Lone Wolf Terrorism

by Jeffrey D. Simon

  I would also like to thank the following colleagues, friends, and others who helped in many different ways: Richard Antony, Martin Balaban, James Bondurant, David Boren, Molly Boren, William Casey, Melinda Catlett, Sandy Chin, Joe Cirillo, Phil Edney, Jenifer Elzea, Steven Emerson, Bill Fargo, Stephen Fischer Jr., Mark Giuliano, Betsy Glick, Cathy Gonzalez, Theresa Hart Barry, Sharon Hayes, Robert Hitsous, Michael Intriligator, Steven Kafka, Eddie Kamiya, Janet Kamiya, Erica Kelly, Chris Kemp, Ed Kobak, Sherm Lamb, Ira Latto, Sue Moran, Bennett Ramberg, Kathy Schreik, Lorron Snell, Cindy Forrestal-Snell, Douglas Snyder, Shoshana Snyder, Jodi Solomon, Travis Sorrows, Warren Spencer, Nkenge Stocks, Meg Sullivan, Bill Teachworth, Kevin Terpstra, James Tong, Donna Wald, Carole Wood, and Ted Zwicker.

  Catherine L. Hensley provided superb editing skills and was a pleasure to work with.

  Special thanks goes to Brian Michael Jenkins, who wrote the foreword and who was my mentor when I began studying terrorism many decades ago.

  I would also like to thank everybody at Prometheus Books, led by Steven L. Mitchell, the editor in chief, for their enthusiasm for a book on lone wolf terrorism. This includes Jade Zora Ballard, Bruce Carle, Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger, Mark Hall, Jill Maxick, Brian McMahon, Lisa Michalski, Catherine Roberts-Abel, Laura Shelley, and Melissa Raé Shofner.

  Nobody could ask for a better agent than Jill Marsal. She championed this book from the beginning and was a constant source of support and encouragement.

  Finally, I want to thank Ellen, Richard, Julie, Penya, Jack, Eric, Elijah, Justine, Caleb, and Oscar for being a special part of my life.

  Just before noon on September 16, 1920, a man drove a horse and wagon along Wall Street in New York City. He parked it across the street from the J. P. Morgan and Company bank headquarters and then vanished from the area, never to be seen again. Hidden in the wagon was a bomb comprised of one hundred pounds of dynamite and five hundred pounds of heavy, cast-iron slugs, along with a timing device. When the bomb exploded, it killed thirty-eight people and injured more than two hundred others. At the time, it was the worst terrorist act ever on US soil, in terms of casualties.

  That infamous record stood for more than thirty-five years until November 1, 1955, when a young man placed his mother aboard a plane in Denver after hiding several sticks of dynamite in her luggage, killing her and forty-three other people when the plane exploded in midair. He was executed a little more than a year later. Then, on April 19, 1995, another young man drove a bomb-laden rental truck up to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at around 9 a.m., lit two fuses, and sped away in another car. When his 4,800-pound bomb, made from a mixture of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil, exploded, 168 people lost their lives. The man responsible was apprehended a few days later and eventually executed for his crime.

  That three of the worst terrorist attacks in US history, with the exception of the 9/11 attacks, were the work of lone wolves, or at least individuals working with minimum assistance from others, indicates the significance of this type of terrorist threat. Mario Buda (the perpetrator of the Wall Street bombing), John Gilbert Graham (the man responsible for the first major midair plane bombing in US history), and Timothy McVeigh (the individual responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing) were as different as three people could possibly be. Buda was an Italian anarchist, one of the last remaining members of the Galleanists, an anarchist group active in the United States during the early part of the twentieth century. The Galleanists were responsible for some of the most audacious terrorist attacks in the United States, including the sending of thirty package bombs across the country over a three-day period in April 1919. The targets included members of President Woodrow Wilson's administration, federal law-enforcement officials, members of Congress, judges, mayors, governors, local police officials, and prominent businessmen. Then, on the evening of June 2, the Galleanists struck again, this time setting off bombs less than an hour or two apart from each other in seven US cities, including New York and Washington, DC. Soon after these attacks, Luigi Galleani was deported to Italy along with several of his close aides. By September 1920, the Galleanists were in disarray, having seen their ranks decimated with arrests, detentions, and deportations. Many members fled the country before they could be arrested.1

