One of the recommendations that Sageman and others make, as noted earlier in this chapter, is to “take the glory out of terrorism.”67 Many impressionable youths around the world view terrorists as their heroes and only see the thrill and glory in engaging in terrorist attacks, not the suffering it causes to innocent victims and their families. The more these other types of images can be conveyed, as well as portrayals of terrorists as criminals and not glorified combatants or fighters, the better the prospects for countering the appeal of some terrorist movements. To that extent, as Sageman notes, high-profile press conferences announcing the arrest or capture of a terrorist can be counterproductive and only serve to elevate that terrorist to a higher status and generate more publicity. Indeed, one of the lessons about terrorism that has been ignored throughout history is that overreaction by governments, media, and the public to various incidents and attacks allows terrorist groups, cells, and lone wolves to achieve a status they would not ordinarily attain due to their size, power, and influence.
Another strategy that can be used to reduce the ranks of those who become attracted to terrorism via the Internet is to demonstrate the reality of a terrorist lifestyle. As one terrorism scholar notes, “Radical clerics and ideologues often glamorize and aggrandize the life of activists and martyrs and ignore the real-world lack of romance associated with this role…. [A] special emphasis must be placed on highlighting [online] the inglorious nature of a terrorist's life and daily separation from family and undisputedly denouncing the concept of martyrdom and use of violence for political ends.”68
An innovative approach to countering the message of extremists is the community outreach program that President Barack Obama unveiled in August 2011. The idea behind it is to have the federal government “support and help empower American communities and their local partners in their grassroots efforts to prevent violent extremism.” The strategy is aimed at “improving support to communities, including sharing more information about the threat of radicalization; strengthening cooperation with local law enforcement, who work with these communities every day; and helping communities to better understand and protect themselves against violent extremist propaganda, especially online.”69 The program, however, has been criticized for allegedly collecting intelligence on individuals in some cases, primarily in Muslim American communities, under the guise of working as a community partnership.
Increased Public Awareness
The idea that an alert and aware public can be an important element in preventing not just lone wolf terrorism but any type of terrorism is commonly accepted in many countries. Israel, for example, has experienced its share of terrorism over the years, and Israelis are therefore always on the lookout for unattended packages, suspicious individuals, and other things that may portend a terrorist attack. In other countries, such as the United States, however, the lack of sustained terrorist incidents has led to a sense of complacency among the public concerning the terrorist threat. Government officials have contributed to this perspective with the numerous terrorism warning alerts of previous years, including the ill-fated color-coded alert system that needlessly worried people about impending attacks that never materialized. The heightened public awareness regarding terrorism that occurred following 9/11 and the anthrax letter attacks eventually dissipated as the years went by without another major incident.
Nevertheless, the value of an alert public in preventing terrorism has been demonstrated in several cases, including, as noted in chapter 1, the case of passengers and crew onboard a Northwest Airlines flight who overpowered Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man who was connected with al-Awlaki's AQAP, when he attempted to detonate a bomb as the plane flew over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009. Passengers and crew also subdued Richard Reid, a British citizen linked to al Qaeda, as he was trying to ignite explosives hidden in his shoes onboard an American Airlines flight in December 2001. Meanwhile, in Britain, a worker in a market in Brixton spotted one of the bombs left by David Copeland, the notorious nail bomber who set off three bombs in London neighborhoods in 1999, and alerted police. Although the bomb still went off, injuring scores of people, many more would have been hurt had an evacuation of the market not already been underway.
RESPONSIVE MEASURES
When a lone wolf succeeds in an attack, a combination of strategies can then be employed in response. Some of these overlap with the preventive measures just discussed, such as using CCTV cameras to identify and track the movements of the lone wolf both before and after the incident and using biometrics to identify the perpetrator. Other preventive measures, including the monitoring of Internet activity, can also be used to determine who may have been responsible for the incident. Diplomatic, economic, financial, and military countermeasures will not be effective, as noted earlier, in responding to lone wolf terrorism. (Though, in one case, the killing of al-Awlaki by a drone attack did eliminate an inspirational and influential figure for many lone wolves around the world.) Law-enforcement crackdowns on suspected terrorist groups will also not be likely to yield any information on a terrorist who works alone. However, there are still a number of response measures that may prove valuable for dealing with the lone wolf terrorist.
Use of Forensic Sciences
Forensic sciences, often referred to simply as forensics, is the application of scientific knowledge to legal issues. This is commonly known as the “crime scene investigation” of evidence. Television shows such as CSI, among others, have made many people familiar with the use of forensics by law-enforcement agencies for solving all types of crimes, including terrorist attacks. Investigators wearing special protective gloves sift through every piece of evidence at a crime scene, meticulously gathering physical biometrics such as latent fingerprints and DNA from blood, hair, fibers, and other material. For terrorism investigations, in addition to the above, forensics can also include, among other things, collecting explosives residue to help uncover the type of bomb used and where the bomb-making material may have been purchased, which, in turn, can lead to the identification of the terrorist or terrorists involved. Forensics for car or truck-bombing incidents also includes recovering the vehicle identification number (VIN) for the vehicle used in the explosion, which then leads investigators to who may have purchased or rented the vehicle.
