HLSS523Wk7

From ABC-CLIO's Praeger Security International website https://psi-praeger-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/

Terrorism

CHAPTER 5: LONE WOLVES ON THE PROWL

pg91

No study of violent extremism would be complete without in-depth consideration of lone-wolf terrorism. The phenomenon has become so prevalent that the term is bandied about with much imprecision. Anyone engaging in wanton violence is being called a "lone wolf." The increase in mass shootings at schools and venues perpetrated by disturbed individuals with no identi�able ideological agenda further complicates matters. Imprecise use of the term clouds objective analysis of this important phenomenon. Any discussion of lone wolves must, therefore, begin by considering what the term has meant historically, how it has evolved in recent years, and the threat it describes today. The term derives its name from an aberration in nature. Wolves are social animals that live and hunt in packs. They seldom roam about alone. "Lone wolf" has a long history as a metaphor for any maverick operating outside the organization to which he/she nominally belongs. Law enforcement soon adopted the term to refer to criminals not associated with gangs. In 1927, the journal Dialect Notes de�ned "lone wolf" as "a bandit or house breaker who works without confederates." Substitute "terrorist" for "bandit or housebreaker," and you have the current de�nition of "lone wolf." Lone wolves do not belong to a terrorist group, network, or organization, although they may adopt the ideology of an active group. They carry out attacks on their own, usually to promote or at least publicize their agenda. Although they are not always on a suicide mission, they are usually willing to die while carrying out the attack. Unlike terrorist cells, they create no "communications chatter" and seldom leave the intelligence trail that helps law enforcement catch members of terrorist groups. Only friends, family members, and close associates have any chance of seeing the warning signs that a lone wolf is preparing to strike.

Lone-wolf attacks are becoming much more common and more lethal. The decade of the 1980s saw just seven lone-wolf attacks. During the 1990s, the number doubled to 15. For the �rst decade of the 2000s, it reached 23,

pg92 and during the next �ve and a half years, it hit 35. The number of people who died in these attacks also increased. During the 1980s, lone-wolf attacks killed 49 people. The number who died in the 1990s shot up to 180, 168 of whom perished in single attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The �rst decade of the new century saw 98 people killed by lone wolves, and from January 2010 to July 2016, 160 people died, 49 of them in the Pulse Night Club shooting in June 2016. Beneath the increase in frequency and lethality of terrorist attacks lies another disturbing trend: the nature of lone-wolf terrorism is changing.

TRADITIONAL LONE WOLVES

Until the last few decades, most lone wolves belonged to a category one author describes as "idiosyncratic." Perpetrators who carried out attacks were motivated not by terrorist ideology but by their own agenda and/or a deeply personal sense of grievance. These lone wolves often su�ered from mental illness and/or exhibited antisocial behavior. They sometimes provided a statement of what they wanted, however bizarre and unattainable. In other cases, especially those in which the perpetrator died in the attack, the lone wolf left no evidence of intent. The absence of an ideological motive means that these lone wolves are better understood as disturbed individuals rather than terrorists.

Muharem Kurbegovic

1 2

3

4

5

Decades before lone-wolf terrorism became a household word, Yugoslav immigrant Muharem Kurbegovic carried out a deadly attack as the �rst step in a planned wave of terror. On August 6, 1974, he detonated a bomb in a locker across from the check-in counter of Pan American Airlines at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The blast killed 3 people and injured 36. That evening, Kurbegovic called the Los Angeles Herald Tribune, identifying himself as "Muharem Kurbegovic, Chief Military O�cer of Aliens of America," the terrorist group he said he represented, and claiming responsibility for the blast. Three days later, he telephoned the local CBS station with information on the location of a tape-recorded message explaining the attack. On the tape, Kurbegovic explained that the LAX bombing was the �rst in a series of attacks to occur at locations across the United States. The name of each location would begin with a letter from "Aliens of America," and the attacks would continue until the words had been spelled out or until the group's demands had been met. The �rst target had been an airport, providing the letter "A." As it turned out, Kurbegovic was acting alone; his alleged terrorist group did not exist.

