “despite reviewing 13 months’
worth of reporting originating from fusion centers” investigators could not
“identify a contribution . . . to disrupt an active terrorist plot.”38 Instead,
the investigation found a multitude of problems, among them that

nearly a third of all reports – 188 out of 610 – were never published
for use within the DHS and by other members of the intelligence com-
munity, often because they lacked any useful information or poten-
tially violated Department guidelines meant to protect Americans’
civil liberties or Privacy Act protections.39

Other observers noted that there had been improvements in the working
of fusion centers. According to a 2015 report, “federal officials chal-
lenged the idea that the centers were not contributing to counterterrorism
efforts and pointed to cases that showed otherwise—such as the ‘Raleigh
Jihad’ case in 2009 and the 2011 disruption of a plot to attack a Seattle
military recruiting center.”40
322 Counterterrorism
All in all, as one expert concluded,

We have created a vast domestic intelligence establishment, one

which few Americans understand and which does not receive the
oversight and scrutiny it deserves. There is good news here: this
domestic intelligence system appears to have been successful in
increasing security within the US, as demonstrated by numerous
foiled terrorist plots and the lack of another major successful attack
on American soil since 9/11. But there is also bad news: these gains
are coming at the cost of increasing domestic surveillance and at the
risk of civil liberties.41

Congress and the Lack of Effective Oversight

Resistance to change did not come only from intelligence agencies and
their parent organizations in the executive branch; the hardest nut to
crack according to the 9/11 Commission was Congress. Pointing out
that eighty-eight congressional committees and subcommittees were
involved in overseeing one or another aspect of homeland security,
the Commission recommended the drastic streamlining of oversight in
the areas of intelligence and counterterrorism within Congress. In the
9/11 Commission’s words,

Congressional oversight for intelligence—and counterterrorism—is

now dysfunctional. Congress should address this problem. We have
considered various alternatives: A joint committee on the old model
of the Joint Commission on Atomic Energy is one. A single commit-
tee in each house of Congress, combining authorizing and appropria-
tion authorities, is another.42

If enacted, this recommendation would result in Congress’s ability to

discharge effectively its oversight responsibilities and free homeland secu-
rity and intelligence personnel from testifying in front of several dozen
committees. But while the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S.
Senate legislated reforms in the executive branch, there were no signs that
an equally important reform along the lines of the 9/11 Commission’s
recommendation of a joint committee or single committee in each cham-
ber was seriously considered. At best, there was some tinkering with the
existing structures. Republicans and Democrats alike were not willing to
make such drastic changes.
By late 2008, nothing had changed. As the Commission on the
Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation, and Terrorism
wrote, “That Congress has yet to adequately organize itself to cope
with the nuclear age, much less the post-9/11 era, is deeply troubling
and demands action.”43 The commissioners noted that, in the House,
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  323
sixteen committees and forty subcommittees still had jurisdiction over
the DHS, and that, in the Senate, fourteen full committees and eighteen
subcommittees shared oversight responsibilities. A decade after 9/11, the
intelligence/homeland security sector had a workforce of 854,000 with
top security clearance. According to one account,

At least 20 percent of the government organizations that exist to fend

off terrorist threats were established or refashioned in the wake of
9/11. Many that existed before the attacks grew to historic propor-
tions as the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more
money than they were capable of responsibly spending.44

Neither the White House nor congressional committees were able to

oversee effectively the massive intelligence–homeland security complex.
There were calls for a bipartisan commission to investigate, review, and
make suggestions for a drastic reorganization of a bureaucracy consisting
of “some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies
[that] work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security
and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.”45
Following a two-year investigation of the U.S. intelligence apparatus
Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin concluded,

The top-secret world the government created in response to the ter-

rorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and
so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many
people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how
many agencies do the same work.46

Given the growing partisan and ideological polarization in the Congress,

nothing changed for the better in this respect during the Obama presi-
dency and the first part of the Trump presidency.

International Cooperation Needed

Intelligence is essential not only in the prevention of terrorism but also
in law enforcement agencies’ efforts to hunt down the perpetrators
of terrorism, the architects of terrorism, and the supporters of terror-
ist groups. While one objective here is to bring terrorists to justice,
an even more urgent goal is to get arrested terrorists to reveal infor-
mation about planned terror plots, accomplices, financial resources,
and weapon suppliers. In cases of transnational terrorism, successful
investigations require close and continued international cooperation
between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. After 9/11, most
Americans associated efforts to prevent further terror strikes with the
military actions abroad, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Yemen, Syria, the
324 Counterterrorism
Philippines, and Africa. But the work of the domestic intelligence and
law enforcement agencies and extraordinary international cooperation
were equally—or more—important.
Two years after 9/11, more than 3,000 terrorism suspects had been
arrested. Although hundreds were captured during the Afghanistan war,
most of the leading figures of Al Qaeda and their followers were caught
as a result of cooperation between American police and intelligence
agencies and their counterparts abroad. This resulted in many arrests
in Pakistan and other countries in the region. But, as the Department
of State’s report on “Patterns of Global Terrorism” for 2002 detailed,
success stories were also reported from other parts of the world, espe-
cially Western Europe, because of bilateral and multilateral cooperation
efforts.47 These trends continued during the following years. Moreover,
the 9/11 strike and subsequent terrorist attacks shocked international
and regional organizations into focusing more on their antiterrorism
capabilities and expanding them:

•• The United Nations (UN) adopted resolutions that obligate member

states to take specific actions to combat terrorism, especially in the
area of interrupting the financing of terrorism. The UN established
the Counterterrorism Committee and a mechanism to oversee the
implementation of the agreed-upon measures.
•• INTERPOL, the International Police Organization (with 181 mem-
ber countries), strengthened its efforts in information sharing and
law enforcement with respect to anti- and counterterrorism signifi-
cantly. In particular, the Fusion Task Force, established in 2002, can
assist member countries in their terrorism investigations. “Project
Tent,” part of the Fusion Task Force, collects information on indi-
viduals known to have attended terrorist training camps.
•• Europol, the European version of INTERPOL, and Eurojust, a trans-
national investigative body within the European Union, established
policies and mechanisms to ensure increased information sharing
and cross-border law enforcement in order to combat terrorism.
•• The Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI), with a SECI
Center in Bucharest; the Southern African Development Community
(SADC); and the Southern Africa Regional Policy Cooperative
Organization (SARPCO) are efforts to function in their respective
regions along the Europol and Eurojust models.
•• Project Pacific, the result of an Asian regional conference in Sri
Lanka, aims at increasing member states’ proactive and operational
cooperation in order to combat terrorism.

Given that Western democracies are the special targets of Al Qaeda,

ISIS, and like-minded organizations, cells, and lone wolves, cooperation
between the United States and European countries was and remains of
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  325
great importance. In a policy paper on post-9/11 transatlantic coopera-
tion, a group of distinguished experts wrote that despite fundamental
differences in counterterrorism approaches,

The United States and the European Union have shared a commit-
ment to making their evolving collaboration against terrorism a suc-
cess. During the past three years, they have reached agreement on
many new arrangements, such as the Container Security Initiative
and Passenger Name Records (PNR), but also on terrorist financ-
ing, sharing of evidentiary information, extradition of suspected ter-
rorists, and many others. They have built close ties between parts
of their bureaucracies that had rarely been in contact before, and
involving officials from working level to Cabinet secretary and
European commissioner.
The question now before the United States and the EU is whether
and how to build on the cooperation achieved thus far and ensure
that this post–9/11 partnership continues into the future. This will
not be easy. Legislation and other agreements must be implemented
and enforced. Existing areas of cooperation must be extended, and
collaboration in new areas must be explored and developed. The
good news is that the United States and the European Union have
established basic mechanisms for building cooperation through
regular consultations and have successfully concluded some basic
agreements.48

The threat of transnational terrorism will not be contained unilaterally

but must be faced by bilateral and multilateral cooperation.
One issue between Washington and the European Union arose over
the transfer of data from Europe’s Swift money-transfer system to
American counterterrorism investigators who tried to identify terrorist
organizations, individual terrorists, and their supporters by following the
money-transfer orders among more than 9,000 banks and other financial
institutions in some 200 countries. European politicians were concerned
about the violation of privacy rights and, in early 2010, voted against an
agreement on data access. By mid-2010, though, the United States and
the European Union agreed on additional safeguards in the data-transfer
process by putting Europol in charge of screening American requests.

Preparedness for Man-Made and Natural Disasters

Recognizing that even the most elaborate and skillful preventive meas-
ures would not eliminate terrorist acts altogether, the federal government,
states, and local communities in the United States—and the comparable
authorities in many other countries around the world—intensified their
efforts to improve the preparedness for emergency responses after 9/11.
326 Counterterrorism
Here, preparations for man-made and natural disasters are very similar
or even the same. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and
other areas along the Gulf coast in late August 2005 and caused many
deaths and human tragedies, it became obvious that neither the federal
government nor state and local emergency responders were adequately
prepared to deal effectively with such a catastrophe. As U.S. Senator
Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut pointed out in a stinging criticism of
federal preparedness, Katrina should have been “a lesser challenge to the
nation’s emergency-management apparatus than the 9/11 attacks: It [the
hurricane] was preceded by 72 hours of increasingly dire predictions.”49
Indeed, while the stunningly flawed or nonexistent preparedness measures
before Katrina struck and the botched emergency response afterward laid
bare the soft underbelly of America’s preparedness for predictable disas-
ters, they did far more so with respect to unpredictable terrorist events.
After all, terrorists do not give warnings as do weather forecasters.
The failure to prepare for and respond to natural and man-made dis-
asters was shocking to Americans and people around the globe. After all,
homeland security had become the single most important objective in
American domestic and foreign policy after 9/11.
Assessments were even more negative when it came to the public’s
knowledge of preparedness in the case of terrorist attacks. Although gov-
ernment officials mentioned and the news media reported frequently on
the seriousness of the terrorist threat in the post-9/11 years, this did not
result in markedly improved preparedness knowledge among ordinary
citizens and did not remedy major problems within and among emer-
gency response agencies. Public opinion survey data revealed “a national
state of unpreparedness for emergency events” in the post-9/11 years.50
And the assessment of professional responders was just as grim, summed
up in the conclusion that “overall, the existing government response
system is more accurately described as disarrayed, disconnected, uncoor-
dinated, underfunded, and discredited.”51
Other countries were plagued by similar preparedness and response
problems. This became painfully clear after four suicide bombers struck
London’s transit system in July 2005. In a comprehensive report that was
released nearly a year after the deadly terrorist attacks, a review com-
mittee listed a multitude of shortcomings in the response system, among
them failures of communication between the emergency services, since
police, fire, and emergency medical services used different radio systems.
Also, there was “a lack of planning to care for survivors” and “of basic
equipment, including stretchers and triage cards, and too few essential
supplies such as fluids at the affected sites.”52
Following those flaws, there were indications that preparedness for
both man-made and natural catastrophe improved in the following years.
When there were unspeakable failures, such as the lack of response to
Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico and the death of more
 The Crucial Role of Intelligence  327
than 4,600 persons, these were not caused by lack of preparedness and
response capabilities but rather by wrong decisions taken at the highest
levels of the federal government.

Notes
1 Ed O’Keefe, “Senators: Boston Bombings Exposed Possible Counter-terrorism
‘Stovepipes,’” Washington Post, April 23, 2013, [Link]/
blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/23/senators-boston-bombings-exposed-
possible-counter-terrorism-stovepipes/.
2 The full text of the report is available at [Link]
[Link]/files/documents/[Link], accessed
July 30, 2015.
3 Elisabeth Bumiller and Scott Shane, “Pentagon Report on Fort Hood Details
Failures,” New York Times, January 15, 2010, [Link]/2010/01/16/
us/politics/[Link]?ref=nidal_malik_hasan, accessed July 5, 2010.
4 Ibid.
5 For an intelligent discussion of thwarted plots and those that otherwise failed,
see Erik J. Dahl, “The Plots that Failed: Intelligence Lessons Learned from
Unsuccessful Terrorist Attacks Against the United States,” Studies in Conflict
& Terrorism 34:8 (2011): 621–48.
6 The charges against the three men were unsealed by the U.S. Department
of Justice on October 6, 2016. The document is available at [Link].
gov/opa/pr/charges-unsealed-against-three-men-plotting-carry-out-terrorist-
attacks-new-york-city-isis, accessed February 15, 2018.
7 Kevin J. Strom, John S. Hollywood, and Mark Pope, “Terrorist Plots against
the United States: What We Have Really Faced, and How We Might Best
Defend against It,” Rand Homeland Security and Defense Center, September
2015.
8 Ibid.
9 Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, “A Hidden World, Growing beyond
Control,” Washington Post, July 19, 2010, [Link]
com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-worldgrowing-beyond-control/
print/, accessed July 19, 2010.
10 Mike McConnell, “Overhauling Intelligence,” Foreign Affairs 86:4 (July–
August 2007): 51.
11 Ibid., 50.
12 Philip B. Heymann, Terrorism, Freedom and Security: Winning without War
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 64.
13 “Whistle-Blower Testifies,” [Link], accessed October 21, 2003.
14 Report from the National Commission on Terrorism, “Countering the
Changing Threat of International Terrorism,” June 2000, 7.
15 Ibid., 15, 16.
16 9/11 Commission, “The Performance of the Intelligence Community,” Staff
Statement no. 11, 12.
17 Report from the National Commission on Terrorism, 8.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 13.
20 Ibid., 14.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Dan Eggen, “Computer Woes Hinder FBI’s Work, Report Says,” Washington
Post, February 4, 2004, A15.
328 Counterterrorism
24 Federal News Service, February 3, 2005.
25 “FBI Announces Deployment of Sentinel,” July 31, 2012, [Link]/news/
pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announces-deployment-of-sentinel, accessed July
30, 2015.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Heymann, 4.
29 Ibid., 64.
30 President Bush’s remarks were made during a White House press conference
on February 17, 2005.
31 [Link]/[Link]/nctc-home.
32 Ibid.
33 Mark Mazzetti and David Sanger, “Spy Chief’s Choice to Step Back Feeds
Speculation,” New York Times, January 5, 2007, [Link]/2007/
01/05/washington/[Link]?_r=1&oref=slogin.
34 McConnell.
35 “Organization, Mission and Functions Manual: Federal Bureau of Investigation,”
available at [Link]/jmd/organization-mission-and-functions-manual-
federal-bureau-investigation, accessed December 3, 2018.
36 Erik J. Dahl, “Domestic Intelligence Today: More Security but Less Liberty?”
Homeland Security Affairs 7 (September 2011).
37 Janet Napolitano, “Progress toward a More Secure and Resilient Nation,”
Homeland Security Affairs 7 (September 2011).
38 [Link]/imo/media/doc/10-3-2012%20PSI%20STAFF%20
REPORT%20re%20FUSION%[Link], accessed June 3, 2018.
39 Ibid.
40 Jason Barnosky, “Fusion Centers: What’s Working and What Isn’t?”
Brookings, March 2015, [Link]/blog/fixgov/2015/03/17/fusion-
centers-whats-working-and-what-isnt/, accessed May 30, 2018.
41 Dahl.
42 The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), 420.
43 Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation,
and Terrorism, World at Risk (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 89.
44 Priest and Arkin.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 U.S. Department of State, “Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002,” [Link].
gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2002/html.
48 David L. Aaron et al., “The Post 9/11 Partnership: Transatlantic Cooperation
against Terrorism,” Policy Paper, The Atlantic Council of the United States,
December 2004, [Link] serviceID=Publis
hingHouse&fileid=314CA3A0-B359-B009-DA3B-9D9FA889FBEE&lng=en.
49 [Link]/katrina/pdf/hs_katrinarpt_lieberman.pdf.
50 Irwin Redlener and David A. Berman, “National Preparedness Planning: The
Historical Context and Current State of the U.S. Public’s Readiness, 1940–2005,”
Journal of International Affairs 59:2 (Spring/Summer 2006): 87.
51 Sang Ok Choi, “Emergency Management: Implications from a Strategic
Management Perspective,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management 5:1 (2008): Article 1, 7.
52 BBC News, “London Assembly Report on 7/7,” June 5, 2006, [Link]
[Link]/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/[Link].
Part III

Terrorism in the News Media

and on the Internet
14 Terrorist Propaganda and the
Mainstream Media

In mid-August 2014, the Islamic State (also called ISIS for the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIL for the Islamic State in Iraq and the
Levant) shocked the world with a close to five-minute video uploaded
on YouTube. The involuntary star of the production was the American
journalist James Foley wearing an orange jump suit and kneeling next to
a masked ISIS fighter. Under duress, the hostage called the U.S. govern-
ment his real killer and exclaimed that he wished he wasn’t an American.
But condemning the Washington government did not save Foley’s life.
The ISIS fighter pulled out a knife and beheaded his hostage while the
camera captured every second of this most brutal execution.
One day later, President Barack Obama appeared in front of cameras
and microphones and declared, “The entire world is appalled by the bru-
tal murder of Jim Foley by the terrorist group, ISIL.” He promised that

the United States of America will continue to do what we must do

to protect our people. We will be vigilant and we will be relentless.
When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to
see that justice is done. And we act against ISIL, standing alongside
others.1

Most Americans did not see the video. On YouTube the clip was
quickly blocked. Although available on some sites, most people either
did not want to see the horror or could not find the full clip. But eve-
ryone who watched television, listened to radio, visited the Internet, or
looked at the front page of a newspaper was aware of the execution.
The already heavy coverage of ISIS before Foley’s execution increased
significantly after the release of the video. As Table 14.1 shows, in lead-
ing print and TV media the number of articles about or mentioning ISIS,
ISIL, or the Islamic State tripled in the month following the release of the
decapitation video compared to the month before the posting of the ISIS
video. Similarly, as seen in Table 14.2, articles with ISIS, ISIL, or Islamic
State in the headlines increased dramatically after the beheading video
was released from merely three in the month before to ninety-nine in the
332  News Media and Internet
Table 14.1  Mainstream Media Reporting on ISIS before and after Foley
Beheading: Articles about or Mentioning ISIS

Month Prior to Beheading Month Following Beheading

(July 18–August 18, (August 19–September 19,
2014) 2014)

New York Times 124 375

Newsweek   3  15
[Link]  45 296
Source: Marissa Young (2015)

Table 14.2  Mainstream Media Reporting on ISIS before and after Foley
Beheading: Number of Articles with Islamic State, ISIS, or ISIL in
Headline

Month Prior to Beheading Month Following Beheading

(July 18–August 18, (August 19–September 19,
2014) 2014)

New York Times  3 99

Newsweek  1  5
[Link] 31 95
Source: Marissa Young (2015)

New York Times, from one to five in Newsweek, and from thirty-one to
ninety-five on [Link]. The coverage patterns were not different in the
rest of the news media.
After he beheaded several other hostages according to ISIS videos,
the executioner, who reportedly grew up in England, became known as
“Jihadi John” around the world. In mid-2015, a Google search of the
term “Jihadi John” produced 6,280,000 results; a search in the archive of
the New York Times brought up 266 stories; there were 78 such articles
in the Washington Post and 229 at [Link].
Those who run the Islamic State’s media center are public information
and propaganda specialists. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami who is
in charge of ISIS’s public information operations could be compared to
Joseph Goebbels who ran the ministry of propaganda in Nazi Germany.
Mainstream media, including their online content, continue to be the
most important news sources. Terrorist propagandists know this well.
As someone with rare insider information of the working of ISIS’s propa-
ganda machine put it,

Crucifixions, beheadings, the hearts of rape victims cut out and placed
upon their chests, mass executions, homosexuals being pushed from
high buildings, severed heads impaled on railings or brandished by
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  333
grinning “jihadist” children—who have latterly taken to shooting
prisoners in the head themselves—these gruesome images of brutal
violence are carefully packaged and distributed via Islamic State’s
media department. As each new atrocity outdoes the last, front-page
headlines across the world’s media are guaranteed.2

In July 2010, some ten weeks after the failed attempt to detonate a bomb
in New York City’s busy Times Square area, an Arab TV network aired
a video in which the would-be bomber Faisal Shahzad justified his plan
to harm Americans as revenge for “oppressed Muslims” and “for all
the mujahedeen.” Obviously produced well before the Times Square
incident, the videotape contained passages in which Shahzad read from
religious texts and used them as launching pads for threats against
America. “Eight years have passed by in Afghanistan and you’ll see that
the Muslim war has just started, and we will tell you how until Islam is
spread on the whole world,” he said at one point. Dressed in traditional
Pakistani garb, the naturalized U.S. citizen held an assault rifle in his
hand—an obvious effort to evoke the image of a fierce jihadist. That was
in line with what he had called himself as he pleaded guilty in the federal
court in Manhattan: A Muslim soldier.
Besides being aired first in newscasts by al Arabiya television and
thereafter by TV networks and stations around the world, aired excerpts
of the forty-minute video were available on the al Arabiya website and
YouTube. Just as important, other media—radio, print, and blogs—
reported the release of the video and its content.
While the Times Square attempt failed, the event itself and the would-
be bomber’s subsequent threats, explanations, and justifications received
an enormous amount of media attention. This was hardly surprising
because not only major terrorist attacks but, in fact, even minor strikes
and sometimes failed or foiled acts of terrorism are reported and often
overreported. This is precisely what terrorists want.
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden
gloated that “these young men [the hijackers] said in deeds, in New York
and Washington, speeches that overshadowed other speeches made eve-
rywhere else in the world. The speeches are understood by both Arabs
and non-Arabs—even Chinese.”3 Bin Laden expressed what terrorists at
all times believed and acted upon, namely, that terrorism is “propaganda
by the deed” or “propaganda of the deed” as nineteenth-century anar-
chists put it. After comparing the publicity success of Black September’s
attack on Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich,
Abu Ubeid al-Qurashi, a leading Al Qaeda operative, boasted that
“September 11 was an even greater propaganda coup. It may be said that
it broke a record in propaganda dissemination.”4
Students of terrorist violence and communication are well aware
that for terrorists “the immediate victim is merely instrumental, the
334  News Media and Internet
skin of a drum beaten to achieve a calculated impact on a wider
audience.”5 Regardless of their grievances, goals, size, and secular
or religious convictions, all terrorist groups strive to maximize their
media impact. As Osama bin Laden wrote in a letter to Taliban leader
Mullah Muhammed Omar, “It is obvious that the media war in this
century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach
90% of the total preparation for the battles.”6 To be sure, some terror-
ist groups are more media savvy than others. The Palestinian Hamas is
among those with sophisticated press and publicity operations, as the
following case demonstrates:

It is August 19, 2003. In Jerusalem, a city bus packed with families

returning from Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, is ripped to
pieces by a powerful explosion. It is an unspeakable scene of car-
nage. Twenty people, among them six children, are killed. More
than a hundred are injured. Traumatized survivors and witnesses.
Disheartened rescuers. Shortly after the blast and well before the
dead and critically injured men, women, and children are identified,
a cell of the Palestinian Hamas group releases a written press state-
ment claiming responsibility for the attack and a pretaped video of
the “martyr” explaining his deed. The videotape shows twenty-nine-
year-old Raed Abdul Hamid Misk holding a rifle in one hand and a
Qu’ran in the other. The father of two young children with a preg-
nant wife, and the imam of a Hebron mosque, justifies his attack on
innocents partially in Arabic and partially in English. His wife does
not seem surprised when she says, “All his life he was saying, ‘Oh
God, I wish to be a martyr.’”7

By making the videotape available to the media nearly simultaneously

with the explosion, the terrorists calculated correctly that the news media
would pay a great deal of attention to Misk. He did not fit the profile of
Palestinian suicide bombers—not in terms of his profession, age, or fam-
ily status. This assured him and his act special media attention around
the world when details about his victims were not yet available. During
the following days, the media’s interest in this unlikely terrorist remained
high. Five days after the attack, for example, the New York Times illus-
trated a general story on suicide attacks with a huge color photograph of
Misk; taken three days before he killed himself in order to kill others, the
photograph showed the smiling father with his three-year-old son and
two-year-old daughter in his arms. Here was a compelling image that
made people wonder what conditions could drive such a man to become
a human bomb. This was precisely the effect that terrorists hope for. In
this particular case, the news added up to an utterly successful public-
ity campaign that could not have been better orchestrated by the best
experts on Madison Avenue.
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  335
The same was true for an earlier case that unfolded in Russia’s capi-
tal. Soon after heavily armed Chechen separatists seized a theater in
Moscow on October 21, 2002, their accomplices delivered videotapes
to the Moscow bureau of the Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera.
They explained that they had chosen to die on “the path of struggling
for the freedom of the Chechen.”8 The videotape was played by TV
networks and stations around the world. As many of the hundreds of
hostages inside used their cellphones to communicate with families and
friends, some of them conveyed the chilling messages of their captors to
the Russian public and especially to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
The hostage-holders left no doubt that they would blow up the build-
ing and kill hundreds of innocent people unless the Putin government
ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. At the height
of the siege, one of the captors grabbed the cellphone from a hostage
who was speaking to a local radio station and delivered a tirade against
Russia’s war against the Chechen people.
Although local politicians noted how media savvy these hostage-
takers were, the Chechens did not break new ground. During the Iranian
hostage crisis of 1979–1981 and subsequent hostage situations in and
around Beirut throughout the 1980s, the captors repeatedly produced
videotapes that depicted the plight of their American hostages. Such
tapes were made available to Western news organizations—in some
instances with the mutual understanding that the material would be
aired unedited. Similarly, terrorists have used cellphones for as long as
they have been available to communicate their demands and grievances
to their target audiences. Thus, the Abu Sayyaf, Muslim separatists in
the southern Philippines, utilized cellphones to contact radio stations
and communicate their demands for the release of their Western and
Asian hostages.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was right when
she said that publicity is the oxygen of terrorism. Terrorists at all times
understand this and act accordingly. Nearly 2,000 years ago and long
before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, the Sicarii, an
extremist sect active in the Jewish Zealots’ struggle in Palestine, attacked
the Roman occupiers of their land (and fellow Jews who did not share
their agenda) on religious holidays at the most crowded places. This way,
the Sicariis made sure that eyewitnesses would spread the word of their
violence. The anarchists of the nineteenth century explained their politi-
cal violence as “propaganda of the deed” and thereby indicated that their
terror strikes were designed to get their messages across to their targets:
the governments they opposed and the publics they wanted to shock and
turn against the existing regimes.
Whenever possible, terrorists do not depend on the media’s gatekeep-
ers to facilitate their desire for publicity, but rather try to convey their
messages directly. This was also true for earlier terrorists. Thus, using his
336  News Media and Internet
anarchist newspaper Freiheit as a platform, John Most urged his comrades
to prepare posters in advance of their terrorist actions in order to explain
their motives rather than depend on hostile newspapers to carry their
message. More recent terrorists have utilized copying machines, mobile
radio transmitters, their own television stations, cellphones, audiotapes,
videotapes, and, most of all, the Internet. But the traditional mass media—
namely newspapers, newsmagazines, radio, and television—remain the
most important targets in the terrorist publicity scheme because they are
still the predominant sources of information. Even when terrorists post
their own video productions on their own websites, most people learn of
new releases from reports in the traditional media.
Because they guarantee freedom of expression and press freedom, lib-
eral democracies have been especially susceptible to terrorist messages;
the fundamental civil liberties in democracies play into the terrorists’
appetite for publicity. But the recent proliferation of global television
networks has increased terrorists’ opportunities to address audiences
additionally in those parts of the world where governments curb the
domestic press.