The case of Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, illustrates how forensics, along with other investigative tools, can help catch a terrorist. Although Shahzad was not a lone wolf, since he had received some training in Pakistan on how to build a bomb prior to his attack and had received some funding from extremists in that country, the way he was identified and captured would have been similar had he worked entirely alone without anybody's knowledge. On the night of May 1, 2010, Shahzad drove an SUV containing a fertilizer-based bomb hidden in the trunk into Times Square in New York City. He set the bomb to explode in approximately five minutes’ time and then walked away to a safe distance. He waited to hear the explosion, but instead the bomb malfunctioned, leaving a trail of smoke that attracted the attention of an alert street vendor who notified the police. Shahzad went home, thinking he would be more successful the next time.70
However, the police were able to trace the sales history of the SUV using its VIN. There were no fingerprints or DNA recovered, but the VIN led them to the previous owner, who then was able to provide more information that led to Shahzad's identity. Surveillance cameras in a Bridgeport, Connecticut, shopping center—Shahzad bought the car through an Internet ad from a woman who did not know what it was going to be used for—recorded him taking the SUV for a test drive before purchasing it. Other information, including an e-mail and a cell-phone call Shahzad had made to the woman regarding the purchase, led to him being arrested on a plane that was taxied on the runway at Kennedy Airport in New York, ready to take off on a flight to Dubai. The entire investigation leading to his arrest took just two days from the time of the incident.71
The lightning speed with which Shahzad was tracked down w
as unusual for most terrorist investigations. The search for Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, took more than seventeen years, while the search for Eric Rudolph, who set off bombs at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and bombed abortion clinics, took nearly seven years. Those investigations, however, were in those ancient days of the latter part of the twentieth century, before state-of-the-art automated systems greatly facilitated the analysis of evidence discovered at the scene of an incident. Technology, particularly advances in biometrics, will likely improve the results of many investigations of lone wolf terrorist attacks.
As noted in the previous section, biometrics can be used for both preventive and responsive measures to terrorism. For forensic investigations, fingerprints are the most widely used biometric, since there is a large database available to match against those fingerprints discovered at the scene of a crime or terrorist incident. As of 2011, the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System had more than 70 million criminal fingerprints, 31 million civil fingerprints, and 486,000 unidentified latent fingerprints (i.e., those left behind at a crime or terrorist scene) from which to look for a match.72 If a CCTV camera or other video device is able to capture the facial image of a lone wolf at the scene of an attack, then that image can be compared to a database containing facial images of individuals to determine the identity of the lone wolf, provided that the lone wolf's photo is already in the database.
One of the more interesting applications of biometrics in forensic investigations involves enhancing artist sketches of suspects so that these can be used in facial recognition software. When there is no facial image of a suspect captured on a CCTV camera but there are witnesses, a police artist will sketch an image of the suspect based on the eyewitness accounts. Using super-resolution (hallucination) techniques, that image can then be made into a high-resolution, picture-like image to be used for facial-recognition analysis.73
Another creative application of biometrics for forensics is the use of tattoos. As more people ink their bodies, law enforcement agencies are finding novel ways to use such artwork in their investigations. “You wouldn't think of tattoos as a biometric,” said the FBI's Stephen Fischer Jr., “but we're starting to work on a tattoo database. Scars, marks, and tattoos we call it. Is it positive identification? No. But it's a good investigative lead.”74 The FBI's Biometric Center of Excellence recently launched the TattooID pilot program, which allows users to initiate a search utilizing a test image to find similar images. Users can also enter keywords or characters related to a tattoo to see if there are matching images. The idea behind the program is that individuals can be matched by the design and location of their tattoo(s).75
As the database of tattoos increases, it could become a valuable asset not only for identifying people who are using a false identity, but also for helping to locate and arrest an individual who has committed a crime or terrorist attack. For example, if a lone wolf placed a bomb in a shopping area, and his face was hidden from CCTV cameras, there still could be images captured of other parts of his body where there is a tattoo. If the lone wolf had a previous criminal record and was in the tattoo database, then the tattoo image captured by the video can be compared to tattoos in the database to reveal the identity of the perpetrator. “All these kids who put the tattoos on their necks and stuff like that,” said the FBI's William Casey, “[don't realize that] if they rob a bank, the camera usually gets those types of [images].”76 For all the parents who are not thrilled with the idea of their children getting tattoos, they may have now finally found a way to persuade them not to get one.