  Buda, “who had appointed himself the avenging angel of the imprisoned and deported anarchists,” decided to stay and launch one more attack.2 He sprang into action shortly after two of his close friends and fellow Galleanists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were indicted for murders committed during a robbery of a shoe factory. It didn't bother him that innocent people would be killed in the Wall Street bombing. Like many anarchists, he believed in the slogan “There are no innocent.” He fled to Italy soon after the attack, never to be heard from again. As one historian noted, “It was his final act of reprisal in America. The biggest of them all, it had gone off without a hitch.”3

  While Buda could be described as a man who believed in a “cause,” Graham could only be described as someone who believed in money. Already having served time in jail for bootlegging, and having received a suspended sentence for check forgery, Graham decided to try to hit the jackpot by collecting on a $37,500 insurance policy on his mother's life that he purchased at the airport. He also was anxious to share part of his mother's estate, which was worth $150,000. Putting a bomb in his mother's suitcase before she boarded a United Airlines flight out of Denver seemed to be the perfect plan. He knew how to build a dynamite bomb, since he had worked for construction and logging companies, where dynamite was used. After saying good-bye to his mother, Graham calmly waited at an airport coffee shop until he heard word that the plane had crashed. He later called the airline's office to confirm that his mother was dead. He remained stoic and unremorseful throughout his trial, conviction, and execution. Because there was no federal law at that time to cover his offense, he was executed for murder under Colorado law in 1957. The first major midair plane bombing in America was therefore not the work of a political or religious extremist, but rather that of a greedy young man.4

  McVeigh, a homegrown American terrorist who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, was not greedy, but he was certainly angry. His anger was directed at the US government, which he blamed for the deaths of more than eighty members of the Branch Davidian cult, whose compound in Waco, Texas, burst into flames during a government raid in 1993. Federal authorities claimed that cult members possessed large numbers of illegal weapons. The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the second anniversary of that raid.

  McVeigh had attended meetings of the Michigan Militia, which was one of several antigovernment, right-wing militia groups throughout the country. The militia movement believed that the government intended to confiscate all citizens’ weapons, thereby abrogating the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. The Waco raid was viewed as evidence that this was now occurring. McVeigh was also influenced by a novel, The Turner Diaries, which was “based on the premise that the United States has already succumbed unwittingly to a conspiracy of global control from which it needs to be liberated through terrorist actions and guerilla bands.”5 McVeigh had sold copies of the book at gun shows. Both McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who helped McVeigh prepare the bomb, were arrested for the Oklahoma City bombing. Nichols was convicted in June 1998 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole while McVeigh was found guilty in June 1997 and executed for his crime in June 2001.

  Buda, Graham, and McVeigh all demonstrated one of the main characteristics that separates terrorism from all other types of conflicts—namely, the ability of a single individual to commit a violent act, or threaten to do so, and at times receive the same degree of attention, reaction, and fear that larger, more established terrorist groups usually attain. The lone wolf, however, until recently, was often overlooked in assessing the terrorist threat, since many definitions of terrorism require that an act of violence be committed b
y a group with a political, social, or religious objective. The media and government officials also tended to talk about the terrorist threat in terms of groups such as al Qaeda or other large-scale violent organizations.