Publicity: The Universal Terrorist Goal

Although publicity is what one may call a universal goal of terrorists, it is
never their only and ultimate objective. As described in Chapter 8, terror-
ists have short-term and long-term political ambitions and goals. But they
are well aware that publicity is the absolutely necessary means to their
ultimate political ends. In their writings and in interviews, terrorists have
revealed that they understand the importance of publicity in their scheme.
Take the case of Leila Khaled, who, as a member of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), participated in hijacking operations. In
2000, thirty years after a quadruple hijacking coup that made her famous,
she revealed in an interview that she had to be pushed by the PFLP leader-
ship to meet with media representatives and explain the group’s causes.
She said that she told Dr. George Habash, the PFLP’s leader, that she was
afraid of talking to reporters. Habash thought it strange that this woman
was not afraid to hijack airplanes but balked at meeting the press. He
told her that she had participated in the hijacking to tell the whole world
about the Palestinian cause and that she had to speak for her comrades
who were in jail. And Khaled obeyed and faced the press.
Terrorists have demonstrated time and again that they understand the
importance of the mass media by the way they have acted during and after
terrorist incidents. Reporting from Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis
in 1979, CBS correspondent Tom Fenton recognized that the captors,
who claimed to be students but may have been part of the Revolutionary
Guards, were very resourceful in getting the press to report their side of
the story. According to Fenton,
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  337
It did not take them long to realize that this is a media event. The
students have even attempted to buy off television networks by offer-
ing an unpublished American embassy secret document in return for
five minutes unedited air time.9

The Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany and its successor cells
timed their terrorist attacks so that the news coverage would be particu-
larly generous: They struck on days when the news holes in newspapers
were larger than on other days. Reporters who covered the TWA hijack-
ing ordeal in 1985 noted that the hijackers and their Hezbollah support-
ers in Beirut were well aware of the geographic reach of the American
media, the audience size of different media types, the working of press
pools, and the advantages of scheduling live interviews during TV net-
works’ popular morning and early evening news broadcasts. According
to some reports, graduates of media studies and communications pro-
grams at American universities acted as advisors to the hijackers and
those who negotiated on the terrorists’ behalf. Following these experts’
advice, the militants granted television reporters preferential treatment
for the sake of reaching the largest audiences. But there was another rea-
son for favoring television over print: Terrorists were aware that visual
images affect audiences far more deeply and for longer periods of time
than the spoken or written word. In other words, terrorists knew in the
past, as they know today, that one picture is worth a thousand words—
and probably more.
In a real sense, then, the immediate victims of bombings, hijackings,
kidnappings, and other terrorist acts are simply pawns in the plays that
terrorists stage in order to engage their domestic and international audi-
ences. But unlike the producers who stage a drama on Broadway or in
theaters elsewhere, terrorists cannot reach their intended audiences unless
they generate a great deal of news coverage.

An Alternative View: Contemporary Terrorists Do Not

Need Publicity
When terrorists struck in the 1970s and 1980s, they typically claimed
responsibility for their deeds and communicated their motives. But more
recently, the perpetrators of major terrorist attacks have often failed
to claim responsibility in an explicit and timely fashion. Some experts
in the field concluded, therefore, that a new “terrorism of expression”
or “expressive terrorism” had emerged. Typically committed by reli-
gious or pseudoreligious fanatics, the new “faceless” superterrorism is
said to have no publicity goals. According to Avishai Margalit, these
terrorists “lack clearly defined political ends” but give vent to “rage
against state power and to feelings of revenge.” They want to inflict
the greatest amount of pain on their targets.10 But this argument has
338  News Media and Internet
weaknesses. Proponents of the expressive terrorism theory point to the
first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 as a milestone. But this case
was in reality one in which the perpetrators did claim responsibility and
explained their grievances against the United States in a typewritten let-
ter mailed to the New York Times. The FBI determined that the letter
was authentic and found the typewriter on which it had been written in
the possession of a man who turned out to belong to the group that had
plotted the bombing.
In other instances, terrorists left important clues that revealed their
motives. Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols did not
contact news organizations to claim responsibility for the Oklahoma
City bombing. However, by detonating their destructive bomb on
the second anniversary of the FBI’s and other federal agents’ ill-fated
actions against a heavily armed group of religious extremists, the Branch
Davidians, in Waco, Texas, the duo ensured that the media would fig-
ure out their motive—revenge for Waco. McVeigh wanted the greatest
amount of news coverage for his act of terrorism. Before he was executed
in June 2001, he said in an interview, “I don’t think there is any doubt
the Oklahoma City blast was heard around the world.” McVeigh said
furthermore that he had attacked the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City because it had “plenty of open space around it, to
allow for the best possible news photos and television footage.” He left
no doubt that he wanted to “make the loudest statement . . . and create
a stark, horrifying image that would make everyone who saw it stop and
take notice.” Anticipating that he might be killed or arrested after fleeing
the bombing site, McVeigh left an envelope filled with newspaper articles
and documents in his getaway car to make sure that the world would be
informed of his motives.11
Following the simultaneous bombings of the U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, Osama bin Laden was covered
as the likely architect of these terrorist strikes—although there was no
immediate claim of responsibility. But two months earlier, the Saudi
exile had told journalists that Americans were “easy targets” and that
this would be obvious “in a very short time.”12 Michel Wieviorka has
pointed out that some terrorists do not seek media attention. But he
nevertheless recognizes that the perpetrators of political violence will
get news coverage—regardless of whether they seek it or not.13
It is likely that terrorists who make no claims would be pleased when
their deeds are highlighted in the news. For this reason, Dale Van Atta
has rejected the notion of the media’s diminished role in the terrorist
calculus, arguing that the

Very act of intending to kill hundreds in airplane and building explo-

sions means they [terrorists] seek sensational coverage for their
deeds . . . Like it or not, the media is still an integral part of achieving
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  339
the terrorist’s aim—and therefore must be as judicious and responsible
as possible in its reportage.14

Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times column-

ist, has suggested that bin Laden transcends the scope of a mere terrorist
because of his geopolitical aspirations and that the Al Qaeda leader employs
“violence not to grab headlines but to kill as many Americans as possible
to drive them out of the Islamic world and weaken their society.”15 But bin
Laden and his associates contradict this conclusion. Thus, an Al Qaeda
training manual advised recruits to target “sentimental landmarks” such
as the Statue of Liberty in New York, Big Ben in London, and the Eiffel
Tower in Paris because their destruction would “generate intense public-
ity.”16 In the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, a video production
crew produced propaganda material that was peddled to the Arab TV
network Al Jazeera. Even when Al Qaeda’s leaders were on the run, they
were, thanks to Arab TV networks, frequently making the news.
But no other terrorist organization built a more sophisticated media and
propaganda center than the Islamic State. While part of the propaganda was
designed to control people in those Syrian and Iraqi regions that the organi-
zation controlled, another part targeted Muslims and non-Muslims in the
rest of the world, not merely through Arabic language communication but
also through media in English, French, German, and other languages.

Terrorism and the Triangle of Communication

To be at least partially successful, terrorists calculate that they need and will
get access to what one might call the triangle of political communication.
The mass media, governmental decision-makers, and the public constitute
the corners of this triangle (see Figure 14.1). By staging horrific spectacu-
lars, terrorists gain instant access to the communication triangle: The media
report (and overreport), the public watches, and decision-makers pay atten-
tion to both the media’s frenzy and the public’s fearful reactions. Terrorists
are first of all interested in accessing the domestic communications links, but
they are also interested in tapping into the international or global triangle.
As we will see in the following chapter, the Internet allows contemporary
terrorists to circumvent the gatekeepers of the mainstream media and com-
municate their propaganda directly to their various audiences. However,
mainstream media remain for the time being the number one source of
information and therefore a major target of terrorist propaganda.
Although the history of terrorism is littered with failures as far as the
ultimate or long-term objectives of terror movements are concerned, ter-
rorists are stunningly successful in spreading their “propaganda by the
deed,” and they harm their target societies in many different ways. Of
course, when public officials respond to terrorism, they, too, can and do
exploit the triangle of communication for their purposes.
340  News Media and Internet

Figure 14.1  Terrorists and the Triangle of Communication

Source: Author

Media-Related Goals
As a general rule, terrorist incidents further the perpetrators’ universal
or media-related goals—regardless of whether they also advance their
short-term or long-term political objectives. There are three goals in
particular that terrorists tie to news coverage and other forms of com-
munication: (1) they want attention; (2) they want their grievances,
demands, and objectives recognized; and (3) they want to win respect
and even gain legitimacy in some circles, countries, or regions. The
obvious question is, of course, to what extent do media organizations
facilitate these objectives?

The Attention-Getting Goal

The most fundamental role of a free press is to inform the public fully.
Thus, the issue here is not whether the media should cover terrorist events,
but rather how much and what kind of coverage should be devoted to ter-
rorist incidents. Violence has always been an attractive topic for the press,
regardless of whether it is criminal or political in nature. News organiza-
tions tend to over-cover terrorist strikes when they are especially dramatic
and shocking and offer plenty of human interest. The 444 days of the Iran
hostage crisis were a case in point in that during November and December
1979 the three television networks—ABC News, CBS News, and NBC
News—respectively devoted 54, 50, and 48 percent of their evening
news broadcasts to the incident. Although the volume decreased in the
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  341
following twelve months, the hostage situation remained the number-one
news story throughout its duration—even though not a single hostage
was killed. During the two weeks of the TWA hijacking crisis in 1985,
about two-thirds of the networks’ evening news broadcasts were filled by
reports on the drama in Lebanon and its effects elsewhere. Media expert
Benjamin Bagdikian called the coverage of the TWA incident “excessive
for strictly self-serving, competitive reasons” and complained that, as a
result, other important news had been obliterated.17 Although the print
press has escaped similar criticism, newspapers and newsmagazines dis-
played the same appetite for terrorist dramas as the television networks.
During the 1985 TWA hijacking situation, for example, the New York
Times devoted an average of 19 percent, the Washington Post 18 percent,
and the Los Angeles Times 15 percent of their total national/international
news coverage to this incident. However, unlike the television networks
with their limited airtime for newscasts, newspapers tend to have enough
space to report on other news developments as well.18 And while the
broadcast networks and the print media overemphasize reporting on ter-
rorism, their coverage pales in comparison to that of the all-news cable
and satellite networks.
There was, however, one shocking incident in the early 1970s that
received at the time an unprecedented amount of news coverage: the
assault on members of Israel’s national team during the 1972 Olympic
Games in Munich by the Palestinian Black September group. The architects
of the assault had chosen this site to take advantage of the international
media present in Germany to report on the sports competition. It was
estimated at the time that between 600 million and 800 million people
around the globe watched the deadly drama in Munich. Nearly three
decades after the Munich ordeal, cable and satellite television and a mul-
titude of specialty channels have joined the broadcast networks. CNN
and other truly global networks are watched around the world. As a
result, one can assume that far more people saw the horrific images of
9/11 than those of the events in Munich. In the United States, television
and radio reported virtually nothing else in the days and nights follow-
ing the 9/11 attacks. Not even commercials were aired. Most sports and
entertainment channels switched to crisis news, many of them carrying
the coverage of one of the networks; others suspended their program-
ming altogether and simply showed the American flag on the screen.
Newspapers and magazines devoted all or most of their news to the cri-
sis. The media abroad, too, dedicated an extraordinary amount of time
and space to the terrorist strikes in the United States.
All Americans were aware of the 9/11 attacks. Opinion polls showed
that 99 percent of the American public followed the news of the terrorist
attacks by watching television or listening to the radio. Most adults iden-
tified television and radio as their primary sources for crisis information,
but nearly two-thirds also mentioned the Internet as one of their infor-
mation sources.19 This initial universal interest in terrorism news did not
342  News Media and Internet
weaken quickly. Probably affected by the news of anthrax attacks along
the U.S. east coast, more than 90 percent of the public kept on watching
the news about terrorism “very closely” or “closely” nearly six weeks
after the events of 9/11.20 For the architects of the 9/11 terror, this was
a perfect score with respect to their desire to get attention. Moreover,
foreign audiences were just as aware of the horrible events in the United
States as were Americans.
By getting the attention of their target audience, terrorists achieve
another objective: they intimidate their target society and spread fear and
anxiety in the population. After all, terrorism is psychological warfare.
The perpetrators of this sort of violence want to get to the psyche of
the society they target. Public opinion surveys taken in the weeks after
9/11 revealed that many Americans were traumatized and feared that
they or their loved ones could become the victims of future terrorism.
Many suffered from depression and were unable to sleep. In some other
countries, especially in Europe, the public expressed similar fears and
anxieties. These feelings did not evaporate in the following months and
even years—especially not in the United States. As one would expect, the
public’s concerns reflected the volume of the news devoted to terrorism
and to the events of 9/11 in particular. In the months preceding 9/11,
when Americans were asked about the most important problem their
country faced, terrorism was not mentioned at all. As Figure 14.2 shows,
after the strikes in New York and Washington, terrorism ranked high in
the public’s perception of what was the most important problem (MIP)

Figure 14.2  Volume of Terrorism News and Public Opinion on Terrorist Threat
Source: Pippa Norris, Montague Kern, and Marion Just, Framing Terrorism: The News
Media, the Government, and the Public (New York: Routledge, 2003)
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  343
for the United States. As the volume of terrorism news declined some-
what during the following months, the public’s ranking of the terrorism
threat subsided similarly.
Nothing changed as far as the mainstream media’s appetite for terrorism-
related news was concerned. As Table 14.3 shows, in the two leading
American newspapers the coverage of terrorism and in particular of ISIS
by far dwarfed the news about equally or perhaps more important public
affairs issues, such as poverty, health insurance, and Medicare.
The table shows the number of stories about or mentioning terrorism,
ISIS or Islamic State, health insurance, Medicare, and poverty.

The Recognition Goal

The leader of the PFLP, Dr. George Habash, once explained that by com-
mitting political violence, his group forced people to ask, “What is going
on?”21 A member of the Japanese RAF who had participated in an attack
on a large crowd at Tel Aviv airport in 1972 explained his motives after
his arrest: He and his comrades had killed twenty-eight innocent people in
order to propel the Palestinian cause onto the world stage. This was also
the rationale behind Black September’s attack on Israeli athletes that same
year during the Olympic Games. During this hair-raising incident, many
people around the world learned for the first time about this group and
similar organizations, and—more importantly—they learned about the
grievances and demands of these terrorists. During the Iran hostage crisis,
the Iranian captors granted interviews to U.S. correspondents in order to
air their grievances against the United States. CBS News correspondent
Tom Fenton reported about a meeting with the young hostage-holders:

They spoke bitterly about corruption and murder under the deposed
Shah’s regime, America’s role in supporting him, their deep resent-
ment when he was allowed to enter the United States, and their fear
that the American government is trying to topple the new Iranian
regime.22

Table 14.3  News Coverage January 1, 2014–December 31, 2014: Articles about
or Mentioning Particular Issues

New York Times Washington Post

Terrorism 3,040 2,292

ISIS or Islamic State 1,676 3,516
Health Insurance 1,293 3,567
Medicare 617 1,362
Poverty 1,905 2,808
Source: Compiled by author from the Lexis/Nexis and Washington Post archive
344  News Media and Internet
Terrorists also get hostages to speak out in support of their causes, griev-
ances, and demands—sometimes by force, sometimes by persuasion, and
sometimes by exposing their captives to situations in which the so-called
Stockholm syndrome, the tendency of some hostages to identify with
their captors, kicks in. During the 1985 TWA hijacking crisis, one of
the hostages said during a news conference his captors had staged, “We
understand that Israel is holding as hostage [sic] a number of Lebanese
people who undoubtedly have as equal a right and as strong a desire to
go home as we do.” He called on the governments and people involved
in the negotiations to free him and the other American hostages to “allow
justice and compassion to guide their way.”23
Government officials are critical of the media’s willingness, if not
eagerness, to give terrorists a public platform to articulate their motives.
Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example,
criticized television news in particular for permitting terrorists to appeal
directly to the American public.24 But journalists and others in the news
media consider it part of their responsibility to present all important
views and put the news about terrorist incidents into a larger political
context. Tom Brokaw once said,

Terrorism often does have political roots and we have to deal with
these political roots. It is not always, although it appears that way,
a mindless act of sheer terrorism for the sake of terrorism. There is
generally some political context as well and I think we have to work
harder at putting it into some kind of political context, however
strong or weak that context might be.25

A content analysis of news reports on terrorism aired by the three TV

networks (as mentioned, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News) from
1981 through 1986 found that 74 percent were predominantly “epi-
sodic” (focusing on individual acts of terrorism and their effects) and 26
percent “thematic” (framing terrorism in the larger context of a political
problem). This means that a surprisingly large proportion of the news on
terrorism—more than a quarter of the total reporting—described, articu-
lated, or commented on the root causes of terrorist violence. In contrast,
this same study found that only 11 percent of all domestic crime stories
during this six-year period were “thematic” in nature.26
Before the 9/11 terror attacks, the vast majority of American news
organizations reported far less from abroad than their European coun-
terparts. Moreover, foreign news reporting was predominantly episodic
and concentrated on a particular case at hand, rather than thematic and
focusing on underlying conditions, developments, and attitudes. After
9/11, there was far more thematic or contextual coverage of Arab and
Muslim countries than before the attacks. By striking hard at the United
States, the terrorists enticed the media to explore their grievances in ways
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  345
that transcended by far the quantity and quality of the pre-crisis cover-
age. This had an impact on the public in the United States and elsewhere
in the West. Suddenly, people wanted to know why people in faraway
countries wanted to kill Americans. Nobody seemed more aware of these
attitudinal changes than Osama bin Laden. According to a videotaped
conversation, he told his associates,

In Holland, at one of the centers, the number of people who accepted

Islam during the days that followed the operations [of 9/11] were
more than the people who accepted Islam in the last eleven years.
I heard someone on Islamic radio who owns a school in America
say: “We don’t have time to keep up with the demands of those who
are asking about Islamic books to learn more about Islam.” This
event made people think, which benefited Islam greatly.27

There are no data on conversions to Islam in the West on the heels of

the 9/11 attacks, but universities and adult education programs added
courses on Islam and the Middle East because of the increased demand.
News coverage helped kindle this sudden interest. One comprehensive
content analysis of religious news in ten American daily newspapers, nine
newsmagazines, and one wire service (the Associated Press) found that
stories on Islam and Muslims dominated this coverage in the weeks fol-
lowing the events of 9/11. Indeed, 70 percent of the stories fully devoted
to religion concerned Islam and Muslims, and the remaining 30 percent
dealt with Christianity and Christians, multi-faith issues, Judaism and
Jews, nondenominational issues, and Buddhism and Buddhists.28
It is certainly understandable that after 9/11 the media devoted an
extraordinary amount of column inches and airtime to Muslims, Arabs,
and the religion of Islam at home and abroad. But one would have wished
that the press had paid more attention to the sentiments among Arabs and
Muslims in the years and decades before 9/11—not as a direct result of
an act of terrorism. If one accepts the notion that terrorists strike in order
to publicize their grievances, bin Laden and Al Qaeda were extraordinar-
ily successful in realizing this objective. And again, more than a decade
later, nothing changed except that other organizations, such as ISIS, al-
Shabaab, Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were
covered along the same lines.

The Respectability/Legitimacy Goal

On September 26, 1990, during the build-up to the first Persian Gulf
War in 1991, Dr. George Habash of the PFLP was interviewed by Ted
Koppel on the ABC News Nightline program. Habash threatened a wave
of terrorism against American targets if the United States made a mili-
tary move against Iraq. Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States,
346  News Media and Internet
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, was another guest on the program. Koppel
made no distinction between his two guests. Thus, it is not unreasonable
to conclude that an appearance by an acknowledged terrorist side by side
with an accredited diplomat bolstered the status of Habash. Or take the
case of antiabortion terrorist Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed in
Florida in September 2003—nine years after he had killed a physician
and his security guard outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola. Before he
targeted Dr. John Britton in 1994, Hill had promoted the killing of abor-
tion providers by comparing them to Adolf Hitler; he condemned women
who had abortions as “accessories to murder.” The news media gave
Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, plenty of opportunities to promote
his crusade. According to the New York Times,

Even before his crimes, Mr. Hill was known for advocating violence
against abortion providers and his extreme views had won him a
high profile. With a serene voice and smile, he became a spokesman
for the cause after another doctor, David Gunn, was shot to death by
Michael Griffin at Pensacola’s other clinic in 1993 . . . In the months
following Dr. Gunn’s murder, Mr. Hill appeared on television shows
like “Nightline” and “Donahue,” where he drew parallels between
killing an abortion doctor and killing Hitler. Mr. Hill insisted that
murdering abortion providers was “justifiable homicide,” a defense
he attempted to use in his trial but that the judge would not allow.29

John O’Sullivan has correctly argued that the media, and especially televi-
sion, bestow respectability and perhaps even legitimacy upon terrorists—
simply by interviewing them the same way legitimate political actors are
interviewed.30 The same can be said about reporters who attend the news
conferences staged by terrorist groups or about reports that refer to the
“spokespersons” of terrorist organizations and the “communiqués” they
release. Osama bin Laden and his associates did not give interviews and
did not hold news conferences after 9/11, but they communicated via
fax messages, audiotapes, and videotapes. In the months following the
attacks of 9/11, TV audiences found it impossible to miss the image of
Osama bin Laden when channel surfing. This prominence in the news
made bin Laden a household name around the world. To be sure, in the
United States and many other countries, the Al Qaeda leader did not win
the hearts and minds of the people. Instead, he became the evildoer-in-
chief. But this played into his hands as well. After all, terrorists do not
want to be loved by their targets; they want to be feared. This is espe-
cially true when they strike on the territory of a foreign enemy. The much
publicized events of 9/11 in particular made bin Laden and Al Qaeda
household words and earned them admiration in those communities for
which they claim to wage jihad. While survey and news organizations
reported declining support for bin Laden beginning in 2005 compared to
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  347
his high approvals in the immediate post-9/11 years, poll data revealed,
in fact, continued solid approval of the Al Qaeda leader and his organi-
zation in the following years. In Muslim countries, vast majorities were
well aware of the grievances articulated by bin Laden and other Al Qaeda
leaders and, most importantly, agreed consistently “with nearly all of al
Qaeda’s goals to change US behavior in the Muslim world, to promote
Islamist governance, and to preserve and affirm Islamic identity.”31
In 2014 and 2015, when President Obama, British Prime Minister
Cameron, and many other heads of governments made mass-mediated
statements condemning ISIS atrocities, this was seen by the organization’s
leadership and their propagandists as signs of their growing importance, as
being a factor in politics and policy considerations of powerful nation-states.

Bedfellows in a Marriage of Convenience

All in all, then, terrorists are very successful in realizing their three media-
dependent objectives in that they receive news coverage that assures them
a great deal of public and elite attention, spells out their causes and griev-
ances, and earns them respect and even legitimacy in some circles. This is
not to say that the media in countries plagued by domestic and/or foreign
terrorism are wittingly supporting groups and individuals that perpe-
trate political violence. Take the case of the United States. The American
media and terrorists are not accomplices. However, they are involved in
a symbiotic relationship in that they feed off each other: The media want
dramatic, shocking, disconcerting news that keeps readers, listeners, and
viewers captivated and that bolsters the circulation of the print press and
the ratings of the electronic media. Terrorists need to spread their propa-
ganda to further their ultimate political objectives. To put it differently,
the news media and terrorists are not involved in a love story; they are
strange bedfellows in a marriage of convenience.
Following the Iran hostage crisis, Gary Sick observed that the situation
“was the longest running human interest story in the history of television,
in living colors from the other side of the world. Commercially it was a
stunning success.” Furthermore, he wrote, “It may never be known how
many pairs of pantyhose and how many tubes of toothpaste were sold
to this captive audience as a direct result of the hostage crisis, but the
numbers are substantial.”32 Much has changed in the media landscape
since the Iran hostage crisis ended in early 1981. Financial considerations
became far more pressing in news organizations because of increasingly
fierce competition caused by the proliferation of television channels, the
emergence of the Internet as an increasingly attractive news source, and
the creation of mega-media corporations with more commitment to prof-
its than to serious news.
Under these circumstances, it is unrealistic to expect the media to curb
their appetite for the news that terrorists provide. One wonders whether
348  News Media and Internet
there could be an altogether different approach to prevent terrorism in
the first place—with the assistance of media organizations. If terrorists
strike primarily in order to force the media to publicize their deeds and
their motives, why not cover the grievances of groups and individuals
before they resort to terrorism? As desirable as the solution seems at first
sight, it may be unrealistic to believe that the news media could grant ter-
rorists a degree of access and coverage that would satisfy their appetite
for front-page news.
Years ago, the widely respected journalist David Broder suggested that

the essential ingredient of any effective antiterrorist policy must be

the denial to the terrorist of access to mass media outlets. The way
by which this denial is achieved—whether by voluntary means of
those of us in press and television, self-restraint, or by government
control—is a crucial question for journalists and for all other citizens
who share our beliefs in civil liberties.33

While many in the American media would agree that the fourth estate,
as the press is sometimes called, would be well advised to exercise self-
restraint with respect to terrorism coverage, few would wish for gov-
ernment-imposed restrictions. In the past, some liberal democracies—for
example, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Greece—adopted press
laws that restricted news coverage during terrorist incidents and especially
during hostage situations. These laws were enacted in response to domes-
tic terrorism. But given the strong commitment to the First Amendment’s
constitutional guarantee of a free press, government censorship is less
likely in the United States and is certainly not a desirable solution. The
late publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham, once said,

Publicity may be the oxygen of terrorists. But I say this: News is the
lifeblood of liberty. If the terrorists succeed in depriving us of free-
dom, their victory will be far greater than they ever hoped and far
worse than we ever feared. Let it never come to pass.34

And she was right, of course.

Media and Terrorist Contagion

On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel (age thirty-one) drives
a twenty-ton truck into a huge crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks
in Nice, France, killing eighty-six and injuring several hundred persons.
The perpetrator is shot; ISIS claims responsibility. The shocking incident
receives prominent and extensive global news coverage.
Six months later, when a terrorist truck ramming at a Christmas
market in Berlin killed twelve persons and injured dozens more, people
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  349
around the world learned about the horror story in “breaking news”
reports. Throughout 2017, there were nine more truck or car-ramming
incidents in which pedestrians were killed plus several more without
lethal consequences—all covered prominently.
It is not hard to imagine that “lone wolves” were inspired by news
coverage that showed how easily available cars or trucks had been used
as deadly weapons against unsuspecting pedestrians in crowded places.
Thus, this simple terrorist tactic spread across country borders like an
epidemic virus (see also Chapter 8).
The argument that media content can be a factor in motivating copy-
cat violence is not new. Based on their analysis of terrorist incidents in
the 1960s and 1970s around the globe, researchers concluded that some
terrorist methods of attacks (hijackings, kidnappings, and bombings)
were more contagious than others (assassinations, raids). These schol-
ars found that publicity provided by the news media was a factor in the
decision of terrorists to imitate terror methods they deemed effective. As
they put it, “Visible and unusual violence is in essence newsworthy and
attracts international publicity necessary for cross-regional and cross-
cultural spread.”35
The breaking-news-all-the-time coverage of ISIS atrocities was not lost
on disgruntled ISIS devotees. A few weeks after the gruesome decapitation
of James Foley in 2014, thirty-year-old Alton Nolen attacked former col-
leagues at a food plant in Moore, Oklahoma, beheading Colleen Hufford
and seriously wounding a second woman. Nolen was a convert to Islam
who had tried to convert his colleagues—without success. A month later,
when Zale Thompson, thirty-two, and another convert to Islam, attacked
a group of New York police officers with a hatchet, the conclusion was
that he had planned to behead his targets. Similar incidents took place in
Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. There is little doubt that these success-
ful and failed decapitations were examples of copycat attacks.
However, the adoption of effective terrorist tactics does not cause ter-
rorism since those tactics tend to be imitated or adapted by groups, cells,
and even lone wolves that have already embraced the terrorist cause.
Inspirational contagion is more alarming for the targets of terrorism
because this is the stuff that actually makes terrorists. One of the found-
ers of the RAF, Horst Mahler, revealed “how television newscasts had
triggered the ‘shock . . . [which led to] self-liberation . . . [and] the basis
for RAF ideology.’”36 In other words, television’s terrorism news played
a crucial role in formulating his group’s ideology of terrorist action and
thus the RAF’s raison d’être. This account did not surprise researchers
whose data revealed that terrorist ideology spread from the Third World,
particularly from Latin American and Palestinian terrorist leaders and
groups, to Western Europe in the early 1970s. Noting that radicals in
Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe received this sort of inspira-
tional information from the mass media, the three scholars figured that
350  News Media and Internet
“physical contacts [for example, between RAF and Palestinian groups]
followed rather than preceded the decision to adopt terrorism.”37
Writing more than a quarter-century later, Mark Sedgwick suggested
that

contagion is possible at two levels, and can happen in two ways. On

one level a group might copy a particular terrorist technique, and on
another level a group might copy a general terrorist strategy. Either
of these might happen directly or indirectly. All these forms of con-
tagion take place. The primary form, however, is the adoption of a
general terrorist strategy without direct contact. All other forms of
contagion are secondary to this.38

The most recent, most lethal, and geographically most diffused inspira-
tional virus originated with Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet occupiers
in the 1980s and, most important, with the establishment of Al Qaeda
and its rapidly expanding terrorism network. It is hardly surprising that
contagion effect tends to be far stronger among those individuals and
groups that share the cultural and religious background of organiza-
tions and leaders with inspirational ideologies. Whereas kinship and
friendship brought the members of the Al Qaeda Central organization
together, the mighty “Afghan wave” that reached literally all continents
in the post-9/11 years is now mostly driven by mass-mediated inspira-
tional contagion.39 As Marc Sageman noted, “The present threat has
evolved from a structured group of al Qaeda masterminds, controlling
vast resources and issuing commands, to a multitude of informal local
groups trying to emulate their predecessors by conceiving and executing
operations from the bottom up.”40 Without the global media and com-
munication environment, the inspirational diffusion of terrorist ideology
would not be as strong as it is in the twenty-first century.

