Lone Wolf Terrorism

by Jeffrey D. Simon

  The second criticism was that terrorists did not have the capabilities to effectively acquire and use WMDs, and, therefore, any publications that warned about the threat would needlessly alarm the public. That criticism can still be heard today. The example that is often pointed to is the failure of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo to launch a successful WMD attack despite a multiyear research effort to acquire and use such weapons and virtually unlimited funds and personnel to support that effort. Their 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway did not cause maximum casualties (twelve people died), mainly because the cult had not manufactured a potent-enough batch of the nerve agent. Even if they had, the group still chose a poor delivery method to disperse the sarin; they simply left several punctured containers on the floor of the five subway trains they attacked. Aum also failed in its efforts to produce biological agents.3

  The thinking is that if Aum could not perpetrate an effective attack with a weapon of mass destruction, then why should we worry about this threat? There are, however, plenty of reasons to worry. First, Aum's large size (approximately fifty thousand members) may have actually worked against the cult's efforts to launch a major, successful chemical or biological terrorist attack. Bureaucratic politics, factions, divisions in the group, and lack of focus and coordination all can add to the problems that large groups sometimes face in planning and implementing a terrorist operation. Furthermore, Aum's members were constantly striving to please their leader and guru, Shoko Asahara, and were basically on a “fishing expedition” to find the most effective weapon, including conventional weapons, for an attack.4 The ineptitude shown in the cult's efforts to devise an effective delivery system for the sarin nerve gas indicates that the group had not researched thoroughly or correctly understood the dispersal method regarding chemical and biological agents.5

  The technological revolutionary age that we are now living in, however, should aid future terrorists in overcoming the challenges in properly dispersing WMDs, including dealing with issues such as wind direction, sunlight, and temperature when releasing biological agents. As more information becomes available on the Internet and from other sources, we can expect to see more groups and individual terrorists experimenting with dispersal techniques. As analysts at Sandia National Laboratories point out, “The ever increasing technological sophistication of society continually lowers the barriers, resulting in a low but increasing probability of a high consequence bioterrorism event.”6

  Not all terrorists, though, would be interested in acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction. One of the major factors that could inhibit a group from using these weapons is concern that an attack would create a backlash among the organization's supporters. Many terrorist groups, such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army when it was active in Northern Ireland, depend upon the support—political, logistical, and financial—of significant segments of the population. While its “constituency” may not necessarily approve of the group's violent acts, they nevertheless support the group's political objectives. That support could be eroded if such a group were to use weapons of mass destruction. Supporters may condone certain killings as necessary to further the cause, but it is quite another thing to justify killing thousands of people.

  It is not just the reaction from their supporters that would inhibit many terrorist groups from launching an attack with a weapon of mass destruction. There would also be concern that such an attack would unleash too strong a response from the government that is the target of the attack. While eliciting a repressive response that curtails civil liberties is sometimes the goal of terrorist groups, since such a response could turn the population against the government, a WMD attack would likely result in the enthusiastic support of the public to crush the group responsible by eliminating it through arrests and other acts.

  Many terrorists might also be concerned about the personal risks involved in using WMDs. Terrorists tend to work with what they are familiar with. Conventional explosives, automatic weapons, and rocket-propelled grenades are among the weapons in the comfort zone of most terrorists. The fear of being infected with a biological agent or being exposed to radiation when working with a nuclear weapon could scare away many terrorists. Further, if the terrorists believe that conventional attacks, such as car bombings, hijackings, armed assaults, are meeting their objectives, there would be little incentive to launch a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack.

  What type of terrorists, then, would be interested in using weapons of mass destruction? It would likely be those who exhibit the following characteristics: a general, undefined constituency whose possible reaction to a WMD attack does not concern the terrorists; a perception that conventional terrorist attacks (car bombings, hijackings, assassinations) are no longer effective and that a higher form of violence or a new technique is needed; and a willingness to take risks by experimenting with and using unfamiliar weapons.7 Among the groups that could be described as meeting these criteria are doomsday religious or millenarian cults and neo-Nazi and white-supremacist groups.8 These types of terrorist groups have amorphous constituencies whose concern about a public backlash is unlikely to deter the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Furthermore, they are likely to view conventional terrorist tactics as insufficient for gaining the attention and reaction they seek. They might, therefore, be willing to experiment with unfamiliar weapons.