Although he did not progress far before being caught, Kurbegovic planned a sophisticated series of attacks. Three days after the �rst attack,

pg93 he placed a bomb in a locker (L) at the Greyhound bus station. This time, however, he warned the authorities in time for them to �nd and disarm the device. Satis�ed with the publicity he had received from the media, Kurbegovic said he did not need to make his point by detonating another device. By this time, the "alphabet bomber," as he came to be called, had left enough clues for the authorities to close in on him. A combination of tips from his acquaintances and voice analysis of the tape recording led authorities to Kurbegovic, whom they arrested on August 20. In his apartment, they found bomb-making materials, sodium cyanide, and literature on chemical and biological warfare.

The tape Kurbegovic left for police reveals a bizarre agenda. He wanted to create a country free of communism, nationalism, religion, fascism, and racism. He claimed to be the Messiah. His belief system conformed to the ideology of no known group or movement. Psychiatrists diagnosed Kurbegovic as paranoid schizophrenic, but a judge deemed him �t to stand trial. He was convicted on multiple counts and is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Theodore Kaczynski

Theodore ("Ted") Kaczynski is the quintessential example of the traditional, idiosyncratic lone wolf. Born to Polish American parents in Chicago in 1942, Kaczynski demonstrated a genius for mathematics that got him admitted to Harvard University with a scholarship at the age of 16. He earned his doctorate from Michigan in 1967 and then accepted a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley. His promising academic career ended two years later when he abruptly resigned his assistant professorship and moved to Montana. In 1978, he returned to Chicago to work in a factory at which his brother was a supervisor. His employer �red him for sending crude limericks to a coworker after she broke up with him. He returned to Montana to live o� the grid.

Over the next 18 years, Kaczynski carried out a series of bomb attacks that ba�ed the FBI. In May 1978, he left a homemade bomb at the University of Chicago with the return address of a Northwestern University professor, who was the intended target. Returned to its purported sender, the bomb injured a security guard at Northwestern when he opened it. In May 1979, Kaczynski left another package bomb at Northwestern's Technology Institute, which injured the graduate student who opened it. That November, he mailed a parcel bomb, which did not explode but caught �re on American Airlines Flight 444, forcing it to make an emergency landing. On June 10, 1980, the president of United Airlines su�ered cuts and burns opening another parcel bomb, which fortunately did not detonate at his Lake Forest, Illinois, home. By this time, the FBI had �gured out that the same individual had produced all four devices, though they saw no

pg94 clear connection between the targets. They dubbed the unknown perpetrator the "Unabomber" (Una for "university and airline"). Over the next 16 years, Kaczynski deployed more than a dozen homemade bombs to a variety of academic and industrial targets, resulting in several injuries and two fatalities.

The Unabomber continued to confound the FBI, which could neither see any clear pattern in his choice of targets nor discern his motives. That situation changed in April 1995, when Kaczynski sent a letter to the New York Times promising to stop the attacks if a major periodical published his personal manifesto. On April 18, the Washington Post printed it as an eight-page supplement. When he recognized the writing as similar to his brother's, David Kaczynski noti�ed the FBI. They arrested Ted on April 3, 1996. Without that tip, they might never have found the Unabomber.