Defending the Media

Those who defend the media in this context point to terrorist situa-
tions in which reporters withheld sensitive information for fear that the
news could harm American citizens. For example, a number of report-
ers learned that several Americans had escaped from the U.S. embassy
in Tehran when it was taken over by militants in late 1979 and that
these people had taken refuge in the Canadian embassy. Not one word
was publicized until the Americans had left Iran. Other observers men-
tion prudent intraorganizational guidelines that specify how to report
and how not to report terrorist incidents, especially hostage situations.
Indeed, most news organizations have adopted such guidelines. The
problem is that these guidelines are not adhered to in the face of actual
terrorist incidents.
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  351
The best case in defense of the media is based on their public-service
role during terrorist situations. News organizations, especially radio and
television networks and stations, are as essential for the management of
a terrorist attack as they are during and after devastating earthquakes,
floods, hurricanes, riots, or other natural and human-made disasters.
This is particularly true of local and regional media outlets. In the case of
the Oklahoma City bombing, for example,

The local broadcast and cable stations functioned as conduits of

communication between public officials and citizens in the affected
city and region. For example, by disseminating officials’ appeals to
donate blood for the injured victims at specific locations, not to enter
the immediate disaster area, or to contribute warm clothing for res-
cue workers, the media provided an excellent public service. Since
many officials, who were involved in managing the crisis, followed
the news about the disaster, the stations facilitated also the difficult
task of coordinating emergency services that involved a great number
of organizations and individuals.41

The media performed in an equally exemplary way in the hours and days
following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York, Washington, and
Pennsylvania. According to one account,

For crisis managers, the mass media offered the only effective means
to tell the public about the immediate consequences of the crisis—
what to do (donate blood of certain types, where to donate and
when) and what not to do (initially, for example, not trying to drive
into Manhattan because all access bridges and tunnels were closed).
In this respect, the media served the public interest in the best tradi-
tion of disaster coverage.42

When people are directly or indirectly affected by an emergency, they

immediately turn to the news media for information. If there is no elec-
tric power, battery-powered radios may be available. At no other times
are radio and television audiences larger than during and after major
disasters. According to one media scholar, the reasons for this demand
are obvious:

Information about [a] crisis, even if it is bad news, relieves disquiet-

ing uncertainties and calms people. This mere activity of watching
or listening to familiar reporters and commentators reassures people
and keeps them occupied. It gives them a sense of vicarious participa-
tion, of “doing something.”
News stories [also] serve to reassure people that their grief and
fear are shared.43
352  News Media and Internet
Television and radio offer crisis managers the opportunity to address the
public directly whenever they desire. About two hours after the first plane
had hit one of the World Trade Center towers, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was
in the studio of New York 1, an all-news cable channel in New York City,
to urge New Yorkers to remain calm and to evacuate lower Manhattan.
But while the mayor was collected, decisive, and cool, he did not mini-
mize what had happened but spoke of “a horrible, horrible situation.”44
By providing a public meeting place literally around the clock, whether
via broadcasting, cable, or print, news organizations served the public’s
interest well in the hours and days after the terrorists struck New York
and Washington. Perhaps that was the most important reason why the
American public looked far more favorably upon the news media in the
weeks after 9/11 than before the shocking events. However, these newly
found public sympathies for the media were short-lived and soon replaced
by far more critical public attitudes toward the press.

Treason or Public Service?

In mid-2006, when the New York Times revealed that the Bush adminis-
tration monitored the flow of money through banking systems, including
Swift, the Belgian-based banking consortium, in order to discover money
trails to terrorist groups, administration officials and others condemned
the paper for obstructing counterterrorist efforts and thereby helping
terrorists. President Bush said, “We’re at war with a bunch of people
who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak
that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the
United States of America.”45 There were similar condemnations, even
charges of treason, after media organizations published reports on illegal
electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency, the existence of
secret CIA prisons for terrorist suspects abroad, and the CIA’s practice of
rendering alleged terrorists captured by American agents abroad to “third
countries, countries with notorious reputations for political prisoners,
such as Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and Uzbekistan.”46 Even local revelations
resulted in controversies about the limits of press freedom. In December
2006, for example, the New York Times published a prominently placed
report revealing that “the PATH train tunnels under the Hudson River
are far more vulnerable to a bomb attack than previously thought, and
that a relatively small amount of high explosives could cause significant
flooding of the train system within hours.”47 In all of these cases—and
many other stories about vulnerable and ill-protected possible terrorist
targets—the crucial question is always whether such revelations harm
American national security or actually help to alleviate wrongs and
shortcomings in counterterrorism and homeland security efforts.
It is far from easy to decide whether to publicize or withhold sensi-
tive material. With respect to the PATH tunnels’ vulnerability to even
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  353
a small bomb blast, one wonders whether the New York Times’ public
revelation, followed by similar stories in the Los Angeles Times and the
Wall Street Journal, was the only and the best choice. The motive of
the person who leaked the information to the news media was to force
the responsible higher-ups in the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey to address the problems. It is entirely possible that an editor could
have alerted the governors of New York and New Jersey to the Hudson
tunnels’ vulnerability and thereby assured action—without publicizing
the material. Although it is well known that terrorists are well informed
about the vulnerabilities of all kinds of sites in all kinds of target coun-
tries, why point them to particularly problematic venues?

Notes
1 White House, “President Obama Delivers a Statement on the Murder
of James Foley,” text of statement is available at [Link]/
photos-and-video/video/2014/08/20/president-obama-delivers-statement-
murder-james-foley, accessed October 1, 2014.
2 Malise Ruthven, “Inside the Islamic State,” New York Review of Books,
July 9, 2015, citing Abdel Bari Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate
(London: Saqi, 2015); emphasis added.
3 Brigitte L. Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media
in Terrorism and Counterterrorism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2002), 49.
4 Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle
East (New York: Oxford, 2002), 274.
5 Alex P. Schmid and Jenny de Graaf, Violence as Communication: Insurgent
Terrorism and the Western News Media (London: SAGE, 1982), 14.
6 The quote is contained in Combating Terrorism Center: Document #AFGP-
2002-6000321.
7 These quotes were published in many reports in both the print and the broad-
cast media.
8 Michael Wines, “Hostage Drama in Moscow: The Moscow Front; Chechens
Kill Hostage in Siege at Russian Hall,” New York Times, October 25,
2002, A1.
9 Fenton reported this on the CBS Evening News on December 6, 1979. Similar
observations were made by other broadcast and print correspondents during
the long hostage crisis.
10 Avishai Margalit, “The Terror Master,” New York Review of Books, October
5, 1995, 19.
11 McVeigh revealed a great deal about his right-wing ideology, his motives,
and his desire for publicity in interviews with a reporter from the Buffalo
News. Interview with Lou Michel, April 2001. See also Lou Michel and Dan
Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City
Bombing (New York: Regan Books, 2001), esp. 168, 169, 227, 245, 382.
12 Based on what bin Laden said in this particular news conference, as well as in
other communications, it was not difficult to pinpoint him as the driving force
behind the bombings in East Africa. The quotes from his news conference in
Khost, Afghanistan, are from Dale Van Atta, “Carbombs and Cameras: The
Need for Responsible Media Coverage,” Harvard International Review (Fall
1998): 66.
354  News Media and Internet
13 Michel Wieviorka, The Making of Terrorism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993), 46, 47.
14 Van Atta, 68.
15 Thomas L. Friedman, “No Mere Terrorist,” New York Times, March 24,
2002, sec. 4, 15.
16 Hamza Hendawi, “Terror Manual Advises on Targets,” [Link]
[Link]/, accessed February 11, 2002.
17 Bagdikian’s testimony before a congressional committee was mentioned
in “Closer Look at Network Coverage of TWA flight 847,” Broadcasting,
August 5, 1985.
18 For more on the coverage of terrorist incidents in the 1980s and early 1990s,
see Brigitte L. Nacos, Terrorism and the Media (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994).
19 According to a Los Angeles Times telephone poll on September 13–14, 2001,
83 percent of the respondents said they watched the news “very closely,” 15
percent “closely,” and 2 percent “not too closely.” Nobody chose the response
option “not closely at all.” The Gallup Organization found in a survey con-
ducted on September 14–15, 2001, that 77 percent of the public followed
the news “very closely,” 20 percent “somewhat closely,” 2 percent “not
too closely,” and 1 percent “not at all.” An ABC/Washington Post poll on
September 11, 2001, found that 99 percent of the public followed the news
on television and radio. Polling adults online on September 11 and 12, 2001,
Harris Interactive found that 93 percent identified television and radio as
their primary news source, and 64 percent mentioned the Internet as one of
their primary sources.
20 According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People
and the Press on October 17–21, 2001, 78 percent of the respondents said
they watched terrorism news “very closely,” 22 percent watched “closely,”
5 percent “not closely,” and 1 percent gave no answer. This was about the
same level of interest as in mid-September (13–17), when 74 percent of survey
respondents revealed that they watched terrorism news “very closely” and 22
percent “closely.” In fact, more Americans watched this kind of news “very
closely” in the second half of October than in mid-September.
21 Habash is quoted in Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism,” in Walter
Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 18.
22 Nacos, Terrorism and the Media, 61.
23 Ibid., 62.
24 Neil Hickey, “The Impact of Negotiations: What the Experts Say,” TV Guide,
September 21, 1985.
25 Brokaw made his remarks during a seminar on “The Media and Terrorism,”
organized by the Center for Communications, Inc., October 23, 1985.
26 Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political
Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), ch. 4.
27 From a bin Laden videotape presumably made in mid-November 2001.
28 “A Spiritual Awakening: Religion in the Media, Dec. 2000–Nov. 2001,” study
prepared by Douglas Gould & Co. for the Ford Foundation.
29 Abby Goodnough, “Florida Executes Killer of an Abortion Provider,” New
York Times, September 4, 2003, A16.
30 John O’Sullivan, “Media Publicity Causes Terrorism,” in Bonnie Szumski, ed.,
Terrorism: Opposing Viewpoints (St. Paul, MN: Greenhaven, 1986), 73.
31 Steven Kull et al., “Public Opinion in the Islamic World on Terrorism, al
Qaeda, and US Policies,” The Program on International Policy Attitudes at
the University of Maryland, 20.
 Terrorist Propaganda and Mainstream Media  355
32 Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York:
Penguin, 1986), 258–59.
33 Broder made his remarks during a seminar on “The Media and Terrorism,”
organized by the Center for Communication, Inc., October 23, 1985.
34 Katharine Graham, “The Media Must Report Terrorism,” in Szumski, 81.
35 Manus I. Midlarsky, Martha Crenshaw, and Fumihiko Yoshida, “Why
Violence Spreads: The Contagion of International Terrorism,” International
Studies Quarterly 24 (1980): 279.
36 Gabriel Weimann and Conard Winn, The Theater of Terror: Mass Media and
International Terrorism (New York: Longman, 1994), 217.
37 Midlarsky et al., 282.
38 Mark Sedgwick, “Inspiration and the Origins of Global Waves of Terrorism,”
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30 (2007): 102.
39 Ibid., 106–7.
40 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2008), vii.
41 Brigitte Nacos, Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to
the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
xiii, xiv.
42 Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism, 51.
43 Doris Graber, Mass Media and American Politics (Washington, DC:
Congressional Quarterly Press, 1997), 143.
44 For more on the media and crisis management, see Nacos, Mass-Mediated
Terrorism, ch. 6.
45 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Bush Condemns Report on Sifting of Bank Records,”
New York Times, June 27, 2006, [Link]
article?res=F50610FB3C540C748EDDAF0894DE404482.
46 Raymond Bonner, “The CIA’s Secret Torture,” New York Review of Books,
January 11, 2007, 28.
47 William K. Rashbaum and William Neuman, “Path Tunnels Seen as Fragile
in Bomb Attack,” New York Times, December 22, 2006, [Link]
[Link]/search/restricted/article?res=F2071EFC3A550C718EDDAB099
4DE404482.
15 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace

Reviewing the futuristic projections of terrifying scenarios by a pair of

authors, legal scholar David Cole wrote in 2015,

They breathlessly imagine a world in which “technologies of mass

empowerment” give everyone the capacity to inflict serious harm
on everyone else, from anywhere. They envision a day in which a
malevolent person can from the comfort of his living room, direct
a tiny “spider drone” into the home of his enemy, where it will kill
the victim in his shower, after first extracting a DNA sample and
checking it against a worldwide database to ensure that it’s got the
right victim.1

Actually, there was no need for futuristic horror scenarios. Present-day

reality was disconcerting enough. A comprehensive Cyberspace Policy
Review requested by President Obama stated,

Threats to cyberspace pose one of the most serious economic and

national security challenges of the 21st Century for the United States
and our allies. A growing array of state and non-state actors such
as terrorists and international criminal groups are targeting U.S.
citizens, commerce, critical infrastructure, and government. These
actors have the ability to compromise, steal, change, or completely
destroy information.2

This assessment was more of an understatement than hype. As the for-

mer White House Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection,
and Counterterrorism Richard A. Clarke warned around the same time:
“Cyber war is real. Cyber war happens in the speed of light. Cyber war is
global. Cyber war skips the battle field. Cyber war has begun.”3
Moreover, the top CIA cyberspecialist Tom Donahue shocked inter-
national security experts from governments and electric, water, oil, and
gas companies with the disclosure that unknown attackers had hacked
the computer systems of utility companies in several regions outside the
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  357
United States and in at least one case caused power outage that affected
several cities. “We do not know who executed these attacks or why,
but all involved intrusions through the Internet,” he said.4 Even more
disconcerting were revelations that hackers had intruded into the U.S.
Air Force’s air traffic control system and managed to embed software in
the nation’s critical power grid and the telecommunication and financial
services computer systems. While no damage was detected, the hackers
may have planned to utilize their access at a later date, perhaps during a
crisis—including a terrorist attack.
Contrary to other experts, Richard Clarke worries only about cyberwar—
not cyberterrorism. Thus, he argued,

Unfortunately, one thing that is too often believed is that there is a

threat of “cyber terrorism.” Cyber terrorism is largely a red herring
and, in general, the two words “cyber” and “terrorism” should not
be used in conjunction because they conjure up images of bin Laden
waging cyber war from his cave. He probably can’t, at least not yet.5

But Clarke also recognized that a “well-funded terrorist group might

find a highly skilled hacker club that would do a cyber attack in return
for a lot of money, but that has not happened to date.”6 Here Clarke
discounted the ability of terrorist organizations to recruit experts with
advanced degrees in many areas, including high technology. But just as
the prospect of cyberwar threatens states’ national security, so does the
possibility of cyberterrorism.
Thus, in February 2017, the Department of Defense Science Board’s
Task Force on Cyber Deterrence issued a report that included nonstate
actors as likely perpetrators of cyber-attacks and mentioned ISIS in
particular. “Non-state actors, though generally less capable than nation-
states, also have conducted cyber attacks,” the Science Board reported. “A
recent example is the October 2016 distributed denial of service attacks
on the internet domain name system (DNS) provider Dyn, for which the
hacker groups Anonymous and New World Hackers claimed respon-
sibility.”7 A few months later, in May 2017, the so-called WannaCry
ransomware cyber-attack affected more than 200,000 computers across
150 countries, caused damages estimated from hundreds of millions to
billions of U.S. dollars, and extorted high sums in the bitcoin cryptocur-
rency from targeted institutions and corporations. Citing the incident,
two experts warned,

There is reason to believe that terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and

ISIS could copy the tactic. In doing so, they would cause as much
damage (loss of data and equipment) and chaos (in hospitals and
other public utilities) as possible, comparable to the chaos and panic
that could be caused by a chemical or biological attack.8
358  News Media and Internet
There is evidence that terrorists and their sympathizers are aware of
the potential for cyberterrorism. Indeed, there have been specific calls
for virtual jihad for years. For example, a poster on the pro-Al Qaeda
site [Link] recommended the hacking of computers and specified
important targets:

Among the targets of hacking should be military installations, intel-

ligence departments such as NSA, CIA, FBI, MI5, Mossad, NASA,
civilian police forces and national guards, so called “united nations
peace keeping troops” which are none other than the army of
democracy and America and any and every disbelieving organization
responsible for military and economic support against the muslims.9

Following a massive power failure in the American Northeast in the sum-

mer of 2003, a poster on a pro-Al Qaeda site claimed, wrongly, that
supporters of bin Laden were responsible for the blackout. According to
the poster,

In compliance with the order of the Commander of the Mujahids,

Usamah bin Ladin (may God preserve him), to strike America’s eco-
nomic links, the Abu al-Misri Brigades struck at two important elec-
tricity generating targets in the region of the American East, including
the most important cities of America and of Canada.
The soldiers of God cut off the power to the above named cities,
plunging the lives of Americans into darkness, just as the criminals
had plunged the lives of the Muslim peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Palestine into darkness.
We say to the Muslims that this is not the strike that has been
expected. This is something called a war of skirmishes (to wear down
the enemy).
We say to the people of Afghanistan and Kashmir that the gift of
the Shaykh of the Mujahids, Usamah bin Ladin, is on its way to the
White House.10

All kinds of hackers have attacked “enemy” computers and taken down
websites in the context of terrorism and counterterrorism. In 2000, for
example, Israeli hackers and their supporters abroad launched electronic
attacks against Islamic militants’ websites, while Palestinians and their
supporters in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere targeted
sites in Israel and in the United States. At one point, a picture of the Israeli
flag occupied the website of Hezbollah’s television station, Al-Manar, for
twelve hours and Israel’s national anthem was heard whenever someone
accessed Hezbollah’s site. While this seemed like a coup in the struggle
for propaganda supremacy, an attack on the site of the American Israeli
Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying organization based in the United
States, had far more serious consequences: Besides plastering the site
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  359
with anti-Israeli slogans, a Pakistani hacker accessed thousands of email
addresses and credit card numbers stored in the organization’s comput-
ers, sent anti-Israeli messages to these addresses, and published the stolen
credit card data on the Internet.
It was never learned whether Israeli or Arab individuals threw the
first cyberbomb in this electronic tit-for-tat exchange: Both sides invaded
hostile websites and/or swamped them with so many emails that they
became hopelessly overloaded and completely incapacitated. Israeli
hackers put the sites of the Palestinian National Authority, Hezbollah,
and Hamas temporarily out of commission; Arab militants and Muslim
sympathizers elsewhere hit Israeli sites just as hard by taking down those
of the foreign ministry, the Israeli Defense Forces, the prime minister,
the Knesset (Parliament), the Bank of Israel, and the Tel Aviv Stock
Exchange. Appeals on both sides drew a large number of supporters who
participated in the campaigns. By simply clicking their mouses, visitors to
the respective sites triggered automated email systems that sent out mes-
sages on their behalf. Hezbollah attributed the crashing of its site, which
normally got between 100,000 and 300,000 hits a day, to “nine million
hits per day, mainly from Israel, the United States, and to a lesser degree
from Canada and South Africa.”11
What the Palestinians came to call “Internet intifada” and Islamic
extremists termed an “e-jihad” bolstered their hope that the Internet
offered them a level playing field. Hezbollah’s webmaster, Ali Ayoub,
quoted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran, who once hypoth-
esized that if every Arab threw a bucket of water on Israel, the Jewish
state would drown. According to Ayoub, “This is exactly what hap-
pened, supporters of the resistance from all over the world, both Arabs
and foreigners, are contributing.”12
These cyber-attacks changed nothing in the actual Middle East con-
flict, but they did reward both sides with attention in the conventional
news media. In this sense, the electronic attacks and counterattacks rep-
resented another dimension of terrorism—with a comforting twist: No
human life was lost, no human being was injured, and the material and
psychological damages were minor in comparison to real terror strikes. In
the real world, only a limited number of extremists commit and actively
promote mass-mediated political violence; in cyberspace, far more sym-
pathizers are willing to click the mouse and participate in cyber-attacks.
The prospect of devastating cyberterrorism was more disconcerting.
Several years ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman out-
lined the following horror scenario:

In five years, with the Internet being used to run more and more
systems, if someone is able to knock out the handful of key Internet
switching and addressing centers in the U.S. (until recently, a quarter
of all Internet traffic passed through one building in Tyson’s Corner,
Va., next to Morton’s steak house), here’s what happens: many trains
360  News Media and Internet
will stop running, much air traffic will grind to a halt, power supplies
will not be able to be shifted from one region to another, there will be
no e-mail, your doctor’s CAT scanner, which is now monitored over
the Internet by its manufacturer, won’t work if it breaks.13

But this would not be the worst-case scenario that security experts inside
and outside the U.S. government have come to fear. American analysts
have seen enough evidence on Al Qaeda’s computers to conclude that

Terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct

instrument of bloodshed. The new threat bears little resemblance to
familiar financial disruptions by hackers responsible for viruses and
worms. It comes instead at the meeting point of computers and the
physical structures they control.14

No evidence exists for the above-mentioned claim that the power

blackout in the American Northeast in August 2003 was the result of
cyberterrorism. But attacks on power grids are among real threats that
counterterrorism experts have warned of. During a 2002 conference for
security experts, the participating experts admitted “that they had no
idea how the [American electrical] power grid would respond to a cyber
attack.”15 Worse yet, security experts foresee any number of horror sce-
narios that are likely to kill many people. Among the potential acts of
cyberterrorism that Barry C. Collins has described are the following:

A CyberTerrorist will remotely access the processing control systems

of a cereal manufacturer, change the levels of iron supplement, and
sicken and kill the children of a nation enjoying their food. That
CyberTerrorist will then perform similar remote alterations at a pro-
cessor of infant formula. The key: the CyberTerrorist does not have
to be at the factory to execute these acts.
A CyberTerrorist will place a number of computerized bombs
around a city, all simultaneously transmitting unique numeric pat-
terns, each bomb receiving each other’s pattern. If bomb one stops
transmitting, all the bombs detonate simultaneously. The keys: 1) the
CyberTerrorist does not have to be strapped to any of these bombs;
2) no large truck is required; 3) the number of bombs and urban disper-
sion are extensive; 4) the encrypted patterns cannot be predicted and
matched through alternate transmission; and 5) the number of bombs
prevents disarming them all simultaneously. The bombs will detonate.
A CyberTerrorist will remotely alter the formulas of medication at
pharmaceutical manufacturers. The potential loss of life is unfathomable.
The CyberTerrorist may then decide to remotely change the pres-
sure in the gas lines, causing a valve failure, and a block of a sleepy
suburb detonates and burns. Likewise, the electrical grid is becoming
steadily more vulnerable.16
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  361
Suggesting that cyberterrorism can prevent a nation from eating, drink-
ing, moving, and living, Collins emphasized that he did not describe
scenarios that were borrowed from the realm of science fiction, but that
all of these catastrophes could be triggered today—in the real world.
And then there are terrorist hackers using their skills for psychological
warfare in cyberspace. Thus, in early January 2015, hackers claiming to
work for ISIS hacked the social media sites of the U.S. Military’s Central
Command, occupying both the Twitter and Facebook sites with their
pro-ISIS propaganda. Calling themselves the Cyber Caliphate, the online
jihadists placed their name on top of the pages with the sub-header “I
love you isis.” A reference to the U.S. military’s involvement in fighting
ISIS in Iraq and Syria from the air was followed by the threat message,
“We broke into your networks and personal devices and know every-
thing about you. You’ll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are
in your PCs, in each military base. US soldiers! We’re watching you!”
One of the posts left on the sites was a fifty-two-page spreadsheet titled
“Retired Army General Officer Roster” that included the addresses,
emails, and retirement dates of many former generals. The Pentagon was
alarmed enough to call the named officers and inform them of the list
that some observers deemed a “hit list.”17
This reaction in the Pentagon was not far-fetched since Al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had repeatedly pinpointed people in the
West as their targets, among them Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of
Charlie Hebdo, and one of the satirical magazine’s staffers killed during
the terrorist attack on the publication’s headquarters. For years, the pub-
lication of most wanted individuals or hit lists was the domain of AQAP.
It is well known that competition between groups results in outbidding,
and ISIS’s posting of a list of retired generals on the Central Command’s
virtual bases was likely an outbidding coup in the eyes of ISIS supporters.
In March 2015, an ISIS cyber unit that called itself “Islamic State
Hacking Division” posted a list of 100 wanted members of the American
military with names, photographs, and addresses on its website: “With
the huge amount of data we have from various different servers and
databases, we have decided to leak 100 addresses so that our brothers
in America can deal with you,” the post warned. This was followed by
the following appeal to ISIS followers in the United States: “Now we
have made it easy for you by giving you addresses, all you need to do
is take the final step, so what are you waiting for?” In other words,
this was a hit list. It did not matter whether the data were the result of
another hacking incident on the part of ISIS or whether it was gathered
from open sources as Defense Department officials claimed. The threat
was once again a blow landed by the jihadists in their psychological
warfare and was serious enough for the Pentagon to warn every one of
the listed persons.18
Add to this a completely different case of actual cyberterrorism in
which an innocent teenager simply because of his religion and nationality
362  News Media and Internet
was lured into a prearranged ambush under the pretense of a passionate
romance (see box “Internet ‘Love Story’ as Terrorist Trap”). But while
the fate of Ofir Rahum is a unique case—for the time being, that is—the
use of the Internet by terrorists and their sympathizers for a variety of
purposes is very common.

