PREVENTIVE MEASURES
“You don't prevent bank robberies,” said James Thompson, former governor of Illinois. “You solve bank robberies after they happen…. The notion of trying to prevent attacks by radicalized Americans, or people in this country lawfully, is almost impossible.”4 The National Security Preparedness Group also expressed frustration regarding the prevention of lone wolf terrorism. In a report reviewing US counterterrorism efforts on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the group wrote that “it is simply impossible to know the inner thinking of every at-risk person. Thus, self-radicalization poses a serious emerging threat in the U.S.”5 And reporter and television commentator Geraldo Rivera, also writing on the tenth anniversary of the suicide attacks, noted that, while the United States was in a better position to prevent another 9/11-type attack from occurring, the lone wolf threat was a different story. “The one thing we can't prevent is not these vast [terrorist] plots but it's the lone wolf who gets it in his head to get a gun and shoot people. That's the danger going forward.”6
The thinking that lone wolf terrorism cannot be prevented is understandable. Whereas governments, militaries, and law-enforcement agencies can devise comprehensive strategies to go after state sponsors of terrorism or terrorist groups themselves, the individual terrorist poses special problems due to his or her ability to “fly under the radar.” It is ironic that we spend so much money and resources on the group terrorist threat—more than one trillion dollars was spent on homeland security in the United States in the decade following the 9/11 attacks7—with the goal of “defeating” terrorism, yet when it comes to the lone wolf terrorist, the tendency is to throw up our hands and say that there is very little we can do about it.
Why, though, should we concede the battle to the lone wolf when we spend so much time and resources on the other aspects of terrorism? While we can't expect to prevent every act of lone wolf terrorism, we can, however, take some preventive measures to help reduce the risk of lone wolves succeeding in their nefarious plans.
Improved Detection Devices
When one thinks about the millions of people who pass through airport security systems each day and the millions of pieces of mail that are sent daily around the world, it is amazing that we do not experience more terrorism than we have already. Finding every potential knife, gun, explosive, or other weapon that is either hidden in luggage or on a person who is traveling, as well as screening for every type of explosive that may be in an envelope or package that goes through postal offices, is an incredibly difficult task.
Protecting against terrorism has been a never-ending technological race against terrorists. As soon as new devices are designed and installed at airports, post offices, and other places to detect weapons, terrorists change their tactics to defeat them. It is a battle of wits, and the terrorists hold the ultimate advantage. No matter how many times security measures are effective in preventing terrorist attacks, the terrorists need to penetrate the system only once to demonstrate its weakness. Security personnel are then blamed for allowing the incident to occur. For example, Pan American World Airways was found guilty by a federal jury in 1992 of “willful negligence” for failing to prevent the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people were killed, including all 259 on board and 11 others on the ground.8
Lone wolves have proven particularly adept at exploiting the postal service to send bombs or hazardous material. One of the most famous cases is that of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, whom I discussed in chapter 2. Kaczynski successfully sent bombs to targets throughout the United States for more than seventeen years. As noted in chapter 2, his campaign of violence led the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the FBI to warn the public about not opening letters or packages that had oily stains on the wrapping, since that could indicate leakage from batteries and/or other devices that were parts of a bomb. The public and postal employees were also warned about wires protruding from packages or letters, oddly-shaped packages (or ones of unusual weight given their size), excessive postage, hand-addressed letters or packages (perhaps with misspellings and no return address), or those with a return address that did not match the postmark. A law was also enacted requiring any letter or package weighing over thirteen ounces to be presented in person at a post office. That took some of the anonymity away from a potential lone wolf package bomber.
The sending of letter and package bombs was nothing new. As noted earlier in this book, an anarchist group, the Galleanists, sent thirty package bombs to various targets in April 1919, while Muharem Kurbegovic, the Alphabet Bomber, claimed to have sent nerve gas through the mail to the US Supreme Court justices in 1974, which turned out to be a hoax. Palestinians and Israelis traded letter bombs throughout the 1970s. And in October 2010, the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) sent two cargo packages containing bombs hidden in the ink cartridges of printers to a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish community center in Chicago. The packages were intercepted by security personnel in Britain and Dubai after a tip from Saudi intelligence.