  Yet in terms of the effect a violent act committed by a single individual can have upon society and government, there is sometimes little difference between the actions of the lone wolf and those of larger, more organized terrorist groups. For example, the reaction after the Wall Street bombing was shock and anger, with the New York Chamber of Commerce labeling the bombing “an act of war” and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer stating it was part of a major plot to overthrow the capitalist system.6 The Denver plane bombing also shocked the nation, as most Americans were outraged by this new form of violence. The public now had to fear midair plane bombings in addition to accidental plane crashes. Federal agencies began conducting studies on identifying the best security measures that could be used at airports to detect explosives in luggage. The Oklahoma City bombing, coming just two years after the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic extremists, caused people to worry that terrorism was now spreading into the heartland. It seemed as though no place in America would be safe from terrorist attacks, including those committed by homegrown American terrorists.

  Other lone wolves who have elicited major reactions include Theodore Kaczynski, the infamous “Unabomber,” who held an entire nation in fear for seventeen years beginning in 1978 by planting or sending package bombs to victims throughout the United States; and Bruce Ivins, who sent letters filled with anthrax spores to members of Congress and the media in 2001, creating a crisis atmosphere in America concerning the threat of bioterrorism. The anthrax letter attacks were indicative of the innovative nature of the lone wolf. Prior to those attacks, it was not believed that anthrax spores could survive being sent through the mail. Lone wolves have been responsible for other attacks that represented the first time a particular tactic was used, such as the first vehicle bombing (the Wall Street bombing), a major midair plane bombing (the Denver bombing), hijacking, and product-tampering attacks in the United States. The lone wolf has long been among the most innovative and creative in terms of terrorist tactics, introducing new forms of violence that the more established terrorist groups eventually adopt as their own.

  The United States is not alone in experiencing the effects of lone wolf terrorism. In July 2011, Anders Breivik, a thirty-two-year-old Norwegian man, set off a car bomb near government buildings in Oslo and then traveled to an island to massacre youths attending a summer camp run by the ruling Labor Party. The attacks represented the worst act of terrorism in Norwegian history and sent shockwaves throughout the country. Meanwhile, Italy had its own version of the Unabomber, when a suspected lone wolf planted more than thirty bombs over a twelve-year period beginning in 1994.

  There have also been recent cases of lone wolves linking up with organized groups or trying to form their own terrorist networks in order to carry out attacks. Colleen LaRose, who used the pseudonym “Jihad Jane” on her MySpace page, tried to recruit extremists online through e-mails during 2008 and 2009. She was also involved in a plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist who had portrayed the Prophet Muhammad in a derogatory manner in one of his cartoons. LaRose traveled to Europe in an effort to form her own terrorist cell. In another instance, a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was recruited by a Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda and sent on a lone wolf mission to the United States to blow up an airliner. Abdulmutallab was overpowered by passengers and crew as he tried to ignite a bomb hidden in his underwear as the plane flew over Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day in 2009.

  The lone wolf threat is destined to grow in the coming years, as the technological and information revolutions will no doubt assist those individuals interested in perpetrating virtually any type of terrorist attack. Terrorism has long been linked to the irreversible march of technology. Technological advancements in all fields do not discriminate among their users. Innovations in weapons, communications, information systems, and so forth are there for all to take advantage of, including lone wolf terrorists.

  The Internet will grow to contain even more reports, websites, and other information than it does today for lone wolves to use in researching, planning, and implementing an attack. Lone wolves can learn about sophisticated weapons, how to make various explosives, and even how to build a homemade biological weapon. They will have technology at their fingertips as they fly under the radar in conducting online surveillance of targets. More individuals are also likely to become self-radicalized as they read terrorist webpages and communicate with other like-minded people via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms, and other social-networking tools. And terrorist groups will undoubtedly search for these lone wolf types, since they can be easily recruited, quickly trained, and sent off on various missions.