Internet “Love Story” as Terrorist Trap

In at least one case, the Internet was used to lure an unsuspecting
teenager into a terrorist trap. Ofir Rahum, a sixteen-year-old Israeli
living with his parents in Ashkelon, was in love. He met his twenty-
five-year-old girlfriend, Sali, in an Internet chat room. She had told
him she was an Israeli of Moroccan descent living in Jerusalem. Ofir
and Sali corresponded non-stop via email. “You don’t know how
much I am waiting for Wednesday,” Ofir wrote Sali in the middle of
January 2001. Wednesday was the day they would finally have a
personal meeting. Sali had asked Ofir to meet her in Jerusalem for a
romantic encounter in her girlfriend’s apartment. She had urged him
not to inform his parents of his plans, and he had promised to keep
their secret. On the morning of January 18, 2001, instead of going to
school, Ofir traveled by bus to Jerusalem, where Sali met him at the
central bus terminal. They took a taxi to her car that she had parked
north of the city. Together they drove toward Ramallah—although Ofir
was probably unaware of their destination. After Sali stopped her car
rather suddenly, a man with a Kalashnikov appeared from nowhere,
ordering Ofir out of the car. When the teenager refused, the man shot
him. The killer drove off with the body. Sali left the scene to meet a
girlfriend for lunch.
Three days later, Sali was arrested by Israeli police officers, who
began to shed light on what turned out to be a terrorist kidnapping via
the Internet. Sali turned out to be Amana Mona, a Palestinian woman
from Bir Naballah who worked as a journalist and was a member of the
Al Fatah organization. She explained that she decided to strike after
covering the funerals of many Palestinians who were killed in the con-
flict with Israel, and that she wanted to inflict pain on an Israeli family.
According to her mother, “Seeing mothers crying all the time gave her
the idea.”19 After her arrest and first appearance in a Jerusalem court,
Newsweek wrote that this young woman from a middle-class family
in the West Bank “hardly fits the profile of a terrorist.”20 But whether
she fit the stereotype of a Palestinian terrorist or not, Amana Mona did
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  363

not have any regrets. She told journalists that she was proud of her
actions and that she had acted for the Palestinian people.
Mona was sentenced to life in prison. According to Israeli sources,
she led a revolt by two dozen female Palestinian inmates in Israel’s
Neve Tirza prison in July 2002. According to Yediot Aharonot, an
Israeli newspaper,

Mona had her own “personal army” in the Neve Tirza prison,
and had controlled activities of the Palestinian women, as well
as those of the Israeli Arab women serving time there. During
morning breaks outdoors, Mona would organize the women in
marching drills, the singing of nationalist songs and paramilitary
exercises.21

But eventually, when the female Israeli Arab inmates refused

to obey Mona’s orders, the two groups attacked each other and
had to be separated by prison officials. Mona was transferred to
another prison.

Social Media as an Ideal Alternative to Mainstream

News Media
In 1853, when Karl Heinzen, an early theorist of anarchist ideology and
fierce advocate of terrorist strikes, self-published his pamphlet titled
“Murder and Liberty,” he mocked the mainstream media of his time,
daily and weekly newspapers, as mouthpieces of the ruling class and
asked fellow radicals to distribute his brochure in all places, in letters,
packages, wherever. A hundred and sixty years later, in 2013, when Al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula posted the first issue of its magazine
Azan online, its editors complained about the vicious propaganda dis-
seminated by the “satanic” international media. Their publication, they
explained, was controlled by those committed to the truth.
As this comparison shows, terrorists have always tried to find alter-
native media they could control. For example, the Brazilian Marxist
revolutionary Carlos Marighella, who became the idol of many left-wing
terrorists far beyond Latin America, recommended in the post-World
War II period the use of copying machines to produce large numbers
of propaganda pamphlets and manifestos. As broadcasting transmit-
ters became lighter and easy to transport, groups with direct or indirect
involvement in terrorism established their own radio and television
facilities. In the early 1990s, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization
364  News Media and Internet
started its own television station, Al-Manar. Soon thereafter, Al-Manar’s
satellite channels became popular in Palestinian homes on the West Bank
and Gaza and in several Arab countries. Eventually, Al-Manar could be
seen around the globe except for those countries that blocked its chan-
nels. In Colombia, left and right-wing terror groups utilized mobile radio
transmitters. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
broadcast over an increasingly large number of channels. Disc jockeys
tend to play popular songs, such as “Guerrilla Girls” or “Ambush Rap,”
with lyrics adapted to the FARC cause. This light diet is always served
with frequent doses of direct propaganda. As one disc jockey explained,
“We’re doing the shooting from the radio.”22
Today all other means of communication, print and broadcasting
included, pale in comparison to the opportunities that the Internet offers
terrorists and hatemongers. To begin with, hate groups and terrorist
organizations utilize online media for the same objectives that they hope
to further through the traditional media’s coverage: They disseminate
propaganda material to get the attention of friend and foe, to intimi-
date the enemy, and to impress potential sympathizers and supporters;
they explain their grievances and demands, justify violence, and portray
themselves as legitimate political and/or religious actors. In addition,
computer-based communications seem ideal to further several other
important objectives, namely: (1) radicalization, recruitment, and incite-
ment; (2) self-reporting of violence; (3) planning and executing terrorist
operations; (4) retrieving valuable information; and (5) raising funds.

Radicalization, Recruitment, and Incitement

Among the terrorism-related cases the FBI announced in the first half of
2015 were several that provided some clues about online radicalization
and recruitment. Here are excerpts from two FBI news releases:

Case 1: Shannon Conley, 19, of Arvada, Colorado, was sentenced

today [January 23, 2015) by U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P.
Moore to serve 48 months in federal prison, followed by three years
on supervised release, for conspiracy to provide material support
to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Conley met the co-
conspirator on the Internet. During their communications, they
shared their view of Islam as requiring participation in violent jihad.
The co-conspirator communicated to Conley that he was an active
member of a group fighting in Syria known as ISIS. The two became
engaged and worked together to have Conley travel to Syria to join
her new fiancé. Conley also intended to fight if it became necessary
to do so. In furtherance of the conspiracy, Conley joined the U.S.
Army Explorers (USAE) to be trained in U.S. military tactics and
in firearms. She traveled to Texas and attended the USAE training.
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  365
She also obtained first aid/nursing certification and National Rifle
Association certification. On March 29, 2014, the co-conspira-
tor, together with others, arranged for an airline ticket for Conley
to travel to Turkey. On April 8, 2014, Conley traveled to Denver
International Airport and attempted to board the flight to Turkey.
She was then arrested by FBI agents.23
Case 2: Asher Abid Khan, 20, was taken into custody this morn-
ing [May 26, 2015] without incident. The criminal complaint alleges
Khan and a friend devised a plan to travel to Turkey and on to Syria
for the purpose of joining and waging jihad on behalf of ISIL. Khan
had allegedly asked a Turkish-based foreign terrorist fighter facilita-
tor that “I wana join ISIS can you help?” He also told someone else
that “I wana die as a Shaheed [martyr],” according to the allegations.
Khan’s friend allegedly made it to Syria and ISIL with the assistance
of Khan and the foreign terrorist fighter facilitator. Khan had been
living in Australia with a relative and made it to Istanbul, Turkey,
where he was to meet up with his friend in their quest to join ISIL,
according to the complaint. However, Khan’s family sent him false
information regarding his mother’s health and he was deceived into
returning home to Texas.24

In both cases, social media were instrumental in guiding the would-be

jihadis to make their way to the Islamic State’s caliphate. While the FBI
releases do not reveal whether social media were also instrumental in
the radicalization of Shannon Conley and Asher Abid Khan, there are
plenty of examples of young Westerners who were radicalized through
social media propaganda. In both cases, though, the would-be jihadis
were in close contact with ISIS handlers—in the case of Conley the online
handler became her virtual fiancé; in the case of Khan the ISIS handler
assisted with flight and meet-up arrangements typical once radicalized
Westerners were ready to join ISIS in Syria or Iraq.
Six decades ago Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl coined the term
“para-social interaction” based on their observations about the relation-
ship between mass media personalities and their audiences. They noted,
“One of the most striking characteristics of the new mass media—radio,
television, and the movies—is that they give an illusion of face-to-face
relationship with the performer.”25 While for most people para-social
interactions take place side by side with actual social relationships, for
some persons they become their sole social life. As the authors explain,
for socially inept or isolated persons the media persona “is readily avail-
able as an object of love—especially when he succeeds in cultivating the
recommended quality of ‘heart.’”26 Admiring audience members “play
a psychologically active role which, under some conditions, but by no
means invariably passes over into the more formal, overt, and expressive
activism of fan behavior.”27
366  News Media and Internet
In the Internet age, social media platforms offer groups, movements,
and individuals ample opportunities for mass self-communication and
for the establishment and cultivation of para-social relationships with
audiences and particularly susceptible individuals. The fans that today’s
originators of para-social interactions win over are no longer mere spec-
tators but participants in virtual interactions, tying them even closer to
their idols and whole fan communities.
As noted in Chapters 6 and 7, ISIS’s social media presence is instru-
mental in grooming, radicalizing, and eventually recruiting fans. Once
hooked, facilitators or handlers contact individuals personally and assist
in travel arrangements and anything else needed by future jihadis.
Speaking at the 2015 White House Summit on Combating Violent
Extremism, President Barack Obama said in a good summary of ISIS’s
virtual radicalization and recruitment,

Terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIL deliberately target their prop-
aganda in the hopes of reaching and brainwashing young Muslims,
especially those who may be disillusioned or wrestling with their
identity. That’s the truth. The high-quality videos, the online mag-
azines, the use of social media, terrorist Twitter accounts—it’s all
designed to target today’s young people online, in cyberspace.28

Preaching Hate and Violence

Extreme hate of other ideological, ethnic, racial, or religious groups
can lead to violence against “the other” and can be carried out by state
and nonstate actors. As mentioned earlier, Nazi Germany’s propaganda
preached an extreme hate of Jews before and during the unspeakable
genocide of Jews in Germany and in conquered countries. Unlike organi-
zations such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, and like-minded groups, many domestic
hate groups in the United States and other Western democracies do not
openly recommend violence but have been known to incite fellow post-
ers and commenters on their online discussion boards where they preach
hate and glorify the founding fathers and ideologies of their movements.
Thus, in early 2015, when most of the world mourned the lethal attack
on members of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and honored the vic-
tims’ stand for press freedom with the slogan “Je suis Charlie,” a post on
Vanguard News Network Forum, a most vicious Neo-Nazi site, showed
Adolf Hitler’s picture and proclaimed, “Je suis Hitler!” The attached
video starred the uniformed Nazi leader in one of his many ugly anti-
Semitic speeches that blamed Jews for all evils in the world. For these
kinds of hate sites white Caucasians are the superior race whose purity
and dominance are threatened by Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and
Muslims. Thus, it was not surprising that immediately after the attack on
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  367
the French magazine Charlie Hebdo conspiracy theories were forwarded
in one discussion thread at Vanguard News Network.
One poster wrote,

Something to keep in mind: These murderers claim to be “al-

Qaeda in Yemen.” Hmmmm! Yemen is predominately Shia, as is
Syria and Iran. Now who really hates, and I mean really hates Shia
(Syria and Iran?). Who is always screaming that the US should
attack Syria and Iran? I’m guessing that if these murderers are not
caught, or are killed before they can be interrogated, then plain-
and-simple . . . this was an Israeli operation.

Another conspiracy theorist calling himself AntiZOG (in Neo-Nazi

circles, ZOG stands for Zionist Occupied Government) was sure that

Mossad had a hand in this, the motivation could be to take some of

the pressure off jews [sic] in France, and further vilify, and point the spot-
light on, Islamists—not that they aren’t dangerous scum—but . . . net
result: this works out for jews, in that outrage is directed away from
jews, and quite likely, no jews were killed—only a dozen sacrificial
goyim, most of whom were left-wing pets, who would not dare write
such cartoons against the self-chosen or criticize the Holohoax.

Yet another contributor wrote,

Folks, this [Charlie Hebdo] is precisely and exactly the sort of pub-
lication that National Socialist would have thrown on a pyre, along
with all the other dirty Jew books that they burned, porn etc. In
2014, we have white people rushing to the defence of the sort of filth
that Hitler would have ordered to be destroyed. Ironically, while we
do that, the only people that appear to have retained the spirit of
Hitler are . . . Muslims.29

How does hate speech relate to terrorist violence? In April 2014, after
Neo-Nazi Frazier Glenn Cross stormed on to the grounds of two Jewish
institutions in Kansas and allegedly shot three strangers to death, one
research report found,

In the last five years alone—since the election of the nation’s first
black president—registered members of Stormfront (an incredible
286,000 people, though many are inactive) have been responsible
for the murders of close to 100 people. The killers had certain com-
monalities. They were frustrated, unemployed white men living with
their mothers or an estranged spouse or girlfriend. And they typically
posted for years before beginning to kill, drawing sustenance and
368  News Media and Internet
support from their fellow racists and anti-Semites. Cross, too, was
nurtured by the Internet—in his case, by a rival neo-Nazi Web forum
known as Vanguard News Network. In recent years, the former
North Carolina Klan leader posted there more than 12,000 times.30

Stormfront’s appeal transcends U.S. borders. Members and frequent

or occasional visitors reside in many countries, especially Europe and
Australia. Anders Behring Breivik, who bombed a government building
in Norway, killing eight people and then massacred sixty-nine people at
a youth summer camp in 2011, was a Stormfront online user.
More recently, left-extremist groups that implicitly and in some cases
explicitly call for violence against public and private capitalist institutions
have been active in several European countries, among them Germany
and Greece. As noted in Chapter 12, in those countries, free speech rights
are not extended to “hate speech” and the “glorification of terrorism.”
Thus, there are no websites like [Link] and similar ones. The
left-extremist group with the generic name “linksunten” is seemingly
part of the Antifa (for antifascist) movement and uses [Link] for
its postings and actual calls for violence. Thus, in December 2014, there
was a call for action in the city of Leipzig that did not preclude vio-
lence. The online appeal listed the names and addresses of fifty public
agencies and private companies to be targeted. Soon thereafter, hundreds
of masked activists took over the city’s streets, attacked police officers,
threw stones into windows, destroyed cars, and sprayed graffiti all over
buildings and streets.

Self-Reporting of Violence
Just looking at the headlines and pictures in any issue of ISIS’s slick online
magazines Dabiq and more recently its replacement Rumiyah will show
you that the group documents all its violence meticulously. Whether the
beheadings of Western hostages, the burning of a Jordanian captive, or
the execution of infidels in the conquered territories, you see it all in the
pages of the online magazines as you do in the videos posted on YouTube
or other social media sites. According to Natascha Bhuiyan, “ISIS pre-
sents not only scenes of crucified, stoned, or beheaded victims, but also
the dead bodies of innocent, bleeding Iraqi children, the victim’s intes-
tines packed up in boxes or heads hanging on spikes.”31 Indeed, no other
terrorist group has publicized its unspeakably brutal violence as detailed
and widely as ISIS.
Contemporary terrorists can and do utilize the Internet to go public even
in the midst of staging horrific terrorist strikes. Particularly shocking were
the communication tactics of the Somalian terrorist organization al-Shabaab
during its attacks inside the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya,
when sixty-seven persons were killed and many more injured. Christopher
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  369
Anzalone’s research revealed that the group’s media department used its
Twitter account to tweet “a continuous stream of ‘updates’ and commen-
tary throughout the assault.”32 The terrorists inside the mall, too, tweeted
“updates” of their own horrible killing spree. Intelligence experts suspected
that the terrorists themselves had set up a mobile command center before
they launched their attack and used it to communicate with al-Shabaab
headquarters and via tweets with friendly and hostile publics. Most of all,
al-Shabaab’s press office HSM (Harakat al-Shaabab al-Mujahidin) used
Twitter to attract the greatest possible attention. According to one account,

The HSM Press account purportedly posted “updates” on the ongo-

ing siege at a time when conflicting reports abounded. These included
tweets announcing the attack on the “Kenyan Kuffar [unbelievers]
inside their own turf,” denying the cessation of fighting between
“the mujahidin” and the Kenyan military and police, alleging that
the Kenyan government was “pleading” with the attackers inside
the mall to negotiate, and reports of the calmness of the attackers
despite being under siege by Kenyan security forces. Al-Shabab also
claimed via Twitter that it had “singled out” only “unbelievers” in
the attack and had “escorted out” Muslims before the attack began,
announcing that the defense of Muslim lands “is one of the foremost
obligations after faith & defending against the aggressive enemy is
our right as Muslims.”33

Planning and Executing Terrorist Operations

Terrorists utilize computer technology and the Internet to plan and coor-
dinate their violent actions. Former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told the
Citizens Crime Commission of New York,

When Ramzi Yousef [the mastermind of the World Trade Center

bombing] was being tracked in the Philippines, he left behind a lap-
top computer that itemized plans to blow up [eleven] U.S. airliners in
the Western Pacific on a particular day. All of the details and plan-
ning were set forth in that laptop computer.34

Part of the information was encrypted and difficult to decode, but it

revealed for the first time how sophisticated terrorists utilized computers
for planning their operations. Even before the 9/11 attacks, U.S. intelli-
gence agencies knew that Al Qaeda operatives used the Internet to com-
municate with each other. According to one account,

Hidden in the X-rated pictures of several pornographic Websites and

the posted comments on sports chat rooms may lie the encrypted
blueprints of the next terrorist attack against the United States or its
370  News Media and Internet
allies. It sounds farfetched, but U.S. officials and experts say it’s the
latest method of communication being used by Osama bin Laden
and his associates to outfox law enforcement.35

U.S. officials disclosed that bin Laden and others were “hiding maps and
photographs of terrorist activities on sports sites, chat rooms, porno-
graphic bulletin boards and other websites.”36 It has become increasingly
difficult to unlock the encrypted messages and images, and it is even
harder finding them in the first place among the many millions of sites,
boards, and chat rooms on the World Wide Web.
According to Timothy L. Thomas, “The Internet is being used as a
‘cyberplanning’ tool for terrorists. It provides terrorists with anonymity,
command and control resources, and a host of other measures to coordi-
nate and integrate attack options.”37 American law enforcement specialists
found evidence that the 9/11 terrorists used the Internet to coordinate
their operation. Their email messages contained code words and never
mentioned what they were really up to in plain language. According to
one terrorism expert, “They knew exactly what to do. I mean, they went
to Internet cafes and libraries, they erased the hard drives.”38 Al Qaeda’s
chief of operations, Abu Zubayda, used the Internet to keep in touch with
the men who actually carried out the mission. The extent of Al Qaeda’s
dependence on cyberspace communication was discovered when several
of the group’s computers were found in Afghanistan and after Zubayda
was arrested in Pakistan in early 2002. Effective command and control
would be far more difficult to establish and maintain for Al Qaeda’s ter-
rorism network without the advantages of the Internet. As Thomas has
noted, “The Internet’s potential for command and control can vastly
improve an organization’s effectiveness, if it does not have a dedicated
command and control establishment, especially in the propaganda and
internal coordination areas.” Noting that Internet chat rooms are one
vehicle for command and control, the same expert explained that one par-
ticular website, “[Link], has supported al Qaeda’s efforts to disperse
forces and enable them to operate independently, providing leadership via
strategic guidance, theological arguments, and moral inspiration.”39
The team that attacked ten sites in Mumbai, India, in November 2008
held hostages in several locations, caused the death of 173 and injured
several hundred persons, utilized an unprecedented range of digital-age
information and communication technology. They carried BlackBerrys
and cellphones with exchangeable SIM cards that made it difficult to
track them; they navigated from Karachi to Mumbai with the guidance
of a Global Positioning System, and they carried CDs with high-resolution
satellite images of their target sites. They communicated with their opera-
tion bosses and with each other via email and satellite telephone, and they
followed live TV coverage as security forces tried to respond to the hostage
situations in several locations. (See box “Excerpts from Conversations.”)
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  371
Talking about the lessons learned from the Mumbai attacks before the
U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs,
New York’s Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that the handlers
of the Mumbai terrorists directed the operations from outside the attack
zone using cellphones and other portable communication devices. As
Kelly said,

This phenomenon is not new. In the past, police were able to defeat
any advantage it might give hostage takers by cutting off power to
the location they were in. However, the proliferation of handheld
devices would appear to trump that solution.40

Excerpts from Conversations between Mumbai

Terrorists and Operation Leaders during the
Hostage Situation in November 2008
Hotel Taj Mahal, November 27, 2008: 03:10 hrs
RECEIVER: Greetings!
CALLER:  Greetings! There are three Ministers and one Secretary of
the Cabinet in your hotel. We don’t know in which room.
RECEIVER:  Oh! That’s good news! It is the icing on the cake.
CALLER:  Do one thing. Throw one or two grenades on the Navy and
police teams, which are outside.
RECEIVER:  Sorry, I simply can’t make out where they are.

Nariman House, November 27, 2008: 22:26 hrs

CALLER:  Brother, you have to fight. This is a matter of prestige of Islam.
Fight so that your fight becomes a shining example. Be strong in
the name of Allah. You may feel tired or sleepy but the Commandos
of Islam have left everything. Their mothers, their fathers. Their
homes. Brother, you have to fight for the victory of Islam. Be strong.
RECEIVER: Amen!

Oberoi Hotel, November 27, 2008: 03:53 hrs

CALLER:  Brother, Abdul. The media is comparing your action to 9/11.
One senior police officer has been killed.
ABDUL REHMAN:  We are on the 10th and 11th floor. We have five hostages.

(continued)
372  News Media and Internet

(continued)

CALLER 2:  Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maxi-
mum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive.
CALLER:  Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone
switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.
FAHADULLAH: We have three foreigners including women. From
Singapore and China.
CALLER:  Kill them. (Voices of Fahadullah and Abdul Rehman direct-
ing hostages to stand in a line, and telling Muslims to stand aside.
Sounds of gunfire. Cheering voices in background, Kafka hands
telephone to Zarar.)
ZARAR:  Fahad, find the way to go downstairs.

Nariman House, November 27, 2008: 19:45 hrs

WASSI:  Keep in mind that the hostages are of use only as long as
you do not come under fire because of their safety. If you are
still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the
hostages, immediately kill them.
RECEIVER:  Yes, we shall do accordingly, God willing.
WASSI:  The Army claims to have done the work without any hostages
being harmed. Another thing: Israel has made a request through
diplomatic channels to save the hostages. If the hostages are
killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel.
RECEIVER:  So be it, God willing.
WASSI:  Stay alert.

Source: New York Times41

Retrieving Valuable Information

Even the most sophisticated terror organizations know that they can find
a great deal of useful information on the Internet. In a training manual
that Al Qaeda left behind in Afghanistan, recruits were instructed to use
open sources (libraries, journals, government documents, Internet sites,
etc.) because, as the text revealed, 80 percent of the information about
the vulnerabilities of the enemy are publicly available. The group’s lead-
ers were also aware that the bulk of this information could be accessed
on the Internet. On the hard drive of an Al Qaeda computer, also
found in Afghanistan, U.S. experts discovered that it had been used to
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  373
access a French site that posts a “Sabotage Handbook” with “sections
on tools of the trade, planning a hit, switch gear and instrumentation,
anti-surveillance methods and advanced techniques.”42 In the past, chat
room participants discussed potential targets for cyberterrorism attacks.
According to one account, “Targets that terrorists have discussed include
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta; FedWire, the
money-moving clearing system maintained by the Federal Reserve Board;
and facilities controlling the flow of information over the Internet.”43
Before the overabundance of information available on the Internet,
it took far more time, money, and effort for terrorists to find what they
perceived as ideal targets. Timothy McVeigh’s selection of the Alfred
P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City for the April 1995 cat-
astrophic bombing of the building was a case in point. He checked
telephone books for the pages listing federal government agencies to find
their locations in various states. He looked for a building that housed at
least two of three federal agencies that were involved in the 1993 lethal
conflict between the Branch Davidian sect and federal law enforcement.
He and his accomplices Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier visited federal
buildings in several states, among them Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, and
Missouri, before McVeigh settled on Oklahoma City. McVeigh had been
a computer whiz kid in high school, but when he planned his horrific
attack, information that was easily accessible on the Internet a decade or
so later was not yet available then.

Raising Funds
Most terrorist and hate groups use the Internet to raise money for their
activities. Even the well-funded Al Qaeda network utilizes websites to
solicit contributions. For this purpose, some websites have publicized
account numbers at particular banks specifically set up for fundraising.
Jessica Stern found that the Lasch-I-Taiba, or Army of God, in Pakistan
utilized the World Wide Web to raise funds for its radical activities.
Indeed, “Laschkar and its parent organization, Markaz ad-Da’wa Irshad
(Center for Islamic Invitation and Guidance) have raised so much money,
mostly from sympathetic Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, that they are report-
edly planning to open their own bank.”44 If they do not dare to direct
their own fundraising operations or aim at targeting larger audiences to
solicit contributions, terrorist groups are content to have front organiza-
tions collect donations via the Internet. Terrorists have also resorted to
criminal activities in cyberspace to finance their activities, with credit
card fraud first on the list of their offenses. According to a leading French
antiterrorism investigator, “Many Islamist terror plots in Europe and
North America were financed through such criminal activity.”45
Whatever their causes, international and domestic terrorist and hate
groups try to raise funds online. In most instances, these appeals target
374  News Media and Internet
people of modest means in the hope that they will sacrifice for the cause.
The “Army of God” has a permanent post on its website that begs with
great urgency for donations. “By now, you’ve probably heard about the
massive effort launched by the baby butchers and their evil lackeys to
destroy the Christian gallery websites,” site visitors read. “Every month
that passes our expenses grow in direct proportion to the number of peo-
ple we impact with this website . . . That’s why we need your donations
every month.”
Nobody, however, is as sophisticated as jihadis and their supporters
who are known to have discussed in various social media the advan-
tages of Bitcoin as an ideal currency for raising donations and purchasing
weaponry. As one researcher found,

Although some websites affiliated with terrorist organizations have

begun collecting Bitcoin donations, this practice appears to be rela-
tively limited. One example would be [Link] It is
possible that as the technical capacity of these organizations increases,
their use of digital currencies will also increase. This increase is likely
to be small however, in relation to overall terror financing through
other channels such as hawala, kidnapping, front companies, narcot-
ics sales, oil sales, and many more.46

All told, the Internet, like many other technological advances, can be
used in positive and negative ways. Terrorists and hate groups have
seized cyberspace rather quickly for their sinister purposes.