  For example, among the reasons cited for Aum Shinrikyo's sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system was the goal of setting in motion a sequence of events that would eventually lead to Armageddon, a prediction that had been made by the cult's leader, Shoko Asahara. Another reported reason for the attack was to create a crisis in Japan that would preoccupy or topple the Japanese government and thereby prevent an anticipated raid by Japanese authorities on the cult's headquarters. Conventional weapons were likely viewed by the cult as inadequate to bring about either of these objectives. White supremacists and neo-Nazis have also been attracted to weapons of mass destruction, due to the potential of killing large numbers of people. In one incident, a white-supremacist group, known as The

  Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, intended to poison the water supplies of major US cities in the mid-1980s with potassium chloride. When federal agents raided the group's compound in Arkansas, they discovered a large cache of weapons, including thirty gallons of potassium cyanide.9

  Religious militants are also potential users of WMDs. If terrorists believe that acts of violence are not only politically but also morally justified, there is a powerful incentive for any type of attack. The belief that one is rewarded in the afterlife for violence perpetrated on earth encourages the undertaking of high-risk and high-casualty attacks. One of the biggest worries after the 9/11 attacks was whether al Qaeda was going to drop the other shoe with a major WMD attack. Although they did not, the group was certainly thinking about it. Documents and equipment discovered in Afghanistan in 2002 indicated that al Qaeda was considering the use of biological weapons and had constructed a laboratory near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan to develop anthrax.10 In addition, al Qaeda was interested in nuclear weapons. A twenty-five-page essay titled “Superbomb” was discovered in 2002 in the Kabul home of Abu Khabab, a senior al Qaeda official. That document included information on different types of nuclear weapons, the properties of nuclear materials, and the physics and effects of nuclear explosions.11

  Groups that have the sponsorship of a foreign government may also be potential candidates to use weapons of mass destruction. Due to such sponsorship, they could easily be provided with the necessary training, resources, and weapons, particularly in the case of chemical and biological agents. The risk, however, for any government supplying terrorists with these weapons is the possibility of the terrorists turning them against that government itself one day. State sponsors of terrorism also have to be convinced that any attack with a weapon of mass destruction by a group they are supporting cannot be traced back to that government. Otherwise, they ma
y face a massive retaliatory strike by the country that was targeted.

  Retaliation, of course, is not a concern for lone wolf terrorists. In fact, they have very little to worry about in terms of the reactions of government or society should they use a WMD. They have no supporters or financial and political backers who might be alienated by a WMD attack and no headquarters or training camps that could be hit in retaliatory raids. A lone wolf might also believe that committing a conventional terrorist attack similar to those occurring regularly around the world would not yield as much publicity and notoriety as an attack with a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon.

  One of the biggest reasons why lone wolves are likely to use a weapon of mass destruction is that these individuals have proven time after time that they can “think outside the box.” They are not afraid to try new things. We have seen how a lone wolf, Mario Buda, committed the first vehicle bombing in the United States in 1920. Although not a WMD, Buda's vehicle bomb nevertheless demonstrated the creative nature of lone wolves, a characteristic necessary for those terrorists who might use WMDs. Buda had no idea if his plan would work; there had not been any standoff attacks like that attempted in the United States. The idea to put explosives in a horse-drawn wagon, park it near his targets on Wall Street, and then walk away after setting a timer was novel for those times. There had been an attempt in France in 1800 to assassinate First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte (before he became emperor) with a bomb that had been built into a barrel on a horse-drawn cart. That attempt failed, and the bomb exploded after Napoleon's carriage had passed the spot in the street where the horse and cart were parked. Approximately fifty-two people were either killed or injured in the blast. It is doubtful that Buda was aware of this novel use of a horse and cart for a terrorist attack, since it happened more than a hundred years before he sprang into action on Wall Street.12

  THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. IVINS

  Another example of a lone wolf thinking outside the box—and this time using a weapon of mass destruction—is the case of Bruce Ivins. Ivins was responsible for the 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the United States, which represented the first time anthrax was sent through the mail with the intent to infect people who opened the letters. His story is revealing for how dangerous lone wolves can be.

  When the bestselling novel The Hot Zone was written by Richard Preston in the 1990s, it made famous a little-known military research facility located just an hour's drive from Washington, DC. The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), located at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, is the military's premier research laboratory for developing medical defenses against biological warfare threats. In 1989, USAMRIID personnel helped contain an outbreak of an Ebola virus among primates in a commercial laboratory animal-holding facility in Reston, Virginia. Had the virus spread to humans, it would have been a national medical catastrophe. Preston's book described the incident and rightly portrayed the USAMRIID scientists as national heroes.13

  Ivins, however, who began working at USAMRIID in 1980, was definitely not a national hero. He was a very troubled man who turned his brilliant mind against his own country. His path to becoming the first person to successfully send “live” anthrax through the mail is one filled with obsession, revenge, fear, and mental illness.

  When Ivins first came to USAMRIID in 1980, he was assigned to work on developing a new and more effective anthrax vaccine. This was a high priority for the US defense community, since, only one year earlier, there had been an accidental anthrax outbreak at a secret Soviet military microbiology plant in Sverdlovsk that killed at least sixty-six people. That incident proved that the Soviets were producing anthrax to be used as a biological weapon. Ivins, who had a doctorate in microbiology, thus began his lifelong research on anthrax. By the time of his death by suicide in 2008, Ivins had become one of the world's leading authorities on growing anthrax spores. He not only provided spores to his colleagues at USAMRIID for their own research, but many other anthrax researchers around the world also relied on his work.14