6

7

8

The Unabomber's manifesto is a rambling diatribe against industrialization and modern society. He also railed against "leftism" and claimed people were "over-socialized." Some forensic psychiatrists diagnosed Kaczynski with paranoid schizophrenia, although others disputed that diagnosis. A judge declared him �t to stand trial, and he always insisted he was sane. He was convicted on multiple counts and is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the federal maximum-security prison in Colorado. Despite his antigovernment attitude, Kaczynski had no association with any radical group, and his beliefs did not conform to those of any extremist ideology. Stephen Paddock

While most traditional lone wolves leave some evidence of their motives, even writing lengthy, if rambling, manifestos, some leave little evidence to explain their behavior. The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history remains the most puzzling lone-wolf attack. On October 1, 2017, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened �re on a crowd of concertgoers from the 32nd �oor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Using 14 di�erent ri�es, he �red more than 1,000 rounds, killing 58 people and wounding 413 others. As police closed in on him, Paddock committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Although he planned his attack meticulously, Paddock left no clue as to his motive. He reconnoitered several other venues, including the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, and did thorough reconnaissance of the Las Vegas target site. He spent a year stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The Las Vegas police closed his case a year after they began their investigation, no closer to identifying a motive than when they had started. They concluded that Paddock acted alone using legally purchased weapons and had no criminal record. He had shown no signs of ideological racialization. He seems to have chosen his target, a country-western

pg95 music concert, because it would yield a large body count, not because of any symbolic value. "In reference to the 2,000 investigated leads, 22,000 hours of video, 252,000 images obtained and approximately 1,000 served legal processes," the report concluded, "nothing was found to indicate motive on the part of Paddock or that he acted with anyone else."

School Shooters

Although not usually classi�ed as terrorists, the active shooters who have threatened U.S. schools in recent years have much in common with traditional lone wolves. They usually act out of an intensely personal motive, such as being bullied. Despite displaying evidence of asocial behavior or even mental illness, they often plan their attacks meticulously, surveilling their targets and collecting weapons and ammunition. As a result, they usually strike with deadly a�ect, and they often take their own lives at the end of their rampage. On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris murdered 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. On March 21, 2005, Je�rey Weise killed �ve students, a teacher, and a security guard at Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota. On February 14, 2008, Steven Kazmierczak killed �ve students at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb.

The school shooter who most closely resembles the pro�le of the traditional lone wolf committed one of the most heinous mass shootings in U.S. history. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and murdered 20 children, ages six and seven, and six sta� members. Like Kurbegovic and Kaczynski, Lanza had been diagnosed with mental disabilities: Asperger's syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and sensory integrative disorder. His father also claimed Lanza may have su�ered from schizophrenia. Like other lone wolves, he developed and eventually acted upon a bizarre ideology. He joined the online forum "Shocked beyond Belief," where members freely discussed mass killings. He railed against society and declared that public education indoctrinated students. Matt Lysiak, author of Newtown, An American Tragedy, concluded, based upon Lanza's posts and other evidence, that he may have attacked the children to spare them what he believed he su�ered in school. The discussion forum seems to have reinforced his beliefs and, thus, may have facilitated his plot.

Another school shooter who conforms to the lone-wolf pattern had ties to a white supremacist group. On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz entered Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and shot dead 17 students with an AR-15, a civilian version of the M16 assault ri�e. Cruz had a personal motive, having been expelled from the school the year before. He also had a history of behavioral problems. However, he had also participated in paramilitary training o�ered by the Republic of

pg96

9

10

11

Florida, a white supremacist group. To what degree, if any, the group's ideology motivated him remains unclear. NEW LONE WOLVES

In recent years, the lone-wolf phenomenon has taken a new, more sinister turn. While traditional lone wolves acted out of profoundly personal, idiosyncratic motives, the new lone wolves carry out violent attacks on behalf of broader ideological movements. They usually do not belong to any particular group but ascribe to an ideology that extremist groups articulate. Some of these groups tacitly or even actively encourage sympathizers una�liated with the group to strike a blow for its cause. Bin Laden's 1998 fatwa called on all Muslims to kill Americans. AQAP's Inspire magazine provides speci�c information on how lone wolves can carry out an attack. In other cases, the groups contribute to a poisonous atmosphere that inspires violence, even if they do not openly incite it. Ideologically motivated lone-wolf attacks are becoming the most common form of contemporary terrorism. To distinguish between these lone wolves and their predecessors, the FBI has adopted the term "homegrown violent extremists." However, because the term "lone wolf" enjoys such widespread currency, it makes sense to continue using it, provided the phenomenon is precisely de�ned.