Notes
1 David Cole, “The New America: Little Privacy, Big Terror,” New York Review
of Books, August 13, 2015, 20.
2 The full text of the Cyberspace Policy Review is available at www.
[Link]/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf,
accessed July 8, 2010.
3 Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, Cyber War: The Next Threat to
National Security and What to Do about It (New York: HarperCollins,
2010), 30–31.
4 Ellen Nakashima and Steven Mufson, “Hackers Have Attacked Foreign
Utilities, CIA Analyst Says,” Washington Post, January 19, 2008; Jeannie
Larson, “The Federal Government Role in Cyber Security,” presentation,
October 29, 2009, [Link]/html/Jeanie_Larson_Presentation.pdf,
accessed July 6, 2010.
5 Clarke and Knake, 135.
6 Ibid., 136.
7 [Link]/dsb/reports/2010s/DSB-cyberDeterrenceReport_02-28-17_
[Link], accessed June 6, 2018.
8 Amrit P. Acharya and Arabinda Acharya, “Cyberterrorism and Biotechnology,”
Foreign Affairs, June 1, 2017, [Link]/articles/world/2017-06-
01/cyberterrorism-and-biotechnology, accessed June 6, 2018.
 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace  375
9 Posted in the “jihad” category of the discussion section of IslamicAwakening.
com, [Link]/discus/, accessed September 12, 2003.
10 Ibid.
11 This is a quote from a Reuter dispatch of October 20, 2000, “Hizbollah
Says Pro-Israelis Damaged Its Website,” [Link]/h/nm/
20001020/wr/mideast_hizbollah_d_l.html.
12 Ayoub was quoted in Ranwa Yehia, “Hizbollah: Arabs Have ‘Tremendous
Power to Fight’ on New Cyber Front,” (Beirut) Daily Star On Line, www.
[Link]/30_10_00/[Link], accessed October 30, 2000.
13 Thomas Friedman, “Digital Defense,” New York Times, July 27, 2001, A19.
14 Barton Gellman, “Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared: Terrorist at Threshold
of Using Internet as Tool of Bloodshed,” Washington Post, June 27, 2002, A1.
15 Ibid.
16 Barry C. Collins, “The Future of Cyber Terrorism: Where the Physical and
Virtual Worlds Converge,” speech delivered at the 11th Annual International
Symposium on Criminal Justice Issues, [Link]
accessed September 17, 2003.
17 This account is from various stories publicized in the news media.
18 Michael S. Schmidt and Helene Cooper, “ISIS Urges Sympathizers to Kill U.S.
Service Members It Identifies on Website,” New York Times, March 21, 2015,
[Link]/2015/03/22/world/middleeast/isis-urges-sympathizers-to-
[Link], accessed March 23,
2015. See also, [Link]
[Link], accessed March
23, 2015.
19 The quote is from Dan Ephron and Joanna Chen, “Ofir’s Fatal Attraction,”
Newsweek, April 2, 2001, 39.
20 Ibid. For my account of this case of terrorism, I drew from many media
accounts, among them the mentioned story in Newsweek and Deborah Sontag,
“Israelis Grieve as Youth Who Was Lured to His Death on the Internet Is
Buried,” New York Times, January 20, 2001, [Link]/2001/01/20/
technology/[Link]?pagewanted=all.
21 [Link] accessed April 14,
2005.
22 Karl Prenhaul, “Colombia’s Rebels Hit the Airwaves,” Newsday, December
24, 2000, A20.
23 The full FBI report is available at [Link]/denver/press-releases/2015/
arvada-woman-sentenced-for-conspiracy-to-provide-material-support-to-a-
designated-foreign-terrorist-organization.
24 For the full FBI release, see [Link]/houston/press-releases/2015/texas-
resident-charged-withconspiracy-to-provide-material-support-to-isil, accessed
August 4, 2015.
25 Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and Para-
Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry 19:3
(1956): 215.
26 Ibid., 223.
27 Ibid., 228; emphasis added.
28 Transcript is available at [Link]
office/2015/02/18/fact-sheet-white-house-summit-countering-violent-extremism,
accessed December 5, 2018.
29 [Link] accessed January 15, 2015.
30 According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, [Link]/news/
2014/04/17/splc-report-users-leading-white-supremacist-web-forum-
responsible-many-deadly-hate-crimes, accessed August 4, 2015.
376  News Media and Internet
31 Natascha Bhuiyan, “ISIS: The Propaganda Jihad,” unpublished research
paper, 2014, 12.
32 Christopher Anzalone, “The Nairobi Attack and Al-Shabab’s Media Strategy,”
CTC Sentinel 6:10 (2013): 3, [Link]/posts/the-nairobi-attack-
and-al-shababs-media-strategy, accessed January 12, 2015.
33 Ibid., 3–4.
34 Freeh’s speech was published in Vital Speeches of the Day on October 1,
1999. The transcript contained a typing error that Freeh referred to as a plan
to attack “1 U.S. airliners” simultaneously; the correct number was eleven
airliners. See also Simon Reeve, The New Jackals (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1999), ch. 4, for details about this foiled plan.
35 Jack Kelley, “Terror Groups Hide Behind Web Encryption,” USA Today,
February 6, 2001, 7A.
36 Ibid.
37 Timothy L. Thomas, “Al Qaeda and the Internet: The Danger of ‘Cyber­
planning,’” Parameters (Spring 2003): 112–23, [Link]
usawc/Parameters/03spring/[Link].
38 Steve Emerson made this remark during a conversation with Chris Matthews
on CNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, March 2, 2002.
39 Thomas.
40 [Link]
41 The document is available at [Link]
nyregion/city_room/20090109_mumbaitranscripts.pdf, accessed January 14,
2009.
42 Gellman.
43 Thomas, 118.
44 Jessica Stern, “Pakistan’s Jihad Culture,” Foreign Affairs (November–
December 2000): 120.
45 Timothy L. Thomas identified Jean-François Richard as the French investiga-
tor he quoted.
46 Aaron Brantly, “Funding Terrorism Bit by Bit,” CTC Sentinel 7:10 (2014): 4,
[Link]/v2/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/CTCSentinel-Vol7Iss101.
pdf, accessed January 23, 2015.
16 Conclusion
Living with Terrorist Threats

There is a great deal of disagreement about the causes of terrorism and

the most effective ways to respond to this sort of political violence.
But there is agreement on one crucial point: Terrorism will not disap-
pear as the weapon of choice in the hands of domestic and international
groups and individuals who cannot fight their declared enemies in
legitimate political arenas or in traditional wars. According to Walter
Laqueur, “Even in the unlikely case that all global conflicts will be
resolved—that all the political, social, and economic tensions of this
world will vanish—this will not necessarily be the end of terrorism.”1 It
is equally unlikely that terrorism that is rooted in the Arab and Muslim
world would end if Israel were to disappear from the map of the Middle
East, because a variety of other domestic and international conditions
breed discontent and fuel terrorist ideas and deeds in the region. The
same is true for other parts of the world and other countries. Moreover,
there can be no doubt that the United States will remain a major target
of international terrorism for the foreseeable future, because, as Paul
Pillar concluded, “U.S. policies and the U.S. presence overseas can vary,
but the United States’ place as sole superpower, leader of the West, and
principal exporter of modern culture do not seem likely to change.”2
Although terrorist organizations come and go, those who represent
today’s greatest danger may prove more impervious than previous
movements. The extremists, who were energized by Osama bin Laden’s
declaration of war against “Crusaders and Zionists” and by his terror
attacks on the United States, bought into his patience in pursuing long-
term goals. Patience informed these terrorists’ long-term strategy and their
mode of operation. Al Qaeda and like-minded groups did not hastily plot
their terror strikes, but prepared and rehearsed for years. Their ideologi-
cal fervor and their justification of unlimited violence were unequivocal.
Omar Bakri Muhammad, the head of a radical Islamic group in London
and a suspected follower of bin Laden, told an interviewer, “Terror is
the language of the twenty-first century. If I want something, I terrorize
you to achieve it.”3 This statement went to the heart of the terrorist cal-
culus and its assumption that terrorism triggers fear in target audiences
378  Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats
that goes far beyond the damage inflicted. If you are patient enough,
Omar Bakri Muhammad and like-minded people believe, violence will
terrorize your targets sufficiently that you eventually get what you want.
According to Muhammad, bin Laden and Al Qaeda had immediate and
long-term goals: “They are engaged in a defensive jihad against those
who attacked Islam. In the long run, they want to reestablish the Islamic
state, the Caliphate. And to convert the whole world.”4 However prepos-
terous such objectives seemed at the time, they motivated rank-and-file
terrorists and produced a brand of terrorism that killed indiscriminately
in order to inflict the greatest psychological damage on their target audi-
ences. A good example was the would-be Times Square bomber: Before
he attempted to detonate a car bomb in the heart of Manhattan on May
1, 2010, the Pakistani-born, naturalized U.S. citizen Faisal Shahzad justi-
fied his motives in a “martyr video” that was later aired by the Arab TV
network Al Arabiya. Shahzad, who called himself “a Muslim soldier” as
he pleaded guilty in a federal district court in New York, warned on the
video that the “Muslim war” would not end “until Islam is spread on the
whole world.”5
While Al Qaeda Central still existed at the time of writing, the group
was a shadow of its past potency. Still, it would have been a mistake to
ignore Al Qaeda and especially its affiliate in Yemen and even more so the
Khorasan elite corps in Syria, because all of these pieces remained threats
not merely abroad but especially to the U.S. homeland. Bin Laden before
his demise and Ayman al-Zawahiri thereafter still hoped for another
9/11-like attack—or worse. By 2017, there were some signs that Hamza
bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, was ready to become his father’s
successor in the global jihad movement. As one expert account had it,

Hamza bin Ladin was among his father’s favorite sons, and he has
always been among the most consistently fervent of his siblings in
his support for violent jihad. Now in his late 20s, Hamza is being
prepared for a leadership role in the organization his father founded.
As a member of the bin Ladin dynasty, Hamza is likely to be per-
ceived favorably by the jihadi rank-and-file. With the Islamic State’s
“caliphate” apparently on the verge of collapse, Hamza is now the
figure best placed to reunify the global jihadi movement.6

One way or the other, it was “bin Ladenism,” the ideology, that had
remained alive and well—albeit in an even more extreme form within the
Islamic State or ISIS, an organization that was after all established in Iraq
as an affiliate of Al Qaeda under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
who had learned the terrorist trade in Al Qaeda’s headquarters and
training grounds in Afghanistan. There was one pronounced difference
though: Whereas bin Laden and his crew envisioned “the Islamic state,
the Caliphate” as a long-term, ultimate objective, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats  379
established ISIS with the immediate goal of conquering enough real estate
in Iraq and Syria to establish the Islamic State. With this goal accom-
plished and one-third of both countries occupied, Baghdadi had himself
declared the Caliph and thus the ruler supreme of the Caliphate with the
next explicit objectives to conquer Istanbul and then Rome.
Nearly a decade after 9/11, two leading terrorism scholars, Leonard
Weinberg and William Eubank, suggested that based on their research
“some evidence indicates [that the current] Fourth Wave of modern ter-
rorism may be on a downward trajectory.”7 But this optimistic suggestion
was proven wrong by the rise of ISIS and the inability of Iraq and other
states in the neighborhood to stop the Islamic State’s reign of terror.
Whatever the durability of the Fourth Wave of so-called religious ter-
rorism with ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other jihadist groups as driving forces, it
could be a costly mistake to ignore other movements, groups, and threats—
not only of the international variety. The potential for devastating strikes
by domestic terrorists is far from remote. In December 2008, according
to an FBI report, a cache of radioactive materials suitable for building
“dirty bombs” was found in the house of James Cummings in Belfast,
Maine, along with literature on how to build such bombs. Cummings,
who was killed by his wife in what seemed an act of self-defense, was
known as a fan of Adolf Hitler and had ties to White Supremacy groups.
Reportedly upset about Barack Obama’s victory in the November 2008
presidential election, he had told his wife and ten-year-old daughter how
he planned to set off his bombs and kill his family during an attack in
Washington, DC, at the inauguration of the president.
In August 2004, sixty-six-year-old Gale William Nettles was charged
with plotting to blow up a federal building in downtown Chicago with a
truck bomb similar to the one used by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh. Nettles, a convicted felon, had bought 500 pounds of what
he thought was explosive fertilizer from an undercover agent and rented
a locker to store the bomb-making material. The would-be bomber
had first told fellow inmates at a Mississippi prison that he was plan-
ning violent revenge against the federal government for convicting and
imprisoning him for his counterfeiting activities. In this case, thanks to
the involvement of undercover agents, the bomb-making fertilizer was in
fact benign material.
Far more alarming was the accidental disruption of a terrorist plot in
early 2003, when FBI agents were directed to a weapons arsenal in the
Texas countryside that contained a large number of guns, pipe bombs,
and a cyanide bomb “big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot
building.”8
Of course, it does not take biological or chemical agents to cause a
massacre as the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina,
once again demonstrated when a lone wolf White Supremacist killed nine
congregants simply because they were African Americans. Vigilance is
380  Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats
needed on all fronts. Comparing the fight against terrorism with public
health experts’ struggle against communicable diseases, Pillar concluded,

Some of the threats are waxing; some are waning. Some are old; oth-
ers are new. Much of the challenge and the frustration comes from the
fact that just as things are going well on one front—and occasionally
even so well that a problem is eradicated altogether (small pox, the
Red Army Faction)—a different and perhaps even more threatening
problem emerges (AIDS, al-Qaida). Attention and resources get shifted
around as threats evolve, but the effort as a whole can never stop.9

Such an analogy is helpful in understanding the nature of the terrorist

threat in both the domestic and the international arenas.
In this book I set out to explain the calculus of terrorism and trace its
influence on the utility of political violence by weak nonstate actors, the
making of terrorists and terrorist organizations, and their strategies, tac-
tics, and organizational structures. The idea furthermore was to describe
and assess how targeted governments respond, how the media report,
and how the public is targeted by both terrorist and counterterrorist
propaganda. Most importantly, the question was and is whether and to
what degree terrorist assumptions are borne out by the results of their
violent deeds. The conclusion is unequivocal: Even small groups and lone
wolves can become political factors in strong nation-states, and at times
in the international political arena as well, when they commit political
violence—especially when their terror is of the spectacular kind. Terrorists
force nation-states to react, and often they get their target societies to
overreact at the expense of violating their most fundamental values.
The question, then, is how societies can cope with serious terrorist
threats without being overwhelmed by the psychological warfare that ter-
rorists wage. There are no silver bullets for this predicament. But the more
people know about the dangers they face, the greater is the chance that
they will not be consumed by fear before actual terrorist attacks occur and
that they will not panic once terrorists strike. Public officials must provide
and citizens must insist on realistic threat assessments that neither mini-
mize nor maximize the dangers based on the best intelligence available.
Politicians must accept that partisan expedience should never enter
counterterrorist discussions, measures, and policies. Terrorists aim at
influencing politics and policies in their target countries. But neither poli-
ticians nor the public should play into their hands. If the architects of the
train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004, struck in order to influ-
ence the outcome of Spain’s national elections three days later, they were
successful: Prime Minister José María Aznar and the Popular Party, sup-
porters of the American invasion and occupation in Iraq, were defeated,
and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the Socialist Party, opponents
of the Iraq war, won the election. Yet, it was far from clear that the
 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats  381
Spanish electorate voted out Aznar because of the massive terror attack.
Instead, observers believed that Spaniards punished Aznar because his
government immediately blamed the bombings on Basque separatists and
discounted Muslim extremists as possible perpetrators in spite of evi-
dence to the contrary.
Regardless of the true reason for Aznar’s defeat, administration offi-
cials in Washington warned in the summer of 2004 that Al Qaeda was
likely to strike the United States again in order to influence the presi-
dential election. In early 2005, similar claims were made in the United
Kingdom with respect to upcoming elections. There was no doubt in
both cases that terrorists could strike again at any time before or after
the election. But to associate threat alerts with the upcoming elections
validated bin Laden and his followers as powerful players for partisan
politics’ sake. Indeed, in early August 2004, after Secretary of Homeland
Security Tom Ridge went public with a warning ahead of the November
elections, 28 percent of Americans believed that this particular alert was
“politically motivated,” 50 percent thought it was based on “real intelli-
gence,” and 12 percent thought it was based on “some of both” factors.10
Residents of New York City were even more skeptical in their assessment
of the administration’s motives, in that 46 percent believed “strongly”
and 17 percent believed “somewhat” that this particular terrorism alert,
supposed to last through Election Day, had political purposes.11
More recently, using the threat of terrorism to gain partisan advan-
tage became common. During the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton
called Donald Trump a “recruiting sergeant for the terrorists” and
“offered herself as a seasoned warrior against terrorism.”12 Mr. Trump
returned fire hours later, blaming Mrs. Clinton and President Obama’s
handling of immigration and the Iraq war for bringing terrorism to
American shores.13 Following the Orlando nightclub shooting, then can-
didate Trump “suggested the sitting commander-in-chief is aiding and
abetting terrorism.”14 This was hardly surprising since Trump was the
most prominent promoter of the birther conspiracy theory which claimed
that Obama was not born in the United States and might be a Muslim.
President Trump continued to question leading Democrats’ toughness
vis-à-vis terrorists. After Democratic Senators criticized his nominee for
CIA Director, Gina Haspel, President Trump tweeted,

My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has

come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists. Think of
that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified per-
son, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough
on terror. Win Gina!

Even without good intelligence in hand, government officials continue to

warn of likely terrorist strikes all too often. For example, in 2015, before
382  Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats
the July Fourth holiday, the FBI and other agencies warned that there
might be ISIS cells ready to strike. In the absence of real news, televi-
sion, radio, and print media reported far more about this threat before,
during, and after the holiday weekend than about the joyful festivities
around the country. No terrorist attack occurred. If public officials make
threat alerts in the absence of specific evidence, the news media must not
scare the public by reporting prominently and frequently on vague infor-
mation. Terror alerts play into the hands of terrorists because the mere
threat of terrorism affects target audiences nearly as much as real strikes.
Public officials, experts, educators, and the news media have an obli-
gation to educate and inform the public about the calculus of terrorism
so that citizens understand the scheme of political violence in which the
psychological impact on target societies surpasses the number of people
killed and injured. Every person who is killed in a terrorist event means
a tragic, utterly unnecessary loss. But we must also keep in mind that
many more people die each year because of traffic accidents, crimes, can-
cer, heart attacks, and AIDS than in terrorist incidents. About 40,000
Americans are killed year in, year out in traffic accidents alone compared
to the approximately 3,000 persons who perished on 9/11 in the World
Trade Center and Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Yet the deaths from dis-
eases and accidents do not cause the widespread fear and depression that
are common in the wake of major acts of terrorism. Target societies must
become aware of these facts and realize that the psychological impact
of terrorism is disproportionate to the likelihood that an individual will
become a victim of terror strikes. Therefore, just as terrorists exploit the
triangle of communication for their propaganda scheme (see Chapter 14),
knowledgeable public and private sources must use the same communica-
tion vehicle to disseminate reliable and useful information that counters
the fear tactics of terrorist foes.

The Financial Costs of the “War on Terrorism”

Following the 2017 Halloween Day truck ramming in New York
City that killed eight people, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that
the city would spend $50 million to secure high-risk public spaces
from attacks by vehicles. Among other measures, this money was
to fund the installation of 1,500 metal bollards at some of the city’s
most-visited locations.
This sum of $50 million was merely a drop in the huge bucket
of money spent by all levels of government in the United States for
fighting the post-9/11 military war on terrorism abroad, providing
for veterans of that war and their families, and supporting the huge
homeland security measures.
 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats  383
While nobody knows the exact terrorism-related costs, national
defense estimates indicated that by 2018 the combined total war-
related costs by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs
was $2.1 trillion. That sum does not include the financing of the huge
homeland security sectors of federal, state, and local governments.
These unimaginable sums of money speak to the power of terror-
ists to inflict damage on target nations by forcing them to finance
counterterrorism instead of taking care of important needs at home,
such as improving education, health care, or infrastructure. But it
also speaks to the tendency of governments with the support of the
public to overreact and pay dearly for that overreaction.

The public has a right to know—even if the truth means learning

about the likelihood that terrorists, sooner or later, will acquire and use
weapons of mass destruction. But for the authorities to discuss possible
horror scenarios makes sense only if they inform the public at the same
time on the state of emergency preparedness in their communities. It is
equally important that the public and private sectors tell the public what
to do and what not to do in case of catastrophic terror.
A well-informed and well-prepared society is less likely to panic in the
face of a terrorist crisis and more likely to opt for proportional coun-
terterrorist responses at home and abroad than a clueless audience. It is
necessary to act decisively in the area of prevention and preparedness, on
efforts to apprehend terrorists and to disrupt terrorist operations, recruit-
ing, training, indoctrination, and financing schemes. It is legitimate to use
military force against state sponsors involved in or supportive of specific
terrorist acts. The Al Qaeda–Taliban collaboration was such a case. But
it is unwise to overreact at home or abroad. Overreaction undermines
the moral fabric of a society that is victimized by terrorists and plays into
their hands and the assumptions central to their calculus of violence. As
we know now, the invasion and occupation of Iraq did not decrease the
terrorist threat but increased it, if only by driving more recruits into the
arms of Al Qaeda and like-minded groups. And at home, the National
Security Agency’s indiscriminate eavesdropping on the American public’s
phone calls and Internet transactions were far beyond acceptable coun-
terterrorism measures. While terrorists can and do cause enormous harm
and affect domestic and international politics and policies—at times sig-
nificantly—few of them realize their ultimate objectives. Based on his
comprehensive study of twenty-eight terrorist groups, Max Abrahams
found that these groups “accomplished their forty-two policy objectives
only 7 percent of the time.” Just as important, those groups “whose
attacks on civilian targets outnumbered attacks on military targets failed
384  Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats
to achieve their policy objectives regardless of their nature.”15 In other
words, terrorism does not work in that most terrorist groups or lone
wolves do not realize their political goals! But by overreacting, target
societies harm their own interests. The establishment of an overblown
intelligence/homeland security complex in the post-9/11 years attests to
overreaction on the part of the U.S. government and powerful interests.
According to a two-year investigation by Washington Post reporters
Dana Priest and William M. Arkin,

•• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies

work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security,
and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
•• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people living
in Washington, DC, hold top-secret security clearances.
•• Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating
redundancy and waste. For example, fifty-one federal organizations
and military commands, operating in fifteen U.S. cities, track the
flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
•• Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained
by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing
50,000 intelligence reports each year—a volume so large that many
are routinely ignored.16

This overblown, expensive bureaucracy has not necessarily enhanced the

nation’s ability to prevent further terrorist attacks, and to respond effec-
tively if terrorists manage to strike. Cases like the Fort Hood shooter and
the would-be Christmas Day bomber revealed that crucial intelligence
gets easily ignored in the information glut of a huge, fragmented system.
Yes, terrorism is a very real, major threat. But so is costly overreac-
tion, when it comes to counterterrorism. Given the poor success rate of
terrorism, there is no reason for gloom and doom. The targets of terror-
ism will have to learn how to counter and contain the threat without
going overboard.

Notes
1 Walter Laqueur, No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century (New
York: Continuum, 2003), 231.
2 Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2001), 233.
3 From an interview conducted by the Portuguese reporter Paulo Moura,
Harper’s Magazine, July 2004, 23.
4 Ibid., 25.
5 John Rikey, “Arab Television Airs Faisal Shahzad Terror Video,” Newsday,
July 14, 2010.
6 Ali Soufan, “Hamza bin Laden: From Steadfast Son to Al-Qa’ida’s Leader
in Waiting,” CTC Sentinel 10:8 (September 2017), [Link]
 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats  385
hamza-bin-ladin-from-steadfast-son-to-al-qaidas-leader-in-waiting/,
accessed June 7, 2018.
7 Leonard Weinberg and William Eubank, “An End to the Fourth Wave of
Terrorism?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33:7 (2010): 600.
8 Paul Krugman, “Noonday in the Shade,” New York Times, June 22, 2004, A19.
9 Pillar, 218.
10 According to a Fox News survey that was conducted on August 3–4, 2004.
11 According to a Pace University survey of August 12–31, 2004.
12 Alexander Burns and Nicholas Confessore, “After Bombing, Hillary Clinton
and Donald Trump Clash Over Terrorism,” New York Times, September
19, 2016, [Link]/2016/09/20/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-
[Link], accessed June 6, 2018.
13 Ibid.
14 Tina Nguyen, “Trump Suggests Obama has Secret Pro-Terrorist Agenda,”
Vanity Fair, June 13, 2016, [Link]/news/2016/06/donald-trump-
obama-muslim, accessed June 7, 2018.
15 Max Abrahams, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security
31:2 (Fall 2006): 43.
16 Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, “A Hidden World, Growing beyond
Control,” Washington Post, July 19, 2010, [Link]
com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-worldgrowing-beyond-control/
print/, accessed July 19, 2010.
Appendix
Major Terrorist Incidents since
the Late 1970s

Incidents That Deliberately Targeted Americans and/or

American Interests

The Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979–1981)

On November 4, 1979, several hundred young Islamic militants, all self-
proclaimed students and followers of Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, seized the American embassy in Tehran, burned the
compound’s U.S. flag, and took sixty-two Americans hostage. Initially,
U.S. officials in Washington and in Tehran viewed the takeover as yet
another annoying but manageable incident in the midst of the funda-
mental political and societal changes that followed the fall of the Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi regime, the triumph of the Islamic revolution,
and the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in Paris. After all, a
similar takeover of the embassy nine months earlier had ended quickly,
after pro-Khomeini revolutionary guards had freed the American hos-
tages and removed the militants from the embassy. But in this case, the
three American officials who happened to be in Iran’s foreign ministry at
the time of the seizure pleaded in vain for the Iranian authorities to free
once again the embassy staff.
The anti-American sentiment in Iran, especially among the support-
ers of the Islamic revolution and the establishment of an Islamic state,
had markedly increased because the Carter administration had allowed
the ailing shah to enter the United States to seek medical treatment a
few days before the embassy seizure. What the White House consid-
ered a humanitarian gesture was seen by many Iranians as yet another
sign of American support for the man who during his reign had brutally
oppressed dissent. In this anti-American hysteria among militant Islamic
elements, it did not matter that President Jimmy Carter, a strong advo-
cate of human rights, had pressed the shah for reforms. The Ayatollah
Khomeini recognized immediately the usefulness of the hostage crisis for
his domestic purposes. The idea was to unite against a powerful and
“evil” enemy, the United States, which he came to call “the Great Satan.”
Thus, one day after the successful takeover, Khomeini and several of his
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  387
highly placed supporters sided publicly with the hostage-holders; they
supported their demands, primarily the return of the shah and his assets
to Iran. Just like the militants who were in control of the U.S. embassy,
the Ayatollah justified the predicament of the Americans by character-
izing them as “spies” and the embassy as a “spy nest” (only a group of
thirteen embassy staffers, predominantly women and African Americans,
were not deemed spies and were released a few weeks after the takeover).
Khomeini moved swiftly against possible opponents.
In Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to exploit the hostage stand-
off to consolidate his power; in the United States, President Carter, after
receiving an initial burst of public support, was increasingly blamed for
allowing a gang of terrorists and a comparably weak country to hold
the United States hostage—blamed by his political opponents in the
Republican Party, by fellow Democrats, and by an increasing share of the
American public. As criticism of Carter’s “do-nothing” approach grew,
the president ordered a highly complex and risky rescue mission by mem-
bers of the counterterrorism unit Delta Force, who had trained for such
an operation since shortly after the embassy takeover. Delta Force com-
mandos were flown to a rendezvous place in the Iranian desert dubbed
“Desert One,” from where they were to fly aboard helicopters into the
area of Tehran to stage a complicated attempt to rescue the hostages. But
only five of the six helicopters needed for the operation (out of a total of
eight) landed at Desert One in operational condition. Charles Beckwith,
the mission commander, had no choice but to abort the rescue attempt.
Tragically, during the refueling operations before takeoff, eight soldiers
were killed when a transport plane and a helicopter collided. The failure
of the mission and, even more so, the deadly disaster at Desert One weak-
ened Carter’s support further. While the president overcame challenges in
his own party and again became the Democrats’ candidate, Republican
Ronald Reagan won the presidential election in November 1980.
With the shah dead (he had succumbed to his illness during the sum-
mer in a Cairo hospital), Carter defeated, and the victory of the Islamic
revolution sealed, the hostages in Iran had outlived their usefulness for
Khomeini and his supporters. After negotiating the transfer of close to
$8 billion of the shah’s assets to Iran, the Iranian authorities released the
hostages on January 20, 1981—only minutes after Jimmy Carter’s presi-
dency had ended and Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as president. For
444 days, as the media reminded the U.S. public day in and day out, the
United States had been held hostage.