  Ivins was a family man who volunteered at the local Red Cross and attended church regularly. He led what his friends called a “hippie mass” in church, playing keyboards and acoustic guitar. He was known as an eccentric, showing up for work in clothes that were a few sizes too small and working out at the gym in dark socks and heavy boots. When he became flustered over something, he would stammer and flap his arms, trying to make his point. His colleagues liked him, finding him to be both smart and generous.15

  Ivins, however, hid a dark side from everyone. He was obsessed with the Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) sorority, driving three hours or more to visit KKG chapter houses on various campuses, look at the house for approximately ten minutes, and then drive home for another three hours. He broke into the houses on two occasions, once to steal the sorority's cipher, which was a decoding device for the sorority's secret rituals, and another time to steal the actual ritual book.16 He also showed an excessive interest in a former University of North Carolina (where Ivins did postdoctoral work) graduate student when he learned that she had been an advisor to the sorority. He vandalized the property where she lived.17 Later in the anthrax investigation, when FBI agents asked Ivins about his interest in KKG, he stated, “Oh, it's not an interest. It's an obsession.”18 What, then, could have caused Ivins to focus so much energy on the sorority and want to take revenge against it? All it took was a Kappa Kappa Gamma co-ed turning him down for a date when he was a student at the University of Cincinnati.19

  Ivins did not have a happy childhood. He had a dominating mother who was physically abusive to his father. She struck her husband on different occasions with a broom, a skillet, and a fork.20 Ivins felt that his family treated him as an “unwanted outsider” and that his father ignored him.21 He was a loner as a teenager and had difficulty communicating with females.22 Nevertheless, Ivins eventually married and raised a family. However, although he was a renowned microbiologist, he became very worried by the summer of 2001 that funding for his anthrax-vaccine research at Fort Detrick would be drastically cut or even eliminated. Ivins was working on two different types of anthrax vaccines. One was a military anthrax vaccine, known as AVA, which had come under intense scrutiny and criticism by many military personnel who had been given the vaccine. They complained about its side effects, which included painfully swollen muscles and joints, headaches, and serious immune-system disorders. There were also questions raised about whether the vaccine would remain effective after up to three years in storage. Ivins was working with a private company to solve these problems, but the company was having trouble in its efforts to produce a better AVA vaccine. Meanwhile, Ivins was also working on another type of anthrax vaccine, called rPA (recombinant Protective Antigen). This was a genetically engineered vaccine, also known as the “Next Generation Vaccine,” that Ivins believed would solve all the problems associated with the AVA vaccine. Ivins was coinventor of that new vaccine and was set to collect patent royalties if the vaccine ever came to market.23

  This was unlikely, though, as Pentagon officials were telling managers at USAMRIID to shift personnel and resources away from research on anthrax vaccines and into the research and development of products that could be used against other biological agents, such as glanders, tularemia, and plague. When USAMRIID management approached Ivins in the summer of 2001 about working on glanders (a bacterium that kills both livestock and humans), Ivins replied angrily, “I am an anthrax researcher. This is what I do.”24 The fear of not being allowed to work on anthrax vaccines was cited by the US government as a motive for his anthrax letter attacks.

  According to the Department of Justice's official report on the incident, “Dr. Ivins’ life's work appeared destined for failure, absent an unexpected event.”25 That event would, of course, be an anthrax attack that created demand for anthrax vaccines. And that is exactly what happened following the September and October 2001 anthrax letter attacks, when the Food and Drug Administration f
ast-tracked approval of the AVA vaccine, putting Ivins back to work on anthrax vaccines.26 Ivins may also have had a financial motive for the attacks, since, as noted above, he had a patent for the rPA vaccine. The more concern there was throughout the country about the threat of anthrax, the higher the probability that Ivins's rPA vaccine might someday make it to market.

  In addition to worries over not being able to work on anthrax vaccines, Ivins was also under severe emotional distress in the period leading up to the anthrax letter attacks. He wrote several alarming e-mails to a former female colleague, Mara Linscott, who used to work with him at Fort Detrick. In one e-mail, sent in October 1999, he wrote: “It's getting to be lately that I've felt there's nobody in the world I can confide in. You're gone now, and one of the reasons I was so sorry to see you go was a very selfish one—I could talk to you openly and honestly, and that was in itself a great lifter of my spirits.”27 He confided in her that he was seeing a psychiatrist and going to group therapy sessions but that it wasn't helping. In a June 2000 e-mail, he wrote: “Even with the Celexa [an antidepressant drug] and the counseling, the depression episodes still come and go. That's unpleasant enough. What is REALLY scary is the paranoia…. Depression, as long as I can somewhat control it with medication and some counseling, I can handle. Psychosis or schizophrenia—that's a whole different story…. Ominously, a lot of the feelings of isolation—and desolation—that I went through before college are returning. I don't want to relive those years again.”28 In an earlier e-mail, in April 2000, he wrote that, at times, “it's like I'm not only sitting at my desk doing work, I'm also a few feet away watching me do it. There's nothing like living in both the first person singular AND the third person singular!”29 In yet another e-mail sent to Linscott, in August 2000, Ivins wrote: “I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind. It's hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I'm being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don't spread the pestilence…. I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs.”30