  While there have been many books and articles published on different aspects of terrorism in the post-9/11 era, there has been very little systematic study of the lone wolf phenomenon.7 This book is an attempt to bridge that gap by providing an in-depth look at this important aspect of terrorism. Three central themes emerge in the following pages. The first is how the lone wolf is changing the dynamics of international terrorism. No longer can theories on terrorism and strategies on how to deal with the terrorist threat exclude the role of lone wolves, since they are capable of matching, and sometimes exceeding, the impact that “regular” terrorist groups can have upon a nation. The lone wolf is forcing us to revise our thinking about terrorism and shift away from an almost exclusive focus on terrorist groups and organizations toward a new appreciation for the importance of the individual terrorist. From the analysis of the causes of terrorism and the motivations of terrorists to the identification of policies and measures that need to be taken to combat this global threat, the lone wolf is now an integral part of the discussion.

  The second theme of this book, mentioned earlier, is the key role that technology, particularly the Internet, is playing in the rise of the lone wolf. While there were significant lone wolves before the Internet was invented, the cyber world has undoubtedly been a godsend for the individual terrorist. It has led to a proliferation of lone wolves around the world and allowed for anybody with a laptop to quickly become knowledgeable about terrorist tactics, targets, and weapons, including how to launch a terrorist attack. The role of the Internet in the radicalization of potential lone wolves is also a key part of this trend.

  The third theme of this book is the creative and innovative nature of the lone wolf terrorist. Because these individuals work alone or with just one or two other people, lone wolves are not burdened by any group decision-making processes or intergroup dynamics that can sometimes stifle creativity in formulating plans and operations. Lone wolves are therefore free to think up any type of scenario they want and then try to act upon it, because they are accountable only to themselves. Related to this is the fact that, because they are not part of a group, lone wolves will not be concerned, as would be some terrorist groups, about potential government and law-enforcement crackdown following an incident that could lead to the virtual elimination of the group through arrests and other measures. And if a lone wolf is suffering from a mental illness, then he or she will not think rationally about the risks and consequences of a particular terrorist tactic. Furthermore, because they do not rely upon any segment of the population for financial, logistical, or political support, lone wolves, unlike many terrorist groups, do not have to worry about negative reactions by the public to a particular attack.

  The world of the lone wolf is indeed a fascinating one. This book is intended to take the reader on a journey into that world. The lone wolf terrorist threat clearly demonstrates why combating terrorism is an endless struggle. We cannot expect to “defeat” terrorism, when terrorism can be viewed as just one person with one bomb and one cause. Perhaps the best description of the difficult task we face in dealing with terrorism was made by the Irish Republican
Army (IRA). Following a failed attempt to assassinate British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, the IRA issued the following chilling statement: “Today, we were unlucky! But remember, we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always!”8 Unfortunately, we can't always expect to be lucky in the battle against terrorism. We are living in an age in which all types of terrorists, including lone wolves, can gain access to weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, and commit horrendous terrorist attacks. Yet while it is unrealistic to expect that we can ever totally defeat terrorism, it is not unrealistic to believe that we can be better prepared to deal with all types of terrorist contingencies, including those centered on lone wolves. It is crucial, therefore, that we do not ignore the lone wolf threat in the ongoing battle against terrorism and that we be as committed to understanding and combating it as we are with respect to all the other forms of global terrorism.

  “The biggest concern we have right now…is the lone wolf terrorist,” President Barack Obama said in 2011.1 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta told Congress a year earlier that “it's the lone-wolf strategy that I think we have to pay attention to as the main threat to this country.”2 India's home secretary, G. K. Pillai, echoed those sentiments, warning that “terrorists can be anywhere. The real challenge is the lone wolf, someone who is not known.”3 Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith joined the list of concerned public officials when he said in a radio interview that “we are now seeing emerging the potential so-called lone wolf escapade where we don't have sophisticated planning but an individual is seduced by the international jihad and as a lone wolf does extreme things.”4 Whether it is homegrown terrorists influenced by jihadist websites and chat rooms or individuals bent on terrorist activity for a wide range of causes or issues, the threat of lone wolf terrorism is growing around the world.