ISLAMIST LONE WOLVES

The Islamic State has made the most sophisticated use of the Internet and social media to recruit lone wolves. It has enticed followers to not only to leave their homes and journey to Syria to die for the cause but also to strike a blow whenever and wherever possible in their home countries. In a September 2014 statement, ISIS spokesman Abū Muhammad al-'Adnānī ash-Shāmī called upon supporters around the world to carry out attacks on behalf of the Islamic state: "If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and �lthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State," he admonished Muslims, "then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be."

Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their associates have inspired lone wolves. These individuals sometimes become radicalized through direct personal contact, but more often they do so via the Internet and Social media. They plan and carry out an attack, usually with �rearms and/or bombs but also with motor vehicles. The Islamist organization then blesses the lone-wolf attack after the fact, granting martyrdom status to anyone who dies in such an operation.

pg97 Unlike traditional lone wolves, these terrorists usually do not show signs of mental illness, though they are often socially maladjusted. They seldom provide an elaborate statement of their beliefs but rather simply acknowledge their allegiance to a particular group. Acting alone makes them much harder to identify before they strike, although after the fact, friends and family members often report changes in behavior that occurred leading up to an incident. The number of lone-wolf attacks has increased dramatically in Europe and the United States. The truck driver who killed 87 people on Bastille Day in Nice, France, in 2016, appears to have been a lone wolf as was the man who killed 12 people at the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016. As it has lost ground in the Middle East, ISIS in particular has lashed out abroad by launching carefully planned attacks by using its network, but also by encouraging lone-wolf terrorism. Examining some cases reveals not only the diversity of Islamist lone wolves but also their common characteristics.

Nadal Hasan

On November 9, 2009, 40-year-old Major Hasan Nadal walked into the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas, yelled "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is great") and opened �re with a semiautomatic pistol. He killed 13 soldiers and wounded 32 others. Born in the United States to Palestinian immigrant parents, Nadal grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and earned a degree in biochemistry (with honors) from Virginia Technical Institute in 1995 and a medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of Health and Sciences in 2003. He later added a master of public health degree to his impressive list of credentials. Not only did Nadal not �t the pro�le of a terrorist, he appeared to be living the American dream: the child of immigrants who became a successful professional.

In the aftermath of the attack, authorities traced Hasan's path to radicalization. After the death of his parents in 2000, he became more religiously observant. That in and of itself should have been no cause for concern, but his later behavior was. In 2001, he began attending the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia. The radical cleric and future leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Awlaki, was serving as Imam at the center, but it remains unclear whether he and Hasan interacted. In 2008, Hasan emailed al-Awlaki, who by this time had moved to Yemen, asking if American soldiers who killed their comrades in the interest of Islam would be considered martyrs.

12

13

14

Over the period of about a year, Hasan exchanged 16 emails with al-Awlaki. At his trial, Hasan admitted that he was the shooter but claimed to be a warrior who had switched from the wrong to the right side. No evidence has been found to suggest that al-Awlaki ordered Hasan to carry out his deadly attack, although the cleric clearly played a role in his radicalization.

pg98 Tsarnaev Brothers

On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan Tsarnaev (age 26) and his brother Dzhokhar (19) planted two homemade pressure-cooker bombs hidden in backpacks near the �nish line at the Boston Marathon. They exploded, killing 3 people, including an 8-year-old boy, and wounding 261 others, 16 of whom lost legs. The brothers �ed the scene, and a manhunt for them ensued. On April 18, they murdered a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police o�cer, hijacked a car, and drove to Watertown, Massachusetts, where police cornered them. Early on the morning of April 19, they shot Tamerlan in a gun battle in which he was also struck by a vehicle. He died in the hospital a few hours later. Later that day, police found his brother hiding in a boat parked in a backyard nearby. A jury found Dzhokhar guilty on multiple counts, including murder and use of weapons of mass destruction, and recommended a death sentence, which the presiding judge imposed. He is currently awaiting execution during the lengthy appeals process.