Two Catastrophic Bombings in Beirut (1983)

On April 18, 1983, a delivery truck loaded with 400 pounds of explo-
sives sped past the guards in front of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and, as it
reached the front portico of the building, blew up in a powerful explosion
388  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
that destroyed the central part of the building. Sixty-three people, among
them seventeen Americans, were killed, and 120 others were injured.
General John Vessey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the
most lethal attack on an American diplomatic facility “an inexplicable
aberration.”1 As it turned out, the first anti-American suicide bombing
was only the beginning of a sustained terror campaign against Americans
by fundamental Lebanese Shi’ite groups, namely the Hezbollah (Party of
God) and the Lebanese Islamic Jihad, who were inspired by the Iranian
revolution and actively supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
and thus by the Iranian leadership. What these circles resented most of
all was the presence of U.S. Marines and other foreign forces on Lebanese
territory even though the troops, together with their French and Italian
counterparts, had come to restore law and order after Israel had invaded
in the hunt for members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
and had carried out the evacuation of PLO leader Yassir Arafat and his
followers from Lebanon.
Far more devastating blows followed six months later, on October 23,
1983, when suicide bombers drove their explosive-laden trucks simulta-
neously into the U.S. Marine Corps’ and the French forces’ compounds
outside Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one American Marines and fifty-
eight French servicemen were killed. President Reagan called the terrorist
attacks “despicable” and expressed his “outrage.” But while immediately
after he learned of the carnage the president emphasized his determination
to keep a force in Lebanon, four months later his administration decided
to withdraw all the Marines. The terrorists had achieved their goal.

TWA Hijacking and Hostage Situation (1985)

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the eight crew members and the
145 passengers when TWA Flight 847 took off on June 6, 1985, from the
airport in Athens, Greece. But once in the air, two heavily armed members
of the Lebanese Hezbollah hijacked the Boeing 727, forcing the pilot to
fly to Beirut and not, as scheduled, to Rome, Italy. En route, the hijackers
brutally beat a young Navy diver, Robert Stethem, and searched for pas-
sengers with Israeli passports or Jewish names. After refueling in Beirut,
the terrorists ordered the pilot to fly to Algiers, where some women and
children were released, then return to Beirut airport, where they killed
Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac before ordering yet another
stop in Algiers and a third flight to Beirut. Eventually, Nabih Berri, a law-
yer, negotiated on behalf of the hijackers, who demanded the release of
hundreds of Shi’ites from Israeli prisons. Seventeen days after the ordeal
began and after intensive negotiations involving Berri, the United States,
the Israeli government, the Red Cross, and, of course, the terrorists, the
hostages were released—with the understanding that Israel would free
the prisoners. Behind the scenes, the Reagan administration had pressed
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  389
Israel to agree to this solution and violate its declared policy of making
no concessions to terrorists.

The Achille Lauro Seizure (1985)

In April 2003, following the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime,
members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces captured Muhammad
Abbas—better known by his nom de guerre Abu Abbas, one of the more
notorious terrorist leaders of the 1970s and 1980s—outside of Baghdad.
Nearly eighteen years earlier, Abbas had masterminded, and four mem-
bers of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) had carried out, one of the
most brutal acts of terrorism. The ordeal began on October 7, 1985, when
four heavily armed Palestinian men, seemingly passengers, seized the
Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro off the Egyptian coast.2 They demanded
the release of fifty of their comrades from Israeli prisons. Because some
750 travelers had gone ashore at Alexandria for an excursion earlier in
the day, less than 100 passengers and 344 crew members were aboard
at the time. Singling out Americans and Jews, the Palestinians terror-
ized their hostages relentlessly. In an unspeakably cruel act, one of the
terrorists killed 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, a New Yorker, who was
partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. After one of the ter-
rorists shot Klinghoffer in the head and chest, he forced members of the
crew to throw the body overboard. Soon thereafter, Egyptian officials
convinced the terrorists to surrender by promising them free passage to a
destination of their choice.
However, U.S. fighter planes intercepted the Egyptian airliner that
carried Abu Abbas, one of his aides, and the four Achille Lauro hijack-
ers, forcing the intercepted plane to land at a NATO base in Sigonella,
Italy. There, Italian troops prevented U.S. Special Operation Forces from
apprehending the Palestinians. Instead, the Italians took the four Achille
Lauro terrorists into custody and allowed Abbas and his aide to leave
the country. Pressured by the Reagan administration, Italy tried Abbas in
1986 in absentia and sentenced him to life in prison.

The Lebanon Hostages (1982–1991)

Foreigners were kidnapped in and around Beirut throughout the 1980s
by members of radical Shi’ite groups that had close ties to Iran. Various
groups claimed responsibility, but it was widely assumed that Hezbollah
was behind most of these hostage-takings. Starting with the kidnapping
of David Dodge, acting president of the American University of Beirut, a
total of seventeen American men were held hostage by these circles. Of
these hostages, three were killed brutally: William Buckley, the CIA sta-
tion chief in Beirut; Peter Kilburn, a librarian at the American University
of Beirut; and Marine Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins. One of the
390  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
hostages was able to escape; the others were held under gruesome con-
ditions for various lengths of time. When one or another captive was
released, others were grabbed. Terry Anderson, an Associated Press
correspondent, was by far the longest held of the “Lebanon hostages,”
spending 2,454 days (or close to seven years) in captivity.
The motives were not always clear. For example, at times the captors
demanded the release of prisoners from Kuwait, Israel, and Germany;
on other occasions, they seemed driven by the desire to gain publicity
and attention at home and abroad. As the result of an arms-for-hostages
deal between the Reagan administration and the Iranian government, sev-
eral of the long-term U.S. hostages were released, but they were quickly
replaced by others. The secret transactions between the White House and
Iranian officials were a blatant violation of the official policy that President
Reagan and his administration claimed to support, namely, not to give in
to the demands of terrorists and not to make deals with terrorists.
The captives, among them Anderson, were finally freed in late 1991
after lengthy negotiations involving Iranian, Israeli, American, and
United Nations officials. Although no side admitted to a quid pro quo,
the Iranian authorities reportedly paid the hostage-holders between $1
and $2 million for each of the Western hostages released after July 1991.

The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (1988)

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, which had originated in
Frankfurt, Germany, was en route to New York after a stopover at
Heathrow Airport when it was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie,
Scotland. All 259 persons aboard, among them thirty-five undergradu-
ate students at Syracuse University, and eleven persons on the ground
were killed. Had it not been for a delay at Heathrow, the explosion
would have occurred over the Atlantic and its cause never resolved. But
with evidence on the ground in hand, the British authorities established
that a small sheet of plastic explosives had been hidden in a radiocas-
sette player inside a suitcase. Early on, there was the suspicion that
the bombing was meant to avenge the accidental destruction of an
Iranian civil airliner over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes and
that the Iranians had contracted with terrorists to do their dirty work.
Bombing devices similar to the one used to destroy the Pan Am airliner
were found in the possession of members of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP–GC) in Germany,
but two Libyan agents were eventually identified as the perpetrators.
This led to the suspicion that the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 was
Libya’s belated revenge for the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi
by the United States. It took years of sanctions by the United States
and the United Nations and sustained pressure by the families of the
Pan Am 103 victims before Libya’s ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, handed
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  391
over the two agents, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Fhima, to
the Netherlands in 1999, where they were tried by a Scottish court. In
early 2001, al-Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum
of twenty years in prison, and Fhima was found not guilty and released.

The First World Trade Center Bombing (1993)

The first bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York on
February 26, 1993, marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history
of anti-American terrorism. While the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103
in 1988 could be understood as a precursor to the catastrophic terrorism
of the 1990s and thereafter, the 1993 bombing of the building in down-
town Manhattan was the first major act of international terrorism inside
the United States. Although the blast of more than 1,000 pounds of
explosives in the parking garage beneath the Wall Street area’s signature
building did not, as the perpetrators had planned, topple at least one of
the 110-story twin towers, its effects were far-reaching and transcended
the immediate costs—six persons killed, more than 1,000 injured, and
massive damage to the WTC. The most severe consequences were to
the American psyche, in that the “explosion in the bowels of the World
Trade Center’s twin towers dispelled for ever the myth that terrorists
are simply not able to stage their violent spectaculars inside the United
States.”3 The “Liberation Army Fifth Battalion” claimed responsibility
for the bombing and warned that more targets inside the United States,
among them nuclear facilities, would be attacked. Demanding that the
United States sever its diplomatic ties to Israel and change its Middle
East policy, the terrorists justified their deed in writing: “The American
people must know that their civilians who got killed [in the WTC blast]
are not better than those who are getting killed by American weapons
and support.”4
Several of the conspirators involved in the elaborate planning and
execution of the WTC bombing were non-Afghan veterans of the fight
against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, and in that role had received
significant American support. But after the Soviet military was out of
Afghanistan and no more assistance was forthcoming from the United
States, these displaced mujahideen (holy warriors) had turned against
their onetime American benefactor. Those who had settled in the
New York and New Jersey area were followers of Sheik Omar Abdel-
Rahman, an anti-Western, anti-American, Muslim preacher. Before
coming to the United States in the beginning of the 1990s, Sheik Abdel-
Rahman was the leader of the extremist Islamic Group in Egypt and
was allegedly involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s
president. Sheik Abdel-Rahman and four other men were accused of
having plotted the WTC bombing in 1993, found guilty, and sentenced
to lifelong prison terms.
392  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
The mastermind of this bombing, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was arrested
in Pakistan and extradited to the United States in 1995. FBI investigators
traced an early, if indirect, link between Yousef and Osama bin Laden.
In 1997, Yousef was found guilty by a jury in New York and sentenced
to 240 years in prison.

The Oklahoma City Bombing (1995)

Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a powerful truck bomb explo-
sion destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown
Oklahoma City. One hundred and sixty-eight persons, among them nine-
teen children who had attended a day care center in the office building,
were killed, and hundreds were injured. As the architect of the devastat-
ing terror who had personally ignited the bomb, Timothy McVeigh, a
veteran of the Persian Gulf War, was eventually tried, convicted, and
sentenced to death. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, was also brought to
justice. By striking on the second anniversary of the FBI’s ill-fated raid on
the Branch Davidian sect’s compound in Waco, Texas, during which sect
leader David Koresh and eighty of his followers died, the perpetrators
revealed their roots in the radical-right milieu whose hatred of the federal
government had been fueled by deadly encounters between, on the one
hand, federal law enforcement agents and, on the other, individuals such
as survivalist and White Supremacist Randy Weaver and groups such as
the Branch Davidian sect.
As soon as McVeigh was identified as a suspect, the media reported on
his links to the extreme right, his visit to the site of the Branch Davidians’
compound in Waco, and how this experience had magnified his hate of
the federal government. The news revisited another incident that had
intensified the antigovernment sentiments in the militia, patriot, and
White Supremacist movements: The deadly encounter between Randy
Weaver and federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, during which
Weaver’s wife and son and a deputy U.S. marshal were killed. Both inci-
dents were on McVeigh’s mind when he planned his act of terrorism.
McVeigh died with the conviction that the “statement” he had made
by bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City was not simply heard
around the world but was also heard by the federal government and
federal law enforcement agencies in particular. He believed that the FBI
and other agencies altered their rules of engagement during standoff situ-
ations similar to those at Waco and Ruby Ridge and, more importantly,
that these changes were the direct result of his terrorist act.5

The Khobar Towers Attacks (1996)

On June 25, 1996, a potent truck bomb was exploded outside the U.S.
military’s Khobar Towers housing area in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  393
nineteen Americans and injuring 515 other persons, among them 240
U.S. citizens. The Dhahran facility housed at the time more than 3,000
members of the military involved in enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq.
Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack, but U.S. authorities
were convinced that Iran had sponsored the perpetrators. It took five
years before the United States indicted thirteen Saudis and one Lebanese
for the bombing.

The Bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998)

On August 7, 1998, two suicide bombers drove their explosive-laden
cars close to the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania, before igniting their powerful bombs. The explosions killed
291 persons and injured more than 5,000 in Nairobi; an additional
ten persons were killed and seventy-seven wounded in Dar es Salaam.
The attacks were directed against U.S. facilities, but most of the casual-
ties were Kenyans and Tanzanians. A group calling itself the Islamic
Army for the Liberation of Holy Places claimed responsibility for the
near-simultaneous blasts, but U.S. investigators suspected immediately
that bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization was responsible. In response,
President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes against Al Qaeda training
camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan that the
U.S. administration described as a chemical weapons-related facility. Bin
Laden and his associates had lived in Sudan before they moved on to
Afghanistan.
Within the next few months, the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of New York indicted a dozen individuals, among them Osama
bin Laden, his chief of military operations, Muhammad Atef, and several
members of Al Qaeda in the two east African bombings. According to
the Department of State, “At the end of 2000, one suspect had pled guilty
to conspiring in the attacks, five were in custody in New York awaiting
trial, three were in the United Kingdom pending extradition to the United
States, and 13 were fugitives, including Usama Bin Laden.”6

The Bombing of the USS Cole (2000)

On October 12, 2000, the crew of the USS Cole readied the mighty
U.S. Navy destroyer to be docked and refueled in the Yemeni port of
Aden, when a small boat with two men aboard moved straight toward
the Cole’s hull and exploded in a powerful blast. Seventeen sailors were
killed, thirty-nine others were injured, and the ship was severely dam-
aged. The suicide bombing was a stunning terrorist act and a success,
in that a small fiberglass boat with some hundred pounds of explosives
had taken on the most powerful of the United States’ warships outfit-
ted with an arsenal of guided missiles and a sophisticated radar system.
394  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
The pictures of the massive hole in the Cole’s hull and of the crew’s
desperate and ultimately successful fight to prevent their ship from sink-
ing “added up to a stunning David and Goliath metaphor: A powerful
symbol of the world’s most formidable military superpower was inca-
pacitated by members and/or agents of a comparatively weak group
unable to fight the mighty United States in open warfare.”7
Because of the boldness of the attack and bin Laden’s family roots in
Yemen, law enforcement authorities in Yemen and in the United States
suspected immediately that Al Qaeda was behind the attack. Two sus-
pects with alleged ties to the terrorist organization were arrested and
jailed in Yemen, but more than two years after the attack the two men
and eight other suspected followers of bin Laden managed to escape from
prison. The following month, federal prosecutors in the United States
indicted Jamal Ahmed al-Badawi and Fahd al-Quso for planning the ter-
rorist strike against the Cole. According to the indictment, the men had
been recruited by Al Qaeda, had attended training camps in Afghanistan,
and had planned an earlier attack on another Navy destroyer, the
Sullivan, that “was called off when their boat sank under the weight of
its own explosives.”8

The Attacks of 9/11 (2001)

On September 11, 2001, after a long period of elaborate preparations
abroad and inside the United States, nineteen male members of the Al
Qaeda network set in motion what up to then seemed an unthinkable
terrorist attack inside the United States. Hijacking nearly simultaneously
four airliners shortly after takeoff from airports on the east coast by
attacking crew members and passengers with box cutters and knives, the
terrorists took command of the planes in order to fly them into predeter-
mined buildings. The chain of events unfolded as follows:

1 Five of the terrorists hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 that

departed Boston at 7:45 a.m. for a flight to Los Angeles. One hour
later, the terrorists piloted the machine into the North Tower of the
WTC in New York.
2 Five of the terrorists hijacked United Airlines Flight 175, also taking
off from Boston and bound for Los Angeles, at 7:58 a.m. An hour and
seven minutes later, the aircraft was flown deliberately into the South
Tower of the WTC. When the two buildings collapsed soon thereaf-
ter, more than 2,800 persons, among them hundreds of firefighters
and police officers, were killed, and many others were injured.9
3 Four terrorists took control of United Airlines Flight 93 after it left
Newark at 8:01 a.m. on its scheduled trip to San Francisco. When
passengers learned from cellular phone conversations with members
of their families that two hijacked planes had been flown into the
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  395
WTC towers, they decided to fight the hijackers. Two hours after
takeoff, Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania’s Stony Creek Township.
It is believed that the terrorists intended to fly the plane into a
building in Washington, DC, most likely the Capitol, and that the
courageous action by passengers foiled this plan.
4 Five terrorists took control of American Airlines Flight 77 after
it had departed Dulles Airport, Washington, DC, at 8:10 a.m. en
route to San Francisco. Twenty-nine minutes later, the aircraft was
crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of the
U.S. capital, killing 189 persons, injuring others, and destroying part
of the building.10

International terrorism against Americans had frequently shocked and

intimidated the U.S. public and preoccupied several U.S. presidents dur-
ing the closing decades of the twentieth century. But the events of 9/11
convinced American leaders and the American public that international
terrorism represented the number-one threat to their national security
and national interest. Based on his pre- and post-9/11 communications,
this was precisely the reaction that Osama bin Laden and his brain trust
had intended and anticipated. The Al Qaeda leader hoped to shock the
United States into a state of mind that would assure that its decision-
makers would overreact in both domestic and foreign policies.

Fort Hood Massacre (2009)

On November 5, 2009, U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan carried out a mass
shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, killing thirteen and wounding twenty-eight
others. Hasan, a Muslim, was to be deployed in Afghanistan later that
month. He had been in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American
imam who encouraged his followers to kill American soldiers and civilians.

Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooting (2012)

On August 5, 2012, six persons were killed and three others injured at a
Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, by forty-year-old Wade Michael
Page, a White Supremacist, who wrongly assumed that Sikhs were
Muslims. After being shot by police, Page killed himself.

Boston Marathon Bombings (2013)

On April 15, 2013, three persons were killed and close to 200 injured,
when two home-made pressure cooker bombs were detonated within sec-
onds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. As they
fled the scene with the plan to drive to New York for additional attacks,
the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev killed a police officer
396  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
on the MIT campus and injured a Boston transit police officer criti-
cally. While Tamerlan was killed in a shoot-out with police, his younger
brother was captured, tried, and sentenced to death.

Charleston Church Shooting (2015)

On June 17, 2015, nine persons were killed and another one seriously
injured by twenty-one-year-old White Supremacist Dylann Roof at
the end of a Bible study gathering at the Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopalian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof, who con-
fessed to the shooting, had posted a manifesto online that revealed his
racist attitudes toward African Americans.

Chattanooga Attack on Military Targets (2015)

On July 16, 2015, twenty-five-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez
opened fire first on a military recruiting center and then on a Naval
Reserve training center. Five Marines were killed and a local police officer
seriously injured. The perpetrator was also killed during a gunfight with
police. Reportedly, hours before his shooting spree, Abdulazeez texted
the following Islamic verse to a friend: “Whosoever shows enmity to a
friend of mine, then I have declared war against him.”

Deadly Attack against Planned Parenthood Clinic (2015)

On November 27, 2015, Robert Lewis Dear, Jr., an antiabortion extremist
who called himself “a warrior for the babies” shot his way into a Planned
Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs killing three persons and five police
officers and four civilians. After a five-hour stand-off, police smashed an
armored car into the building, forcing the shooter to surrender.

San Bernardino Mass Shooting (2015)

On December 2, 2015, a married couple targeted an early Christmas party
of San Bernardino County’s Department of Health employees for a deadly
mass shooting that killed fourteen persons and injured seriously twenty-
two others. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik fled the scene in their
SUV but were eventually intercepted by police and killed during a shoot-
out. FBI investigators found evidence that the shooters had embraced
violent extremism and what they perceived as martyrdom via jihad.

Orlando Nightclub Shooting: Most Lethal Attack since 9/11 (2016)

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a twenty-nine-year-old security guard,
entered a gay nightclub in Orlando and in the following three hours
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  397
carried out the most lethal terrorist attack since 9/11, shooting to death
forty-nine persons and injuring fifty-three other club patrons. Since
the “Pulse” nightclub staged a “Latin Night” on that date, most of the
victims were Latinos from the greater Orlando area. Mateen was even-
tually shot by officers of the Orlando Police Department. During the
ordeal, Mateen dialed the 9-1-1 police emergency number to explain his
motives. According to the police, the shooter identified as a follower of
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, explained his violence as a response
to U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria, and demanded an end to U.S. military
actions in those countries.

Vehicular Terrorism on Halloween (2017)

On October 31, Halloween Day, twenty-nine-year-old Sayfullo Saipov,
an immigrant from Uzbekistan, drove a rented truck into runners and
cyclists in Hudson River Park in Lower Manhattan killing eight persons
and injuring eleven more. After the truck collided with a school bus
Saipov left the vehicle wielding guns toward one policeman who shot and
arrested him. As it turned out, the weapons were a paintball and a pel-
let gun. The Islamic State flag found in the truck along with documents
revealed the attacker’s allegiance to ISIS.

Mass Shooting in Pittsburgh Synagogue (2018)

On October 27, 2018, White Nationalist Robert Bowers (forty-six)
entered the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue with an assault rifle and
three handguns. He immediately began shooting parishioners who
had gathered for Saturday morning service. Eleven people were killed
and six were injured. The sole suspect was arrested and charged with
twenty-nine federal crimes and thirty-six state crimes. He had a history
of posting hateful anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant messages on social
media frequented by White Nationalists. As he received medical treat-
ment Bowers told a SWAT officer that “all these Jews have to die.”

A Few Notable Incidents Abroad

March 20, 1995: Twelve persons were killed and 5,700 were injured as
a result of a sarin nerve gas attack in a crowded subway station in the
heart of Tokyo, Japan. Nearly simultaneously, a similar release of nerve
gas occurred in the subway system of Yokohama. The Aum Shinrikyo
sect was blamed for the attack and its leader brought to justice. The same
cult was responsible for another nerve gas attack in the Japanese city of
Matsumoto the previous June. In this case, seven persons died and 150
fell sick. The lethal incident in Tokyo’s subway alarmed people around
the world and magnified the fear that terrorists would increasingly resort
to biological, chemical, and even nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
398  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
October 12, 2002: A mighty truck bomb exploded in a popular section
of Bali, Indonesia, in the midst of popular nightclubs, cafes, and bars that
were mostly frequented by foreign tourists. Two hundred persons from
more than twenty countries were killed, most of them Australians. Seven
Americans died in the blast, which was perpetrated by terrorists with
ties to the extremist Jemaah Islamic group and to Al Qaeda. Terrorism
experts suspected that the perpetrators intended to harm Westerners and
particularly Americans.
March 11, 2004: Within fifteen minutes and at the height of the morn-
ing rush hour, a total of at least eight backpack bombs exploded first on
a commuter train inside Madrid’s Atocha station, then on a crowded
commuter train entering the station, and finally on a third train entering
the Santa Eugenia station about nine miles from Atocha. One hundred
and ninety-one persons were killed and 1,500 were injured. Although the
unknown Al-Quds al-Arabia group claimed responsibility for the attacks
as punishment for Spain’s participation in the “crusade alliance” in Iraq,
Spanish officials were quick to name the Basque separatist group ETA as
the primary suspect. Three days after the carnage in Madrid, José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero and his Socialist Party defeated Prime Minister José
María Aznar and his conservative Popular Party. Aznar, a staunch sup-
porter of the U.S.-led war against Iraq, had contributed 1,300 Spanish
troops to the invasion forces.
September 1–3, 2004: A large group of heavily armed Chechen
extremists took over a school in Beslan in south Russia and held more
than 1,200 children, parents, and teachers hostage. On day three of the
incident, the captors detonated explosives that they had rigged around
the interior of the school—especially the gym, where many of the hos-
tages were held. At least 330 hostages, about half of them children, were
killed, and many more were injured.
July 7, 2005: Four nearly simultaneous suicide attacks on the London
transit system killed fifty-six victims and injured over 700. Three of the
bombs exploded in underground trains and the fourth in a double-decker
bus. Two weeks later, another quadruple attack on a bus and three
underground trains was unsuccessful when the bombs failed to detonate.
In both cases, Muslims who were British citizens or residents were identi-
fied as the terrorists or would-be terrorists.
July 23, 2005: Several car bombs exploded at tourist hotels in Sharm el-
Sheikh in Egypt, killing eighty-eight and wounding more than 100 persons.
November 9, 2005: Three explosions in three hotels in Amman,
Jordan, killed sixty persons and injured more than 100. Within days,
Jordanian authorities identified the three suicide bombers and connected
them to an Al Qaeda-affiliated group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who
was also responsible for many terrorist attacks in post-invasion Iraq.
November 26–29, 2008: Ten heavily armed terrorists opened fire
on civilians in ten different sites in Mumbai, India, and eventually held
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  399
hostages in two hotels and one Jewish community center. When Indian
security forces gained control, 173 persons were dead, five Americans
among them, and hundreds were injured. All but one of the terrorists
were killed in the incident that according to Indian authorities was
planned, directed, and carried out by members of the Pakistani terrorist
organization Lashkar-e-Taiba.
July 22, 2011: Thirty-two-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, an extreme
Euro-nativist, set off a car bomb near government buildings in Oslo,
Norway, killing eight people. He then made his way to the island of
Utoya, where he shot and killed sixty-nine young persons who were par-
ticipating in a youth camp organized by the Workers’ Youth League.
Before he perpetrated his terrorist deeds, he posted a manifesto online
that explained his Euro-centrist, anti-Muslim ideas.
January 7, 2015: Said and Chérif Kouachi, two brothers, shot their
way into the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris,
France, killing eleven staffers and injuring eleven others. As they fled the
scene, they killed a police officer. Before they died in a shoot-out with
police, they revealed that they acted on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula in revenge for the magazine’s publishing of cartoons depicting
the Prophet Muhammad.
October 31, 2015: A Russian charter flight carrying 217 passengers
and seven crew members from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh,
Egypt, to St. Petersburg crashed shortly after taking off, killing everyone
on board. Shortly after the incident ISIS’s Sinai branch claimed responsi-
bility for what Russian and Egyptian authorities eventually identified as
an explosion caused by a potent explosive device smuggled onto the plane.
November 13, 2015: In a horrific six-stop killing spree in Paris a team
of ISIS-affiliated jihadis took the lives of 130 civilians and injured hun-
dreds more. It was the most deadly terrorist attack in French history.
Among the locations targeted were a music hall, a sports stadium and
several bar and restaurant terraces. Ninety persons were shot to death
during a siege at an “Eagles of Death Metal” concert inside the Bataclan.
Police actions prevented follow-up strikes plotted for the following days.
July 14, 2016: As a jolly crowd celebrated Bastille Day on the
Promenade de Anglais in Nice, France, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel
drove his truck deliberately into the people killing eighty-six and injur-
ing several hundred more. According to an ISIS statement the Tunisian
perpetrator, who was shot and killed by police, acted on behalf of the
organization.
May 22, 2017: As thousands of fans were leaving Manchester Arena
after a concert with U.S. pop star Ariana Grande, twenty-two-year-old
suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated his home-made explosive device
killing twenty-two persons and injuring more than fifty. While ISIS
claimed responsibility for the attack there was no evidence of direct ties
between Abedi and the terrorist organization.
400  Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents
June 3, 2017: After driving their van intentionally into pedestrians on
London Bridge the three occupants ran to the Borough Market area stab-
bing people inside and outside restaurants and bars. Eight persons were
killed and forty-eight injured. The three jihadis were eventually shot dead
by police.
August 17, 2017: In a seemingly lone wolf attack twenty-two-year-old
Younes Abouyaaqoub drove a van into pedestrians in a popular tourist
area of Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen persons were killed and more than a
hundred injured. As the attacker fled on foot he killed another person in
order to get control over the victim’s car. Several hours later, five men
drove a car into pedestrians in the town of Cambrils causing the death of
one person and injuring six others. The six perpetrators were eventually
killed in shoot-outs with police as were two additional members of what
police said was a twelve-man Jihadi terrorist cell; the other four members
were arrested.

