Domestic terrorism
[8] Under the 2001 USA Patriot Act, domestic terrorism is defined as "activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state; (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S." This definition is made for the purposes of authorizing law enforcement investigations.
Security analysts have argued that after the end of the Cold War, military conflicts have increasingly involved violent non-state actors carrying out asymmetric warfare,[14] of which terror attacks are one part.
[15] The United States has uncovered a number of alleged terrorist plots that have been successfully suppressed through domestic intelligence and law enforcement.
The United States has begun to account for the threat of homegrown terrorism, as shown by increased volume of literature on the subject in recent years[when?]
and increased number of terrorist websites since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, began posting beheading videos in 2003.
On June 6, 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a wide-ranging strategy to prevent British citizens from being radicalized into becoming terrorists while at university.
[21] On July 23, 2019, Christopher A. Wray, the head of the FBI, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the agency had made around 100 domestic terrorism arrests since October 1, 2018, and that the majority of them were connected in some way with white supremacy.
[23] From the late 20th to the early 21st centuries, lone wolf terrorism in the United States has primarily been associated with white supremacy, Islamic fundamentalism, and anti-government extremists such as Dylann Roof, Robert Bowers, Wade Michael Page, Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., and Omar Mateen.
[29] He says that intermediaries and English-speaking imams, such as the late Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (d. 2011), who are often found through the internet on forums, provide key roles in the radicalization process.
[17] The only constant appears to be "a newfound hatred for their native or adopted country, a degree of dangerous malleability, and a religious fervor justifying or legitimizing violence that impels these very impressionable and perhaps easily influenced individuals toward potentially lethal acts of violence," according to Peter Bergen and Bruce Hoffman's September 2010 paper for the Bipartisan Policy Center.
[18] Training for potential homegrown terrorists is often very fast-paced, or rushed, as some groups under attack by U.S. forces may feel the need to implement operations "more precipitously than they might otherwise occur," according to Bruce Hoffman.
Pakistani Taliban (TPP) was on record as providing financing and four months of training for Shazad directly prior to his actions in Times Square.
In the case of the London Underground bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, the operational leader of the cell, received military and explosives training at a camp in Malakand, Pakistan in July 2003.
The American convert, Abdulhakim Muhammad (née Carlos Bledsoe), who killed a U.S. military recruiter in Little Rock, Arkansas, and wounded another, had many other targets and plans, which went awry.
[36] The internet has a wide appeal as it provides an anonymous way for like-minded, conflicted individuals to meet, form virtual relations, and discuss the radical and extremist ideology they encounter.
Purported to be created by Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen and cyber-jihadist, the magazine uses American idioms and phrasing and does not appear to have British or South Asian influences in its language.
[37] The magazine contains messages calling for western jihadists, like this one from AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi, "to acquire weapons and learn methods of war.