The experience of the British police with the AQAP package bombs is indicative of the tough job police, security, and intelligence personnel have with respect to discovering bombs in packages. London's Metropolitan Police Department Bomb Squad was called to the East Midlands Airport in central England in the early-morning hours of October 29, 2010, to inspect a United Parcel Service package from Yemen that Saudi intelligence believed contained a bomb. Bomb squads get calls all the time about suspicious packages that turn out to be harmless, but the Saudi tip made this one seem not likely to be a hoax. The police inspected a printer from the package, including lifting out its ink cartridge, but found no explosives. They also used specially trained bomb-sniffing dogs and put the printer through an x-ray scanner. When no explosives were detected, the bomb squad thought their day was over. But Saudi intelligence asked them to look again, because they were convinced that there was a bomb hidden in the printer. Sure enough, the second examination of the printer revealed four hundred grams of high-explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) hidden inside the ink cartridge. PETN was also found inside the ink cartridge of the package at the Dubai airport.9
AQAP taunted the West after the bomb attempt with the following statement: “[Our goal was to] force upon the West two choices: You either spend billions of dollars to inspect each and every package in the world or you do nothing and we keep trying again.”10 Since screening for cargo is not as extensive as the screening of passengers and their luggage and other possessions, AQAP had found a vulnerability and exploited it. And even when the British authorities were looking for the bomb, they still could not initially find it, since it is difficult to distinguish the plastic explosive PETN from similar nonlethal powdered substances.
Fixing this loophole in the airport security system is critical, since the AQAP package bombs had been placed on passenger jets as cargo during the first legs of their journeys.11 A lone wolf could just as easily have constructed a PETN bomb and succeeded where AQAP failed. The AQAP bomb was discovered only because Saudi intelligence had information that the terrorist group was planning such an attack. Such intelligence is unlikely to be available to uncover a lone wolf plot, making the screening of cargo that much more significant. The single-view x-ray machines, which is the technology used at a large number of cargo warehouses around the world, lacks the resolution necessary to thoroughly inspect the contents of packages. New-generation multiview x-ray machines and explosive-trace-detection devices, which the British did not have at the time they inspected the package bomb, have a better chance of finding explosives such as PETN, but they are not used for all cargo flights.12 Even if a lone wolf brings down a cargo flight rather than a passenger flight, there will still be casualties and worldwide reaction. Continuing to improve airline security measures for cargo is therefore an important preventive measure for potential lone wolf terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, following the Unabomber
attacks, the USPS made detecting letter and package bombs a top priority. However, due to the volume of mail sent daily, it was not feasible to screen all letters and packages for explosives. Since letter and package bombs are intended to kill or injure the recipient, it is the latter who has to play one of the key roles in preventing these attacks from being successful. This includes following the precautions noted above (being on the alert for letters or packages that have excessive postage, are hand-addressed with possible misspellings, contain oily stains, and so on). Letter and package bombs can also be intercepted by the alert mail carrier or other postal employees. For example, in June 2007, a mail carrier in Missouri found a suspicious package in a collection box addressed to the West Plains, Missouri, police. The Missouri State Highway Patrol's bomb squad x-rayed the package and discovered a pipe bomb inside. After rendering it safe, they sent the components to the US Postal Inspection Service's forensic laboratory in Dulles, Virginia, where it was traced to purchases made at a retail store. Copies of a surveillance photo and a reward poster were distributed to the media, and the suspect, Donald Wayne Schamber, was arrested shortly afterward. Schamber, who pled guilty and was sentenced in May 2008 to ten years in prison, told postal inspectors that he was trying to frame his ex-wife's husband as the mailer of the pipe bomb.13
Corporations and other large businesses that may be targets of lone wolves can also take preventive measures by utilizing various mail-screening technologies that are available. These range from low-cost desktop electronic devices that can automatically detect improvised explosive devices in letters and packages to more complex, conveyorized x-ray screening systems that are used in the aviation industry.14
While preventive measures can work with respect to letter and package bombs, it is more difficult when it comes to detecting biological agents. Bruce Ivins opened the eyes of the security world with his successful anthrax letter attacks in 2001. Now, in addition to worrying about package bombs, postal services, government agencies, and the public everywhere had to be concerned that lone wolves and others would be sending deadly biological agents through the mail. Most, if not all, deadly biological agents, however, cannot be detected until after they have been released into the environment. That is why there has been a major effort in the United States and elsewhere to improve the response time to a potential bioterrorist attack. Devices that can measure if anthrax, ricin, or any other biological agent has been released are important for providing early warning that an attack is underway. Accurate diagnosis and speedy treatment of victims can save many lives.