The “Forgotten” Most Lethal Terrorist Attacks

Abroad
On October 14, 2017, a truck bombing killed 512 and injured
more than 300 additional persons in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.
The potent bomb was detonated when the truck was stopped at
a check point. According to the authorities, the real target of the
attack directed by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab was a compound
that houses international peacekeepers and agencies.
On November 24, 2017, several dozen men, some of them car-
rying an Islamic State flag, detonated a massive bomb in a mosque
in North Sinai, Egypt, and gunned down fleeing worshipers;
311 persons were killed and more than 100 injured. According to
some reports the attack was in response to mosque leaders’ coop-
eration with Egyptian security forces involved in fighting ISIS’s
affiliate in the Sinai.
While these two incidents were the most lethal of 2017, hun-
dreds of other terrorist attacks in Africa, the Middle East, South
Asia, and other regions with Muslim majorities or sizable Muslim
minorities killed and maimed tens of thousands in 2017 alone. To
list all of these cases for the last several decades would fill a book.
I decided to focus in this appendix on summarizing major inci-
dents directed against Americans at home or abroad and notable
attacks overseas mostly against Westerners because these receive
the greatest attention by the media, the public, and governments
and thus figure most prominently in counterterrorist reactions
and policies.
 Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents  401
Notes
1 David C. Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of
America’s War on Terrorism (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 105.
2 Originally, the quartet planned to take hostages once the ship reached one
of the ports-of-call—Ashodod, Israel. But when a member of the crew hap-
pened upon the Palestinians as they cleaned their weapons in their cabin, they
changed their plan and acted immediately.
3 Brigitte L. Nacos, Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to
the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2.
4 Alison Mitchell, “Letter Explained Motive in Bombing, Officials Now Say,”
New York Times, March 28, 1993, 1.
5 Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the
Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: Regan Books, 2001, 378–379.
6 U.S. Department of State, “Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000,” Released
April 30, 2001, [Link]/j/ct/rls/crt/2000/, accessed December 5, 2018.
7 Brigitte L. Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media
in Terrorism and Counterterrorism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2002), 7.
8 Eric Lichtblau, “Aftereffects: The Cole Bombing; U.S. Indicts 2 Men for
Attack on American Ship in Yemen,” New York Times, May 16, 2003, A17.
9 Nearly a year after 9/11, the official number of victims killed in the WTC
stood at 8,823. As of August 2002, 2,726 death certificates related to the
WTC attack had been filed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and “Mortality Weekly Report,” September 11, 2002, no. 51 (spe-
cial issue), 16–18, [Link]/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/[Link].
10 The timeline of the events on 9/11 is described in “September 11 and Review of
Terrorism 2001,” in U.S. Department of State, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,
2001,” 1. See also Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism, ch. 2.
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Index

1968 52–54 with 272–273; demise of 215;