Psychological Profiles and Psychological Warfare
When lone wolves are not killed or captured shortly after their attacks, psychological profilers usually emerge to offer their expertise on who the lone wolves might be and what may have made them do what they did. It is a controversial endeavor, however, since psychological analysis is offered by professionals who have never met with the person they are profiling and do not know anything firsthand about the individual's personality or mind-set. Everything is based on assessing the type of attack, weapon used, target, victims, and so forth, to derive a psychological profile. If the lone wolf decides to communicate after the attacks, then his or her written messages, handwriting, or Internet-posted material become part of the profile.
While a psychological profile by itself cannot result in the specific identification of the lone wolf, it can still narrow the gap in knowledge about the type of person who committed the attack. It can also be used to design a “psychological warfare” program aimed at increasing the stress level of the lone wolf in the hope that he or she will make a mistake that will result in an arrest.
Austrian police used this strategy against Franz Fuchs, a right-wing extremist who launched a bombing campaign in Austria and Germany in the 1990s. Fuchs's targets were immigrants and organizations and individuals he believed were friendly to foreigners. Between 1993 and 1996, he sent twenty-five mail bombs and planted three pipe bombs that killed four people and injured fifteen others. Most of the bombings occurred in Austria, where the authorities turned to criminal psychologists for help in their search for the individual known as “Austria's Unabomber.”77
Thomas Mueller, who was one of the psychologists consulted, developed a five-phase program aimed at capturing Fuchs. He referred to it as a “psychological duel,” a way to break the anonymity of the bomber and force him to make a mistake. Mueller had a lot to work with, since Fuchs had sent several letters to the authorities during his bombing campaign. The first phase was to publicly acknowledge the skills of the bomber, emphasizing his detailed knowledge of electronics, physics, and chemistry. The second phase was to make Fuchs feel guilty for his crimes, an attempt to instill a “bad conscious” in him. Since they knew of his militant, right-wing sentiments based on his letters and the victims he chose to attack—and that he also liked small children—Mueller released a recording to the media of an interview he conducted with a neo-Nazi who was initially suspected of the bombings but was put in prison for other
offenses. In the interview, the neo-Nazi lamented that he had not yet been permitted to see his newborn daughter. Mueller hoped that would make Fuchs feel responsible for the situation.78
The third phase of the psychological duel involved giving inside information to two journalists who then wrote a book about the bombing campaign, which included Mueller's profile of the bomber. The profile described the bomber as an Austrian male in his fifties who probably completed secondary education, lived in a family house, and possessed specialized tools along with a hobby workplace. He was described as a Catholic who had knowledge of hierarchies and religious titles and liked order and tidiness. He was also portrayed as somebody who had knowledge of chemistry and an interest in history. The police hoped the bomber would read the book and realize that they knew a lot about him. It was thought that adding pressure might increase the bomber's level of anxiety, which might in turn lead him to make a crucial error. (The book, however, was not found among Fuchs's possessions after he was arrested.) The fourth phase of the plan involved a government announcement that the police were now being given more powers to collect intelligence on the bombing campaign, and the final phase included a government statement that ten Austrians were prime suspects in the bombings and that they were under close and continuous observation.79
The strategy, particularly the government announcement that suspects were being watched, appeared to work, as Fuchs grew more apprehensive about being caught. He became suspicious of two women who drove by his house twice one night in October 1997, shortly after the government's announcement. Thinking that they were undercover policewomen, he followed them, which of course doesn't seem like a good strategy if you believe the authorities are watching you. One of the women thought Fuchs was a stalker and called police. When police stopped Fuchs, he thought they were about to arrest him for the bombings. He tried to commit suicide by setting off an improvised explosive device. He su
rvived the blast but lost both hands and injured a nearby policeman. Fuchs, who was convicted of the bombing campaign and sentenced to life in prison in March 1999, eventually succeeded in committing suicide the next year.80
Another example of police using psychological profiling and psychological warfare to arrest an anonymous lone wolf terrorist was the case of George Metesky. Known as the “Mad Bomber,” Metesky terrorized New York City between 1940 and 1957 by planting thirty-three improvised explosive devices, of which twenty-two exploded, in public settings including movie theaters, libraries, train stations, and other locations. There were no fatalities, but fifteen people were injured by the bombings. The bombs became more powerful as the years went by. Just like the Unabomber case years later, the bombing campaign frustrated and embarrassed the police, who seemed helpless to deal with the violence.81
The first bomb, which did not explode, was left at the utility company Consolidated Edison (also known as Con Ed), in November 1940, with a note calling the company “crooks.” Metesky had worked there and was denied disability benefits, despite being injured on the job. A second, similarly constructed pipe bomb without a note was discovered nearly a year later, lying on the street a few blocks from the Con Ed offices. Then there was a hiatus for many years. Metesky wrote letters stating that he was halting his bombing campaign out of patriotism for US involvement in World War II. Years later, in March 1950, a third unexploded bomb was found in Grand Central Station. Police were beginning to think that the lone wolf terrorist never intended to have his bombs explode. That belief was proven wrong when additional bombs that Metesky had placed in Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library exploded in 1951. Over the next several years, many more bombs would explode in public places.82
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