Among the devices utilized by the USPS following the anthrax letter attacks is the Biological Detection System, which is set up to screen the air above mail processing machines as an early warning sign that a biological agent has been released.15 The US government has also deployed air monitors in thirty major cities, covering approximately 80 percent of the US population, to test for the presence of biological warfare agents.16 However, until the day comes when detection devices are developed (if possible) that can accurately detect biological agents before they are released into the environment, terrorists, including lone wolves, will still have a major advantage over security systems everywhere.17
Expansion of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) in Public Settings
Nobody likes being watched. Yet the price for security against terrorism requires a little watching. How much, though, is always open to debate. Since the 9/11 attacks, the number of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras that monitor your every move in public settings has skyrocketed around the world. Britain, the United States, China, and India are just a few of the countries that are utilizing CCTV to prevent crime, terrorism, and other illegal activities. In Britain alone, which is considered the CCTV capital of the world due to the prevalence of these cameras, it is estimated that there are nearly two million CCTV cameras, with the average Londoner being caught on camera approximately three hundred times each day.18 Yet, in the case of Britain at least, CCTV has not been proven to have reduced crime or been responsible for catching a single terrorist before she or he went into action. Because of this, many observers have questioned its value. “CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness,” said David Davis, a British member of Parliament. “It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.”19
The CCTV cameras have, however, been effective in tracking down lone wolves and other terrorists after an incident and therefore preventing these individuals from striking again. One of the earliest examples occurred in April 1999, when David Copeland (mentioned in chapter 1), a British neo-Nazi who became known as the “London Nailbomber,” embarked upon a thirteen-day bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 139 others. His target was the black, Asian, and gay communities of London. Copeland planted homemade nail bombs in public locations over three successive weekends. The first bomb exploded outside a supermarket in Brixton, South London, a district with a large black and minority ethnic population. The second bomb detonated in Brick Lane, East London, an area with a large South Asian community. The third bomb went off in a pub in Soho, Central London, which was frequented by the gay community.20
After the first bombing, the authorities viewed more than one thousand CCTV videotapes of the area, which contained approximately twenty-six thousand hours of footage. Since the police had been able to recover a black sports bag that had contained the bomb, they looked on the videotapes for people carrying similar bags. They eventually saw images of a man carrying such a bag, and he became their prime suspect. After releasing the CCTV images to the media, the police received hundreds of calls and other information from the public. Their best lead came from one of Copeland's coworkers (an engineer who had worked with him on the London Underground), who recognized him from the released CCTV images.21 But before the police could go to his home to arrest him, Copeland struck again with the Soho bombing. “I was devastated because we'd released the images…and we were actively following lots of information that had come through,” said Detective Chief Inspector Maureen Boyle. “We'd not succeeded in arresting…him before he committed his next offence.”22 The arrest, however, did help prevent additional attacks, since Copeland confessed that he had three more multicultural areas in London on his list of future targets.23
CCTV cameras were also used in the aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings to identify the four suicide terrorists responsible for the attacks in the subway that killed fifty-two people and injured seven hundred others. Another example of effective CCTV use occurred during the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed more than 160 people. CCTV cameras were able to record the terrorists’ movements during the shooting spree, which aided in the investigation of the incident. During riots in London and other cities in August 2011, British authorities posted CCTV images of looters and others, leading to information from the public that allowed them to make several arrests. And it wasn't just facial images that the British authorities used in their investigations. Since many of the rioters were aware that there were cameras watching, they hid their faces with scarves, bandannas, and hooded sweatshirts. But the CCTV cameras weren't fooled. “We can identify people on how they walk, their height, their clothes, shoes—all manner of things,” noted Martin Lazell, chairman of the Public CCTV Managers Association, a body that represents council-run CCTV networks throughout Britain. “People recognized people by what they wear and often, despite having full wardrobes, we tend to wear the same clothes most of the time. These people won't be going home and burning their jeans, trainers, jackets, or coats so they can be identified and placed in an area.”24 The CCTV system also allows for tracing the earlier movements of suspects, by following them back in time to a period when their face was not hidden or where they might have gotten off a train, bus, or car, thereby yielding more clues as to where they live and other vital information.
CCTV systems, however, have to be more than just an investigative tool if they
are to be of value for identifying lone wolves or any type of terrorist before such an individual acts. One factor that plays into the hands of police, intelligence agencies, and others whose job it is to protect against terrorism is the need for some lone wolves, just like other terrorists, to conduct onsite surveillance of potential targets. The use of the Internet for virtual surveillance has somewhat reduced the need for the physical inspection of targets. Still, terrorists usually do not just go off on a mission without some previous scouting of whom or what they are going to attack. This makes lone wolves vulnerable to detection by CCTV before they strike. And since they do not have others to assist them in the surveillance, lone wolves can become even more susceptible to discovery than “professional” terrorists. As one security expert noted: “A person unskilled in the art of surveillance, especially one who is mentally disturbed, will frequently commit many errors of demeanor. Thus, their odd behavior and crude surveillance technique—they frequently stalk and lurk—make them easy to pick out.”25 For example, Yigal Amir lurked in a parking lot prior to assassinating Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Volkert van der Graaf hid for two hours in the bushes outside a building before killing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. And Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (who changed his name from Carlos Bledsoe) had cased a Little Rock, Arkansas, military recruiting center before opening fire on two soldiers standing in front of the building, killing one and injuring the other in June 2009.26
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