WAR ON TERRORISM - The U.S. Lone Wolf Terrorist

"What threat do ‘lone wolf’ terrorists pose to America’s national security?" PBS NewsHour 10/26/2014

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  During the past week, there have been at least three separate attacks launched by what are referred to as lone wolf terrorists, who are often inspired by propaganda from groups like ISIS.

Last Monday in Quebec, a man who had converted to Islam and had become radicalized purposely crashed his car into two soldiers, killing one of them, before he was shot dead.

Two days later, another gunman with a similar story killed a soldier standing guard at a war memorial in Ottawa.  He later raced into the Parliament building, before being shot dead.

Then Thursday, in Queens, New York, a man who had posted comments sympathetic to the jihadists used a hatchet to attack four rookie police officers posing for a picture on the street.  He, too, was shot dead.

Today, on the Sunday talk shows, the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees commented on the attacks.

CHARLIE ROSE (talk show host):  What kind of threat does that pose to our own national security?

REP. MIKE ROGERS:  Huge, and getting worse.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN:  These attacks and the multiplicity of attacks in 2014 show that their propaganda is having some effect.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  For more about all this, we are joined now from Boston by Jytte Klausen.  She is a professor at Brandeis University and the Founder of the Western Jihadism Project, which tracks the activity of Islamist extremists in the West.

So, I want to ask, what is behind these lone wolf attacks?

JYTTE KLAUSEN, Brandeis University:  Well, we call them lone wolves, but, in most cases, they have been connected to networks and peer groups and militants for some time.

And they carry out the attacks by themselves, but they are not actually lone wolves, in the sense that they had just become radicalized off the Internet or something like that.  It — of course, there are exceptions to this general rule.

But, right now, there is a call out from the Islamic State group, sometimes referred to as ISIL, to carry out attacks on — on people who represent the Western states.