9/11 attacks 2–4, 235–251, 341–345, drivers of 114–116; drone attacks
394–395 248–249; financing 221–223,
225, 227; ideology 121–126,
Abbas, M. 389 178; military retaliation 256–257;
ABC News 32 networks 207–212; state
Abedi, S. 399 sponsorship 221–223; wealth 228
Abouyaaqoub, Y 400 Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Abu Ghraib 298–300 (AQAP) 361
Abu Sayyaf separatists 19, 211 Al-Shabaab 400
Achille Lauro seizure 389 Alt-Right movement 84–85
acoustical devices 34 Al-Zarqawi, A.M. 212, 398
active terrorists 140–141 al-Zawahiri, A. 123, 124, 209
actors, defining terrorism 27–29 America: 9/11 attacks 2–4, 235–251,
addiction 144–145 341–345, 394–395; Alt-Right
Aden, Yemen, USS Cole attack 26–27, movement 84–85; anarchists
393–394 87–90; anthrax attacks 5, 94–95;
aeroplanes: 9/11 attacks 2–4, 235–251, anti-abortion violence 18, 84,
341–345, 394–395; hijackings 94–95, 107–108, 113, 396;
in 1968 52–53; Pan Am Flight ANTIFA movement 89–90;
103 bombing 4, 390–391; TWA antitax militants 84; Antiterrorism
hijacking and hostage situation and Effective Death Penalty Act
388–389 285–286; assassinations by the
Afghanistan 3, 258–259 state 263–264; Black Panther Party
African National Congress (ANC) 276 91–92; Boston marathon bombing
al-Awlaki, A. 25 147, 308–309, 395–396; Branch
al-Baghdadi, A.B. 124–125 Davidian sect 83, 338; Central
Al Dawa 185 Intelligence Agency 311–314;
ALF see Animal Liberation Front Charlestown Episcopalian Church
Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya 211 81–82, 396; Charlottesville,
alienation 114–116 Virginia 2, 17, 89; Chicago, “Days
Al-Jazeera, bin Laden addresses of Rage” 90–91; Christian Identity
123–124 movement 78–82; definitions of
Al-Jihad 211 terrorism 22–28, 32; Department
Al-Khansaa Brigade 160–161 of Homeland Security 319–322;
Al-Manar 364 desegregation 76; domestic
Al Mujahir, A. 5–6 terrorism-caused deaths 84–85;
Al Qaeda 64–66, 68, 185, 201–202; drone wars 246–249; embassy
Afghanistan war 3; commando bombings 185, 387–388, 393;
raids 261–262; communication Federal Bureau of Investigation
 Index  415
17–18, 22, 23, 156, 311–315, 227; unilateral use of force 242;
318–319; Foreign Intelligence USA Freedom Act 292–293;
Surveillance Act 289–290; Fort USA PATRIOT Act 286–290;
Hood army base shooting 127, Washington, DC sniper attacks
395; Fraunces Tavern bombing 99; 24; Weather Underground 90–91;
hate crimes vs. terrorism 17–18; Wichita anti-abortion attacks
homegrown jihadis 126–131; 159–160; Wisconsin Sikh temple
Hudson River Park, Manhattan shooting 395; World Trade Center
34, 105–106, 397; incidents attacks 2–4, 17, 20, 178, 341–345,
against sine 1970s 386–397; Jewish 391–392
Defense League 97–98; July Fourth, “America First” policies 245
1999 81; Ku Klux Klan 74–78; American Embassy bombing, Beirut 185
left-wing terrorist organizations American exceptionalism 239–240
87–93; Little Rock, Arkansas 127; The Anarchist Cookbook 181–182
making the world safer and better anarchists 20, 21, 47, 48–49, 59,
240–241; Militia Movement 82–85; 87–90, 363
National Security Agency 289–293, ANC see African National Congress
313–315; national security strategy anchoring events 9/11 attacks 2–4
235–251; national security Animal Liberation Front 18–19, 47
strategy, Bush 235–242; national Animal Liberation Front (ALF)
security strategy, drone wars 96–97, 181
246–249; national security strategy, anthrax attacks 5, 94–95, 200–201
neoconservatives 238–240; national anti-abortion activism 18, 84, 94–95,
security strategy, Obama 243–244, 107–108, 113, 159–160, 396
248, 254–256; national security Antifa extremists 60
strategy, Trump 245–246, 248, Antifa movement, America 89–90
266; neoconservatives 238–240; antiglobalization groups 47
Neo-Nazis 78–82; Oakland, antigovernment violence 21
California 91–93; Oklahoma City Anti-Racist Action (ARA) 90–91
bombings 4, 18, 80, 178, 338, antitax terrorism 84
392; Omnibus Diplomatic Security antiterrorism: definition 282; laws
Act, 1986 285; Patriot Movement 281–293
82–85; Pensacola killings 94; Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Pittsburgh shootings 83, 397; Penalty Act, 1993 285–286
power failure 358; preemptive AntiZOG 367
military action 241–242; Puerto AQAP see Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Rican nationalist groups 98–99; Peninsula
Pulse Nightclub shooting 128–129; ARA see Anti-Racist Action
radical environmentalism 18–19, Arafat, Y. 52, 163
96–97; right-wing terrorist Arkansas, Little Rock 127
organizations 73–87; San Armed Forces for National Liberation
Bernardino County’s Health (FALN) 99
Department shooting 128, 396; Armenia 49
self-radicalization 106, 126–131; Army of God 95, 139–140
single-issue terrorist organizations Army of the Righteous see
93–99; Snowden 290–293; Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
sovereign citizens movement 85–87; arsonists 18–19, 96–97
Special Operation Forces 259, Aryan Nations 73–74, 79, 206
264–265; Symbionese Liberation ’Asbat al Ansar (League of Followers) 211
Army 92–93; terrorist ideologies assassinations: anarchist movements
99–101; terrorist organizations 48–49, 87–88; attempt on Truman
72–104; Times Square bombing 98; Biagi 185; Britton, Dr. 107–108;
1, 127–128, 150, 333; torture McKinley 87–88, 146–147; Slepian,
298–303; tri-border area 223–224, Dr. 94; as a strategy 185; Tiller, Dr. 94
416 Index
Assassins 45–46 398; Bali 398; Beirut 4, 185, 186,
Association for the Taxation of 387–388; Boston marathon 147,
Financial Transactions and Aid to 308–309, 395–396; Fraunces
Citizens (ATTAC) 60 Tavern 99; Indonesian churches
Atocha station, Madrid 398 167–168; Khobar Towers 392–393;
ATTAC see Association for the Manchester Arena attack 399;
Taxation of Financial Transactions Mogadishu, Somalia 400;
and Aid to Citizens Mumbai, India 398–399; North
attention-getting 340–343 Sinai mosque 400; Oklahoma
Aum Shinrikyo cult 5, 200, 201, City 4, 18, 80, 178, 392; Pan Am
202, 397 Flight 103 4, 390–391; Sharm
Australia 59 el-Sheik 398; shoe-based devices
autocracy 138 22, 309–310; Times Square 1,
avoidance, of terrorism as a term used 127–128, 150, 333; U.S. embassies
30–32 185, 387–388, 393; USS Cole
Awlaki, A., Al 25 26–27, 393–394; by vehicles
Ayala, R. 99 183–184; Western Wall, Jerusalem
Azizabad 258–259 334; World Trade Center 17, 20,
178, 391–392, see also suicide
Baader-Meinhof group 51–54, 57, bombings
136, 139, 141–142, 158, 165, 177, Borough Market, London, UK 400
215, 216, 337, 349–350 Borradori, G. 38
Bakr, H. 213 Borum, R. 142
Bakunin, M. 48 Boston, marathon bombing 147,
Bali bombing 398 308–309, 395–396
Balkans, Russian Federation botulinum toxin 201
disintegration 63 Bouhlel, M.L. 348
Bandura, A. 111–112 Branch Davidian sect 83, 338
Barber, B. 64 Bray, M. 90
Barcelona, Spain 400 Breivik, A. 399
Bastille Day attack, Paris 399 “British Israelism” 78
Bataclan shootings 399 Britton, J.B, Dr. 107–108
“The Battle of Seattle” 47 Broder, D. 348
Bauman, B. 165 Brokaw, T. 344
Beam, L. 205–206 brown areas 223–224
beheadings 331–332 Brown v. Board of Education,
Beirut 4, 185, 186, 387–390 1954 76
Berrebi, C. 136–138 Brzezinski, Z. 344
Berry, J. 77 Bush, G.W. 82–83, 135, 235–242,
Biagi, M. 185 299–300; 9/11 attacks 3
bin Laden, O. 17–18, 64–66, 68, Butler, R. 79
123–124, 207–212, 225,
333–334, 338 calculus, of terrorists 6–7
bioterrorism 5, 94–95, 200–201 California: Black Panthers 91–92;
Birth of a Nation 74–75 Symbionese Liberation Army 92–93
bitcoin 228 caliphates, declaration of
Black Bloc anarchists 59 establishment 124–125
Black Panther Party for Self Defense Caliph Ibrahim 124–125
91–92 Cane Cutters 99
Black September 262, 341 Caplan, B. 140
Bloom, M. 171, 189 car accident fatality figures 2
Boko Haram 169–170 Carter, J., Iran hostage crisis 11
Bok, S. 34 casualties, trends 8–10
bombings 181–185; Amman, Jordan catastrophic terrorism, rise of 60–69
398; Atocha station, Madrid catfishing 362–363
 Index  417
causative experiences 141–143 commando raids 261–262, 264–265
CBRN see chemical, biological, common forms of attack 180–181
radiological and nuclear weapons communication: with terrorist groups
cells, organizational 207–212 271–274; triangle of 339–340,
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) see also diplomacy
311–314, 356–357 communist Bloc disintegration 62–64
charismatic leadership 189 communist revolution, Cuba 51
Charlestown Episcopalian Church, conciliation 275–277
South Carolina 81–82, 396 Congressional oversight 322–323
Charlie Hebdo murders 108–109, Conley, S. 364–365
284–285, 366–367, 399 contagion via media 348–350
Charlottesville, Virginia 2, 17, 89 content moderation 35
Chase, E. 159 Coomaraswamy, R. 169
Chechen–Russian conflict 63 coordination see organizing structures
Chechen terrorists 155, 166, 335, 398 corporal violence 33
chemical, biological, radiological and counterterrorism: American post-
nuclear (CBRN) weapons 199–202 9/11 National Security Strategy
chemical weapons 199, 200 235–251; assassinations 262–264;
Chesimard, J.D. 156 Central Intelligence Agency 311–314;
Chicago, “Days of Rage” 90–91 commando raids 261–262,
childhood trauma 141–143 264–265; conciliation 275–277;
children 155, 168–171 definition 282; Department of
Chomsky, N. 38 Homeland Security 319–322;
Christian Identity movement 78–82, 115 deterrence 268–269; diplomacy
Christian, J. 82 269–271, 274–275; disaster
Christians: anti-abortion activism 18, preparedness 325–327; drones
84, 94–95, 107–108, 113; church 303–304; economic sanctions
bombings, Indonesia 167–168; 266–268; Federal Bureau of
sects of the Middle Ages 46, Investigation 311–315, 318–319;
see also individual acts, persons Guantanamo Bay 295–298; hard
and groups . . . power 252–268; hostage rescue
Church of the American Knights of missions 264–266; human rights
the Ku Klux Klan 77 294–304; information sharing 313,
Church of the Sons of Yahweh 79 321–322; intelligence 308–328;
CIA see Central Intelligence Agency international cooperation 323–325;
civilians: Azizabad strikes 259; drone liberty 281–293; making the world
warfare 249; as targets of terrorism safer and better 240–241; mass
24–27 surveillance 282–293; military hard
“clandestine political violence” 39 power 255–266; peace-making
Clarke, R. 357 275–277; preemptive military action
Clausewitz, C., von 139 241–242, 259–261; public diplomacy
Clinton, H. 252–253 274–275; retaliation/reprisals 256–259;
coca production 223, 229 security 281–293; soft power
Cold War biases 27–28 252–255, 268–277; torture 298–303;
Cole, D. 356 unilateral use of force 242
Collazo, O. 98 Crenshaw, M. 21, 150, 162, 221,
Collins, B.C. 360–361 235–236, 237
Colorado Springs, Planned crime vs. terrorism 17–20
Parenthood Clinic 396 criminal activity as financing 227, 229
Columbia: FARC 46–47, 56–57, Cronin, A. K. 112–113
158–159, 229, 265, 364; narco- Cross, F.G. 367–368
funded terrorism 229; state cryptocurrencies 228
authority 223 Cuban communist revolution 51
combatants, jihadist’s view 25–26 Cunningham, C.J. 157
Comey, J. 213–214 Cunningham, K. 162
418 Index
Cyber Caliphate 361 DNS see domain name system
cyberspace 356–376; domain name DOD see Department of Defense
system 357; hacking 358–363; love domain name system (DNS) 357
story 362–363 domestic terrorism: American deaths
cyberstrikes 196–197 caused 84–85; definitions 23; FBI
cyberterrorism 359–363 definitions 22; targets 24; vs. hate
Czolgosz, L. 87–88, 146–147 crimes 17–20
Domestic Terrorism Most Wanted
Dahl, E.J. 321 List 156
Dartez, H. 159 Donahue, T. 356–357
“Days of Rage” 90–91 Donohue, L. 286–287
Dayton Peace Accord 63 Doyle, C. 287
Dear, R.L., Jr. 396 drones 246–249
Debray, R 50–51 drug smuggling 229
decapitation: Foley 331–332; terrorist Duke, D. 77
groups 215–216 Dworkin, R. 294
decline, of left-wing terrorism 57 dynamite 184–185
“definitional haze” 22–24
definitions of terrorism 17–44; Eagleburger, L. 186
attributes 24–32; avoidance of use Eagles of Death Metal 399
30–32; in context of study 37; in Earth First 47
the media 30–32; motives 24; over Earth Liberation Front (ELF) 18–19,
time 20–35; state actors 35–37; 47, 96–97
United Nations 28–29; United economic sanctions 266–268
States 22–28, 32 eco-organizations 18–19, 47, 96–97
definitions of violence 32–35 education 137–138
DeFreeze, D. 93 effectiveness of suicide bombers
dehumanization 149–150 186–187
della Porta, D. 39–40 Egypt: North Sinai mosque massacre
Delta Force 264–265 400; Sharm el-Sheik bombings 398
democracy 137–138, 240–241 Egyptian Islamic Jihad 211
demographics 135–139 e-jihad 359–360
Department of Defense (DOD) 28, El Al hijacking 52–53
357–358 electrical supply systems 195–196
Department of Homeland Security ELF see Earth Liberation Front
(DHS) 319–322 Elliott, A. 150
Department of State 23–28 Ellsberg, D. 290–291
Derrida, J. 38 embassy bombings 185, 387–388, 393
Der Spiegel 32 Encyclopedia of Jihad 207
desegregation 76 equality 162–167
detention 295–298 ETA see Euskadi Ta Askatasuna
deterrence 268–269 Eubank, W. 138
deviant women 162–165 Euro-nativism 399
Dhanu 158, 165 European–American Unity and Rights
DHS see Department of Homeland Organization (EURO) 77
Security European Convention to Combat
diplomacy 269–271, 274–275 Terrorism 28
Director of National Intelligence Europol 324
(DNI) 316–318 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) 19, 46,
dirty bombs 5–6, 201 55–56
disaster preparedness 325–327 executions 331–332
disintegration of the communist Bloc experiences leading to radicalization
62–64 141–143
DNI see Director of National explosives, manufacture 181–183
Intelligence extraordinary powers 295
 Index  419
“faceless superterrorism” 337–338 Forbes, Ten Richest Terrorist Groups
facilitating traits 142 list 228
Fadlallah, S.M.H. 188 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
failed/failing states 223–224 (FISA) 289–290
FALN see Armed Forces for National Forman, J. 97
Liberation formative experiences 141–143
families, suicide bombing 167–168 Fort Hood army base shooting
fan behavior 365–366 127, 395
Fanon, F. 50–51 Foster, M., Dr. 93
FARC see Revolutionary Armed France: Bastille Day vehicular
Forces of Columbia terrorism 399; Charlie Hebdo
far-left violent extremism: post-9/11 murders 108–109, 284–285,
59–60; women 157–159, see also 366–367, 399; November 13th,
left-wing terrorism 2015 399; Reign of Terror 20–21
Farook, S.R. 128, 396 Fraunces Tavern Bombing 99
far-right violent extremism: post-9/11 freedom 240–241
58–59; women 159–160, see also Freiheit 87–88
right-wing terrorism French Direct Action 136
fatalities: American domestic Frick, H.C. 88
terrorism 84–85; terrorism versus friendship 145–146
other causes 2; trends 9–10 Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
fear 115–116 Pueblo 47
Federal Bureau of Investigation Fujimori, A. 20
(FBI): counterterrorism 311–315, Fusako, S. 162
318–319; definitions of terrorisms fusion centers 321–322
22, 23; Domestic Terrorism Most
Wanted List 156; Ten Most Gaddis, J.L. 255–256
Wanted Fugitives List 17–18; Ten Gandhi, R. 165
Most Wanted Terrorists List 156; Gates, R. 253–254
Virtual Case File project 314–315 Gaza, Palestine: participatory
Federal Emergency Management demographics 136, see also Palestine
Agency (FEMA) 22–23 gender 155–156, 162–167
female terrorists 155–168, 170–171; Geneva Convention 294
catfishing 362–363; gender equality Georgia, Jekyll Island 83
162–167; Islamic State 160–161, Germany: Lorenz kidnapping
364–365; left-wing 157–159; 10; Olympic games, Munich
religious 157–162; right-wing 262; post-World War I 35–36;
159–160; tactical advantages Rasterfahndung 282–283; Red
165–167 Army Faction 51–54, 57, 136, 139,
Fenton, T. 343 141–142, 158, 165, 177, 215, 216;
Fields, J.A., Jr. 89 Reichsbuerger movement 58–59;
financing 225–229; Al Qaeda teenagers 170–171
221–223, 225, 227; criminal germ weapons 5, 94–95, 200–201, 397
activity 227, 229; drug smuggling globalization 64–68, 240–241
229; internet 373–374; legitimate global war on terrorism 237–242
businesses 226–227; private glorification: right-wing terrorists
organizations 226; tri-border area 81–82; suicide bombers 187
223–224, 227 goals: attention-getting 340–343;
FISA see Foreign Intelligence legitimacy 345–347; media-related
Surveillance Act 340–347; publicity 336–339;
fixed target missile attacks 193–194 recognition 343–345; respectability
Florida, Pensacola antiabortion 345–347; of terrorists 174–176
killings 94 Goldman, E. 87–88
Foley, J. 331–332 Goldstein, B., Dr. 107–108
followers 145–148 government-linked charities 222
420 Index
governments: definitions of terrorism Israeli soldier kidnapping 11;
22–24; mass surveillance 282–293; participatory demographics 136–137,
state terror 35–37 144; suicide attacks 185–187;
Graham, K. 348 TWA hijacking and hostage-taking
Grant, U.S. 74 388–389; U.S. Marine barracks
Greenpeace 47 bombing, Beirut 4, 186, 387–388
Griffiths, D.W. 74–75 hijackings of planes in 1968 52–53
Guantanamo Bay 295–298, 300–301 Hill, P.J. 107–108, 346
guerrillas 21, 51, 57 Hoffman, B. 27, 35
Gunaratna, R. 210 Holmes, R.L. 33
gun homicides: as hate crimes 17; homegrown jihadis 126–131
non-terrorist 2, see also shootings Home Workshop Explosives 181–182
Gurr, T. 138 homicides: versus terrorism fatalities
2, see also assassinations; shootings
Habash, G., Dr. 52–53 Honderich, T. 38
Habermas, J. 37–38 Horowitz, A. 189
hacking 196–197, 358–363 Horton, D. 365
Hale, M. 81 hostage-taking 190–192; Beirut
Hamas 46, 186–187, 228, 334 389–390; Iran embassy 11,
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld 296–297 335–337, 340–341, 343, 386–387;
Handbook of Urban Guerrilla Islamic State 190–191; rescue
Warfare 51 missions 264–266; TWA hijacking
Harakat ul-Mujahidin (Movement of 388–389
the Warriors, HUM) 211 Hudson River Park, Manhattan 34,
hard power 252–268; assassinations 105–106, 397
262–264; Bush 238–242; HUM see Harakat ul-Mujahidin
commando raids 261–262, human rights 294–304; drones
264–265; definition 253; drone 303–304; enemy combatants
wars 246–249; economic sanctions 294–297; Guantanamo Bay
266–268; hostage rescue missions 295–298, 300–301; torture
264–266; military action 241–242; 298–303
Obama 243–244, 266; preemptive humiliation 116
action 241–242, 259–261; Huntington, S. 66
retaliation/reprisals 256–259; Hussein, S. 3
Trump 245–246, 248, 266;
unilateral use of force 242 ideology: American trends
Harmon, C. 156–157 99–101; jihadi 121–126, 178;
Hasan, N, Maj. 127, 395 neoconservatives 238–240; target
hashishin 45–46 selection 177–178
Hassan, N. 186 idiosyncratic sectarians 81
hate crimes: as addiction 144–145; IG see Islamic Group
Christian Identity movement Ignatieff, M. 294–295, 296
78–82; Ku Klux Klan 74–78; IIF see International Islamic Front
motivations, 2016/2017 America inactive sympathizers 140–141,
100–101; vs. terrorism 17–20 145–146
hate speech 33–34, 366–368 incitement via social media 364–368
Hearst, P. 93 indefinite detention 295–298
Hebron massacre 110–111 India: Mumbai bombings 398–399;
Heinzen, K. 48, 87–88, 363 Thugs 46
Herman, E. 27–28 indoctrination 130, 138, 168–171,
Hezbollah 228, 363–364; American see also radicalization
Embassy bombing, Beirut 185, Indonesia, church bombings 167–168
387–388; founding of 67–68; information gathering online 372–373
hostage-taking in Beirut 389–390; information sharing 313, 321
 Index  421
information technology shortfalls Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS):
313–315 Cyber Caliphate 361; declaration
intelligence 308–328; American of caliphate 124–125; drone
agencies 311–322; Central attacks 248–249; formation of 213;
Intelligence Agency 311–314; legitimate targets 26; negotiations
Congressional oversight 322–323; with 273; propaganda 190–191,
Department of Homeland Security 214–215, 331–332; rise of 66–67,
319–322; Federal Bureau of 146; self-radicalization 106;
Investigation 311–315, 318–319; social media 364–366, see also
information sharing 313, 321–322; Islamic State
international cooperation 323–325; Islamic State (IS): children 168–171;
mass surveillance 282–293; hostage taking 190–191; legitimate
National Security Agency 313–315; targets 25–26, 178; organizational
preparedness 325–327; Snowden structure 212–215; propaganda
290–293; torture 298–303; USA 190–191, 214–215; rise of 66–67,
PATRIOT Act 286–290 146; suicide bombings 190; women
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 84 160–161, 364–365
international cooperation 323–325 islamists 118–119
International Islamic Front (IIF) Israel: assassinations 262–263;
209–211 commando raids 262; conciliation
international terrorism, definitions 23 277; military retaliation 257–258;
internet 356–376; domain name Olympic Games, Munich 262,
system 357; financing 373–374; 341; participatory demographics
hacking 358–363; hate speech 136–137; roots of modern conflict
366–368; incitement 364–368; 46, 52–53; soldier kidnappings
information gathering 372–373; 11; Western Wall, Jerusalem
love story 362–363; organizational bombing 334
structures 207–212, 369–372; Italy, Red Brigade 11, 177, 216
para-social interactions 365–366;
recruitment 364–366; self-reporting Jackman, M.R. 33
of violence 368–369 Jarboe, J.F. 96–97
Internet intifada 359 JDL see Jewish Defense League
INTERPOL 324 Jekyll Island, Georgia 83
intersectionality 162–167 Jemaah Islamiya (JI) 211
invasions, Iraq 3, 238–240, 259–260 Jenkins, B. 30, 40, 127, 147–148
involuntary host countries 224–225 Jerusalem, Western Wall bombing 334
Iran: Assassins 45–46; diplomacy Jewish Defense League (JDL) 97–98
270–271; hostage crisis 11, 335–337, Jews, Hebron massacre 110–111
340–341, 343, 386–387 JI see Jemaah Islamiya
Iraq, invasion post 9/11 3, 238–240, jihad, meaning of 120–121
259–260 Jihadi John 331–332
Irish Republican Army (IRA) 49–50, jihadists 117–131; aims of 120–121;
54–55, 180, 216, 272 children 168–171; homegrown,
IRS see Internal Revenue Service western 126–131; ideology
ISIL see Islamic State in Iraq and the 121–126; organization 207–215;
Levant Paris attacks 399; perception of
Islam: core divisions 118; jihadi threat 1–7; radicalization model
movement 117–131; salafis 119–120; 130; targets 25–26
wahhabism 120, 222–223 jihadization 130
Islamic Group (IG) 211 Jihad vs. McWorld 64
Islamic Jihad 186–187 jihiliyya 122
Islamic State Hacking Division 361 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF)
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant 321–322
(ISIL) 213 Jordan, Amman bombings 398
422 Index
Juergensmeyer, M. 64–65, 112, 115 TWA hijacking and hostage-taking
July Fourth, 1999 81 388–389; U.S. Marine barracks
justifications, of terrorism 37–39 bombing, Beirut 4, 186, 387–388;
wealth 228
Kahane, M., Rabbi 97, 107–108 left-wing terrorism 45–57; 1968
kamikaze attacks 185 and the 1970s 52–54; America
Kansas, Wichita anti-abortion attacks 87–93; anarchists, American
159–160 87–90; ANTIFA movement
Kaplan, J. 78, 80–81 89–90; Black Panther Party
Katzenstein, P. 10, 282–283 91–92; causative experiences
Kellen, K. 142 141–142; decline of 57; long-
Kenya, U.S. Embassy bombing 393 lasting groups 55–57; post-9/11
Kerry, J. 256 59–60; post-World War II 49–52;
Khan, A.A. 365 roots of 47–49; Symbionese
Khobar Towers bombing 392–393 Liberation Army 92–93; Weather
Khomeini, Ayatollah 67–68 Underground 90–91; women
kidnappings 190–192; Islamic State 157–159
190–191; Israeli soldiers 11; legality: communication with terrorist
Lorenz 10; Moro 11; Symbionese groups 274; drones 303–304;
Liberation Army 93; trends 9–11 military retaliation 257–258; rights
kinship 145–146 of enemy combatants 294–297
KKK see Ku Klux Klan legitimacy 345–347
Klein, H.J. 142 legitimate businesses as financing
Kopp, J.C. 18, 94 226–227
Kouachi, S. & C. 108–109, 399 “legitimate” targets 25–26
Kropotkin, P. 48 Leiter, M. 243
Krueger, A.B. 136–137 LET see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 74–78, 159, letter bombs 185
205–206 Lia, B. 125
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) 165, liberal democracies 138–139
188, 189, 228 liberation terrorism 38
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Lahouaiei-Boutel, M. 399 (LTTE) 158, 165, 187–189,
language: temporal variations 20–35; 205, 216
terrorism as a term used or avoided liberty 281–293; Antiterrorism and
30–32; terrorism vs. hate crimes Effective Death Penalty Act
17–20; and violence 33–34 285–286; Guantanamo Bay
Laqueur, W. 4, 29, 136, 144–145 295–298, 300–301; mass
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the surveillance 282–293; USA
Righteous, LET) 211 PATRIOT Act 286–290
“leaderless cells” 206–207 Libya 224, 270
“leaderless resistance” 205–207 linguists 315
leaders 145–148, 207–209 Little Rock, Arkansas 127
League of Followers see ’Asbat al Lockerbie, Scotland, Pan Am Flight
Ansar 103 bombing 4, 390–391
League of Nations, terrorism London Bridge vehicular attack 400
definitions 28–29 lone wolves 27, 59, 146–148, 349,
Lebanese Hezbollah 363–364; 399, 400
American Embassy bombing, Beirut Long Range Acoustic Devices 34
185, 387–388; founding of 67–68; Lorenz, P. 10
hostage-taking in Beirut 389–390; Los Macheteros 99
Israeli soldier kidnapping 11; love 162, 362–363
participatory demographics 136– LTTE see Liberation Tigers of Tamil
137, 144; suicide attacks 185–186; Eelam
 Index  423
McAdam, D. 39 Mateen, O. 128–129, 396–397
machete wielders (Los Macheteros) 99 Mathews, R. 80
McKinley, W. 87–88, 146–147 Matsuda, M. 33
McVeigh, T. 18, 27, 80, 147, media: 9/11 attacks 3–4; anarchist
182–183, 338, 392 87–88; and contagion 348–350;
mainstream media 331–376; and defenses of 350–353; goals of
contagion 348–350; defenses terrorists 340–347; marriage
of 350–353; goals of terrorists of convenience 347–348;
340–347; marriage of convenience propaganda 331–376; publicity
347–348; news coverage in 2014 336–339; self-reporting of violence
343; publicity of terror 336–337; 368–369; social 146, 190–191,
triangle of communication 339–340 214–215, 363–369; triangle of
“Make America Great Again” 245 communication 339–340; usage of
making of terrorists 135–154 terminologies 30–32; videotapes
making the world safer and better 331–335
240–241 Metzger, T. 80
Maleckova, J. 136–137 Mexico, Fuerzas Armadas
Malik, T. 128, 396 Revolucionarias de Pueblo 47
Manchester Arena attack 399 Middle Ages, Christian Sects 46
Manhattan: Hudson River Park militant environmentalism 18–19, 47,
34, 105–106, 397; Times Square 96–97
bombing 1, 127–128, 150, 333; military action: assassinations 262–264;
World Trade Center attacks 2–4, commando raids 261–262, 264–265;
17, 20, 178, 341–345, 391–392 defeat of terrorist groups 216;
man-made disasters 325–327 drones 246–249, 303–304; as hard
Manual of the Army of God 95 power 255–266; hostage rescue
manufacture of explosives 181–183 missions 264–266; Iraq invasion
Marighella, C. 51 3, 238–240, 259–260; preemptive
Marine barracks, Beirut 4, 186 241–242, 259–261; retaliation/
maritime targets 26–27, 192–193, reprisals 256–259; unilateral 242
393–394 Militia Movement 82–85
Marxist groups see left-wing terrorism Misk, R.A.H. 334
masculinity 162, 164–165 missile attacks 193–194
mass destruction 195–199 modern-day terrorism, advent of
mass disruption 195–199 52–54
mass killings: Charlestown modernity 115–117
Episcopalian Church 81–82, 396; modernization 64–66
Fort Hood army base shooting 127, modern roots of terrorism 47–49
395; Indonesian church bombings Mogadishu, Somalia, truck bombing 400
167–168; July Fourth, 1999 81; Molly Maguires 88
North Sinai mosque 400; Paris, Mona, A. 362–363
November 13th, 2015 399; Pulse moral disengagement 111–112, 149
Nightclub, Orlando 128–129, 396; Morales, W. 99
San Bernardino County’s Health “moral legitimacy” 38–39
Department 128, 396 Mord 87–88
mass surveillance 282–293; Morgan, K. 136
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Morgan, R. 162
Penalty Act 285–286; Foreign Moro, A. 11
Intelligence Surveillance Act 289–290; Morozov, N. 48
Germany 282–283; National Moscow, Chechen terrorists 155,
Security Agency 290–293; Snowden 166, 335
290–293; United Kingdom 283–284; Mossad 262
USA Freedom Act 292–293; USA Most, J. 87–88, 184
PATRIOT Act 286–290 motives, defining terrorism 24
424 Index
Movement of the Warriors see Newton, H.P. 91–92
Harakat ul-Mujahidin New York: Hudson River Park 34,
moving targets 193–194 105–106, 397; shootings 2; Times
mujahideens 64 Square bombing 1, 127–128,
Mumbai bombings, India 398–399 150, 333; World Trade Center
Munich, Olympic games 262, 341 attacks 2–4, 17, 20, 178, 341–345,
Murder 87–88 391–392
Murphy, D. 222 Nichols, T. 18, 27, 80, 147,
Muslim Brotherhood 119 182–183, 338
Muslims: case study 108–109; core Nigeria, suicide bombings 171
divisions 118; Islamists 118–119; Noble, K. 115–116
jihadi movement 117–131; Salafis noncombatants, as targets of
119–120; self-radicalization 106, terrorism 24–27
126–131; vehicular terrorism nonstate actors: hate crimes vs.
105–106; Wahhabis 120; terrorists 17–20; language variations
Wahhabism 222–223, see also 20–35; as terrorists 27–29, 114
individual acts, persons and North America see America
groups . . . Northern Ireland, Irish Republican
mustard gas 200 Army 49–50, 54–55, 180,
216, 272
Napoleoni, L. 144 North Sinai, Egypt, mosque massacre 400
Napolitano, J. 321 Norway, Oslo 399
narco-terrorism vs. narco-funded NSA see National Security Agency
terrorism 229 nuclear weapons 5–6, 198–199, 201
Narodnaya Volga 48 Nunberg, G. 35, 256
National Alliance 80 Nye, J. 252
National Commission on Terrorism 237
National Counterterrorism Center Oakland, California 91–93
9–10 Obama, B.H.: al-Zawahiri’s remarks
National Defense University speech, 124; Aryan Nations’ response
Obama 248 73–74; cyber threats 356; Ku Klux
nationalists 46–47 Klans’ response 78; language usage
National Liberation Movement, 32; national security strategy
Uruguay (Tupamaros) 57 243–244, 248, 254–256; Patriot
National Security Agency (NSA) and Militia Movements 83;
289–293, 313–315 rendition and torture 302–303
national security strategy, America O’Connor, S.D. 295–296
235–251; Bush 235–242; drone Oklahoma City, bombing 4, 18, 80,
wars 246–249; neoconservatives 178, 392
238–240; Obama 243–244, Olympic Games, Munich 341
248, 254–256; Trump Omnibus Diplomatic Security Act,
245–246, 248, 266 1986 285
natural disasters 325–327 The Order/The New Order 80
Navis, M.S. 226–227 organizing structures 205–216; Al
Nechaev, S. 48 Qaeda 207–212; decline of groups
negotiation 271–274, see also 215–216; Islamic State 212–215;
diplomacy jihadists 207–215; “leaderless”
neoconservatives (neocons) 238–240 205–207; networks 207–212,
Neo-Nazis 78–82, 367–368 369–372
nerve agents 5, 200 Orlando, Pulse Nightclub shooting
“netwar” 208–212 128–129, 396
networks 207–212 Oslo, Norway 399
news coverage: in 2014 343, see also O’Sullivan, G. 27–28
mainstream media outbidding 189
newspapers see mainstream media oversight by Congress 322–323
 Index  425
Page, W.M. 395 planning see organizing structures
Pakistan, drone strikes 247 plastic explosives 183
Palestine: conciliation 277; female PLF see Palestine Liberation Front
terrorists 163–164, 362–363; PLO see Palestine Liberation
Internet intifada 359; military Organization
retaliation 257–258; participatory political systems 138–139
demographics 136; suicide missions political violence: calculus 6–7; as
186, 187 hate crimes vs. terrorism 17–20;
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) 389 suicide bombers 188–189, see also
Palestine Liberation Organization terrorism
(PLO) 46, 52 Popular Front for the Liberation of
Pan Am Flight 103 bombing 4, Palestine (PFLP) 52–53, 157–158,
390–391 336, 343, 345–346, 390–391
Pape, R.A. 189 post-9/11: American policy effects
para-social interactions 365–366 2–4, 235–251; violent extremist
parental violence 141–143 group developments 58–60
Paris: Bastille Day attack 399; post-Cold War 61–62
Bataclan shooting 399; Charlie post-World War II 49–52
Hebdo murders 108–109, 284–285, poverty 135–137
366–367, 399; mass killing, power see hard power; soft power
November 13, 2015 399 power failures 358
party politics 137–138 Prairie Fire 91
Patriot Movement 82–85 preconditions 135–137, 141–143, 151
peace-making 275–277 preemptive military action 3, 241–242,
Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh shootings 259–261
83, 397 preparedness 325–327
Pensacola, Florida, antiabortion pre-radicalization 130
killings 94 privacy 281–293; German laws
People for the Ethical Treatment of 282–283; United Kingdom laws
Animals (PETA) 97 283–284; USA PATRIOT Act
perception: effect of 9/11 attacks 2–4; 286–290
and language 17–24, 30–32; of private organizations & individuals,
threats 1–7 finance 226
Persia: Assassins 45–46, see also Iran; production of cocaine 223, 229
Syria profiles: lack of universality 148; as
personal economic situations 135–137 male 166
personal traits of terrorists 141–143 Project Pacific 324
PETA see People for the Ethical propaganda: Chechen terrorists
Treatment of Animals 335; “by the deed” 49;
PFLP see Popular Front for the Hamas 334; ISIS 190–191,
Liberation of Palestine 214–215, 331–332; publicity
Phase I Report on the Emerging by media 336–339; triangle
Global Security for the First of communication 339–340;
Quarter of the 21st Century videotapes 331–335
236–237 Provisional Irish Republican Army
physical defeat of terrorist groups 216 (PIRA) 216
Piazza, J.A. 137 psychological factors 141–143
Pierce, W. 80, 197 public diplomacy 274–275
Pillar, P. 236, 256 publicity: lack of need 337–339; and
pipe bombs 182 mainstream media 336–337
PIRA see Provisional Irish Republican public support and ending of terrorist
Army groups 216
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 83, 397 Puerto Rican nationalist groups
Planned Parenthood Clinic attack, 98–99
Colorado Springs 396 Pulse Nightclub, Orlando 128–129, 396
426 Index
Qutb, S. 122–123 respectability 345–347
retaliation 256–259
racism: Christian Identity movement revolutionaries 21
78–82; Ku Klux Klan 74–78; Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Neo-Nazis 78–82 Columbia (FARC) 46–47, 56–57,
radical environmentalism 18–19, 47, 158–159, 229, 265, 364
96–97 “revolutionary cells” 207
radicalization: children 168–171; Revolution in the Revolution 50
mainstream media 348–349; Richardson, L. 141
model of 130; psychological Ricin 201
forces 141–143; as rational choice Ridgeway, J. 79
139–141; self- 106, 126–131; social rights see human rights
media 364–368; stages of 148–151; right-wing terrorism: Alt-Right
teenagers 170–171 movement 84–85; America 73–87;
radiological weapons 5–6, 201 Christian Identity movement 78–82;
RAF see Red Army Faction glorification 81–82; Ku Klux
Rahum, O. 362–363 Klan 74–78; Militia Movement
ransoms, Lorenz kidnapping 10 82–85; Neo-Nazis 78–82; Patriot
Ranstorp, M. 106, 116–117 Movement 82–85; post-9/11
Raper, A. 135 58–59; sovereign citizens movement
Rapoport, D.C. 7, 50, 54, 113 85–87; women 159–160
Rasterfahndung (computer matching) risk factors 141–143
282–283 Roe v. Wade 84, 94–95
rational choice theory 139–141, 189 Roman Empire 45
RB see Red Brigade Roof, D.S. 81–82, 396
rebel groups, as a definition 19 Roosevelt, T. 88–89
recognition 343–345 Rubenstein, R.E. 21
“reconstructed traditions” 78 Rubin, A.J. 126
recruitment via social media 364–366 Rudolph, E.R. 18
Red Army Faction (RAF) 51–54, 57, Rummel, R.J. 36
136, 139, 141–142, 158, 165, 177, Russia: anarchists 48; Chechen
215, 216, 337, 349–350 terrorists 155, 166, 335, 398
Red Brigade (RB) 11, 177, 216 Russian Federation, disintegration
Reeve, S. 68 of 63
Reichsbuerger movement 58–59
Reid, R.C. 22, 309–310 SADC see Southern African
Reign of Terror 20–21 Development Community
religious terrorism 105–134; Sageman, M. 120, 125, 127, 143–144
anti-abortion violence 94–95, Saipov, S. 34, 105–106, 397
159–160; case studies 107–111; salafism 119–126, 222–223
communications 123–125; cosmic San Bernardino County’s Health
wars 111–113; drivers of 111–113; Department shooting 128, 396
Islamists 118–119; Jewish Defense sanctions 266–268
League 97–98; jihadi movement Sarin 5, 200
117–131; moral disengagement SARPCO see Southern Africa
111–112; proliferation of 64–69, Regional Policy Cooperative
113–117; Salafism 119–126; Organization
self-radicalization 106, 126–131; SAS see Special Air Service
suicide bombers 187–188; trends Saudi Arabia 221–223, 276, 392–393
8–9; Wahhabis 120; women schools 137–138
157–162 Scotland, Pan Am Flight 103 bombing
renditioning 302–303 4, 390–391
reprisals 256–259 Seale, B. 91–92
rescuing hostages 264–266 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 47
 Index  427
SECI see Southeast European Sisters in Crime 163
Cooperative Initiative SLA see Symbionese Liberation Army
secondary motives 141 Slepian, B., Dr. 18, 94
sectarians, idiosyncratic 81 smallpox virus 201
security 281–293; Antiterrorism Smith, B. 24, 81, 136
and Effective Death Penalty Act sniper attacks, Washington, DC 24
285–286; German laws 282–283; Snowden, E. 290–293
Omnibus Diplomatic Security Act, social interactions 143–145, 365–366
1986 285; United Kingdom laws social media 146, 190–191, 214–215,
283–284; USA PATRIOT Act 286–290 363–369
Sederberg, P.C. 275–276 socioeconomic status 135–137
Sedgwick, M. 113–114 SOF see Special Operation Forces
selection of targets 24–27, 176–179 soft power 252–255, 268–277;
self-identification 130 communicating with groups
self-radicalization 106, 126–131 271–274; conciliation 275–277;
self-reporting of violence 368–369 definition 253–254; deterrence
Semtex 183 268–269; diplomacy 269–271,
separatists 19, 46–47 274–275; peace-making 275–277;
settlements, Israeli 136–137 public diplomacy 274–275
Shahzad, F. 128, 150, 333 Somalia, Mogadishu truck bombing 400
Shannon, S. 159–160 Sommers, L. 265
“Sharia camps” 168–169 South Africa 276
Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt 398 South America see specific countries
Shatz, A. 67 South Carolina, Charlestown
shoe bombs 22, 309–310 Episcopalian Church 81–82, 396
shootings: Britton, Dr. 107–108; Southeast European Cooperative
Charlestown Episcopalian Church Initiative (SECI) 324
81–82, 396; Charlie Hebdo Southern African Development
murders 108–109, 284–285, Community (SADC) 324
366–367, 399; Charlottesville, Southern Africa Regional Policy
Virginia 2, 17; civilian homicides Cooperative Organization
2; Fort Hood army base 127, 395; (SARPCO) 324
as hate crimes 17; New York City Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
2; Paris, November 13th, 2015 73–74
399; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 83, sovereign citizens movement 85–87
397; Planned Parenthood Clinic, Spain 19, 46, 55–56, 398, 400
Colorado Springs 396; Pulse Special Air Service (SAS) 274
Nightclub, Orlando 128–129, 396; Special Operation Forces (SOF) 259,
San Bernardino County’s Health 264–265
Department 128, 396; Washington, Sprinzak, E. 140, 148
DC sniper attacks 24; Wisconsin Stack, J.A. 84
Sikh temple 395 START see Study of Terrorism and
Shultz, R. 139 Responses to Terrorism
Shura 210 state sponsorship 217–225, 226;
Sicariis 45 brown areas 223–224; failed/failing
Simon, J.D., Dr. 52, 147 states 223–224; involuntary hosts
single-issue terrorism: America 93–99; 224–225; Saudi Arabia 221–223
anti-abortion fanatics 18, 84, state terrorism 35–37
94–95, 107–108, 113, 159–160, Stein, J. 117–118
396; antitax militants 84; Jewish Stern Gang 20
Defense League 97–98; Puerto Stern, J. 113, 115, 166, 207
Rican nationalist groups 98–99; Stern, K.S. 76
radical environmentalism 18–19, Stohl, M. 28
47, 96–97 Stormfront 367–368
428 Index
strategy: advantages of women weapons 199, 200; kidnapping/
165–167; American national hostage-taking 190–192; maritime
security 235–248; assassinations targets 192–193; mass destruction/
185; biological weapons 200–201; disruption 195–199; methods of
bombings 181–185; Bush 235–242; attack 179–202; missile attacks
chemical weapons 199, 200; 193–194; nuclear bombs 198–199,
drone wars 246–249; economic 202; propaganda 331–376;
sanctions 266–268; hard power publicity 336–339; radiological
252–268; kidnapping/hostage-taking weapons 201; suicide attacks
190–192; maritime targets 192–193; 185–190; unconventional 194–202;
mass destruction/disruption vehicular terrorism 194–195;
195–199; methods of attack videotapes 331–335, see also
179–202; military hard power strategy
255–266; missile attacks 193–194; Taliban 228
neoconservatives 238–240; nuclear Tamil Tigers 158, 165, 187–189,
bombs 198–199, 202; Obama 205, 216
243–244, 248, 266–268; Tanzania, U.S. Embassy bombing 393
propaganda 331–376; publicity targets: drone warfare 247–249;
336–339; radiological weapons selection of 24–27, 176–179
201; soft power 252–255, 268–277; Tarrow, S.G. 39–40
suicide attacks 185–190; Trump Taymiyya, I. 121–122
245–246, 248, 266; unconventional teenagers 170–171, see also children
194–202; vehicular terrorism Tehran, hostage crisis 11, 335–337,
194–195; videotapes 331–335 340–341, 343, 386–387
Study of Terrorism and Responses to television broadcasts see mainstream
Terrorism (START) 9–10 media
success and ending of terrorist temporal variance of terrorism
groups 216 definitions 20–35
suicide bombers 140–141, 185–190; Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List
effectiveness 186–187; families 17–18
167–168; glorification 187; Ten Most Wanted Terrorists List 156
Nigeria 171; Palestine 163–164; Ten Richest Terrorist Groups list 228
participatory demographics 137; terrorism: 1968 52–54; America
rational choice 189; religious 72–104; American ideological
terrorism 187–188 waves 99–101; attributes
surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) 24–32; avoidance of use 30–32;
193–194 calculus 6–7; catastrophic, rise
surveillance 282–293; Antiterrorism of 60–69; common forms of
and Effective Death Penalty Act attack 180–181; common threads
285–286; Foreign Intelligence 174–204; in context of study 37;
Surveillance Act 289–290; as a crime 260–261; definitions
Germany 282–283; National 4–5, 17–44; generalized theory
Security Agency 290–293; Snowden and methodology 39–41; global
290–293; United Kingdom 283–284; context 45–71; goals 174–176;
USA Freedom Act 292–293; USA justifications of 37–39; left-wing
PATRIOT Act 286–290 Americans 87–93; in the media
Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) 30–32; modern roots 47–49;
92–93, 163 motives 24; over time 20–35;
sympathizers 140–141, 145–146 perception of threat 1–7; post-9/11
Syria, Assassins 45–46 groups 58–60; post-Cold War
61–62; post-World War II 49–52;
tactics: advantages of women as rational choice 139–141, 189;
165–167; assassinations 185; right-wing Americans 73–87;
biological weapons 200–201; single-issue 93–99; state actors
bombings 181–185; chemical 35–37; target selection 24–27,
 Index  429
176–179; trends 7–13; triangle Torresola, G. 98
of communication 339–340; transitions of terrorist groups 216
United Nations 28–29; United trauma and participation 141–143
States 22–28, 32; versus other trends in terrorism 7–13
causes of death 2; vs. hate crime Trepov, F. 20
17–20, see also domestic terrorism; triangle of communication 339–340
international terrorism; left-wing tri-border area (TBA) 223–224, 227
terrorism; right-wing terrorism; trigger events 151
state terrorism; terrorists Truman, H. 98
terrorist groups: communication with Trump, D.J. 245–246, 248,
271–274; conciliation 275–277; 255, 266
cyberterrorism 359–363; definitions Tsarnaev, T. 147, 308–309, 395–396
23; diplomacy 269–271, 274–275; Tupac Amaru group 20
endings of 215–216; financing Tupamaros 57, 216
225–229; formative reasons 151; The Turner Diaries 80
goals 174–176; organizational TWA hijacking and hostage situation,
structures 205–216; state 1985 388–389
sponsorship 217–225, 226; Twitter 146
ten richest 228; triangle of
communication 339–340 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) see
terrorists: calculus 6–7; causative drones
factors 135–154; children 168–171; UN see United Nations
demographics 135–139; education unconventional tactics 194–202
137–138; followers and leaders unilateral use of force 242
145–148; gender 155–156, United Kingdom: antiterrorism laws
162–167; love 162; methods 283–284; Irish Republican Army
179–202; personal traits 141–143; 49–50, 54–55, 180, 216, 272;
preconditions 135–137, 141–143, Manchester Arena attack 399,
151; rational choice 139–141, see also England; Scotland
189; shaping experiences 141–143; United Nations (UN):
social interactions 143–145; counterterrorism 324; terrorism
socioeconomic status 135–137; definitions 28–29
stages of radicalization 148–151; United Self-Defense Forces of
teenagers 170–171; trigger events Venezuela 47
151; universal profile 148; women United States of America (USA) see
155–168, 170–171, see also America
terrorism United States Code, Section 2656f(d),
terrorist spectaculars 8 Title 22 23
testosterone 164 universal profile: lack of 148; as
Texas: Branch Davidian sect, Waco male 166
83, 338; Fort Hood army base unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) see
shooting 127, 395 drones
Thatcher, M. 335 Uruguay, Tupamaros 57, 216
The Order/The New Order 80 USA Freedom Act 292–293
The Turner Diaries 80 USA PATRIOT Act , 2001 286–290
threats, perception of 1–7 USA PATRIOT Improvement
Three R’s 141 and Reauthorization Act, 2005
Thugs 46 288–289
Tiller, G., Dr. 94 U.S. Commission on National
Tilly, C. 39 Security/21st Century 236
Times Square, Manhattan 1, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
127–128, 150, 333 28, 357–358
Title 22 of the United States Code, USS Cole 26–27, 393–394
Section 2656f(d) 23 U.S. Special Operation Forces (SOF)
Tokyo, Sarin attack 5, 200, 397 259, 264–265
430 Index
VCF see Virtual Case File West Point address, Obama 243
vehicle bombs 183–184 whistleblowers 290–293
vehicular terrorism 194–195, White Aryan Resistance (WAR) 80
348–349; Barcelona, Spain White Supremacists: as addicts
400; Bastille Day, Paris 399; 144–145; antiabortion violence
Charlottesville, Virginia 89; 95; Aryan Nations 73–74, 79,
Hudson River Park, Manhattan 34, 206; Charlottesville, Virginia
105–106, 397; London Bridge, UK 2; Christian Identity movement
400; Time Square, Manhattan 1 78–82; as criminals 17; Ku Klux
Venezuela, United Self-Defense Klan 74–78, 205–206; Neo-Nazis
Forces 47 78–82; New York shooting 2; risk
Victor, B. 164 factors 142–143; weapons of mass
videotapes: Chechen terrorists 335; destruction 197–198; Wisconsin
Hamas 334; ISIS 331–332 Sikh temple shooting 395; World
violence: as addiction 144–145; Church of the Creator 24, 81
definitions 32–35; self-reporting Wichita, Kansas, anti-abortion attacks
368–369 159–160
violent extremism 32 Wilkinson, P. 282
Virginia: Charlottesville protests 89; Winn, C. 40
Charlottesville shooting 2, 17 wiretaps 289–293
Virtual Case File (VCF) project Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting 395
314–315 Wohl, R.R. 365
visual violence 34–35 Wolfowitz, P. 238–239
VX agent 200 women 155–168, 170–171; gender
equality 162–167; Islamic State
Waco, Texas, Branch Davidian sect 160–161; left-wing terrorism
83, 338 157–159; religious terrorism
wahhabism 120, 222–223 157–162; right-wing terrorism
Walzer, M. 37, 38–39 159–160; tactical advantages
WannaCry ransomware 357 165–167
WAR see White Aryan Resistance Woodward, B. 238–239
“war on anarchists” 88–89 World Church of the Creator 24, 81
Washington, DC, sniper attacks 24 World Trade Center: 9/11 attacks
waterboarding 298–300 2–4, 235–251, 341–345, 394–395;
Watson, P. 47 American National Security
wealth of terrorist organizations 228, Strategy 235–248; bombing 17, 20,
see also financing 178, 391–392
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) worthiness, unity, numbers and
197–202; American national commitment (WUNC) 40
security strategy 236; Iraq invasion The Wretched of the Earth 50
3, 259–260, see also bioterrorism; WUNC see worthiness, unity,
chemical weapons; nerve agents; numbers and commitment
nuclear bombs; radiological
weapons Yemen: drone strikes 247; state
The Weather Underground 90–91, 139 authority 223; USS Cole attack
Weber, M. 253 26–27, 393–394
Weimann, G 40 Yousef, R. 20, 182
Weinberg, L. 138
West Bank, Palestine: participatory zakat 222
demographics 136, see also Zanini, M. 208
Palestine Zasulich, V. 20
western countries, self-radicalization Zazi, N. 127
106, 126–131 Zionist Occupation Government
Western Wall, Jerusalem 334 (ZOG) 80, 367