The Tsarnaev brothers were Chechens, born in Kyrgyzstan, who immigrated to the United States in 2003 when Tamerlan was 17 and Dzhokhar 9. Tamerlan masterminded the plot and probably radicalized his younger brother. The FBI report on the bombing paints a vivid picture of Tamerlan as personally frustrated and ideologically driven. His family struggled, his parents separated, and he failed in his dream to become an Olympic boxer. He was arrested for domestic abuse. In June 2010, he married his pregnant girlfriend, who delivered their daughter in October. Despite his ethnic ties to the Caucasus, a region in which Islamist extremists have been active, Tamerlan appears to have begun his radicalization after moving to the United States, probably online. In 2011, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) noti�ed the FBI of its concern that he might return to Russia to join an extremist group and asked the FBI to notify it if he did. The FBI also investigated Tamerlan to see if he posed a threat to the United States and determined that he did not. He did travel to the Russian Federation in January 2012, visiting Dagestan and Chechnya during his stay. Although the FBI found no unequivocal evidence that Tamerlan met with terrorist leaders, the trip does seem to have contributed to his radicalization, as he carried out the bombing shortly after his return.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev adapted much better than his brother to life in the United States. He attended high school at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where he became cocaptain of the wrestling team and did well enough to earn a small college scholarship. He went on to the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Even though he did not do well academically, he appears to have been well liked and socially well-adapted, drinking and smoking marijuana, like many college students his age. He was close to his brother, who probably radicalized him.

pg99 The FBI found no evidence of a link between the Tsarnaev brothers and any known terrorist organization. Claims that Tamerlan met with extremists during his trip to the Caucasus have not been substantiated. A search of his computer after the attack did turn up a YouTube account set up after his return from Russia with links to videos on Islam in Russian, one of which dealt with a jihadist prophecy. Dzhokhar told authorities that he and his brother learned to make the bombs they used by reading Inspire, the online magazine published in English by AQAP. The amateur nature of the attacks supports the conclusion that the brothers acted alone. Their bombs were crude, and they did not deploy them to maximum e�ect.

Muhammad Abdulazeez

On July 16, 2015, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez drove to a military recruiting station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and �red through the window but did not hit anyone. He then traveled to a nearby U.S. Navy operational support center, where he opened �re again, killing four Marines and mortally wounding a sailor. Police responding to the attack shot and killed Abdulazeez.

15

16

17

18

19

20

A combination of personal issues and Islamist radicalization motivated Abdulazeez, just as they had Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Born in Kuwait in 1990 to Palestinian parents, he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1996. Abdulazeez grew up in a comfortable American home, got into the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and graduated with an engineering degree in 2012. He struggled with substance abuse and depression. He got a job at the Perry Nuclear Power plant, but his employer �red him after just 10 days in 2013 because he failed a drug test. He was arrested in April 2015 for driving under the in�uence of alcohol, which embarrassed his family. He was also in debt and considered declaring bankruptcy.

Because Abdulazeez died in the attack, determining his path to radicalization has been di�cult. His father had twice been investigated by the FBI for donating money to Palestinian groups believed to support terrorism. Abdulazeez made �ve trips to Jordan, staying with an uncle whom U.S. authorities considered radical. A search of his home and computer after the attack revealed that he had CDs and downloads of lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki and had researched whether martyrdom would absolve him from his sins. Two days before his death, Abdulazeez wrote a revealing blog post. "Brothers and sisters don't be fooled by your desire, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to Allah might pass you by," he declared. "If you make the intention to follow Allah's way 100 percent and put your desires to the side, Allah will guide you to do what is right." This message, however, could have been an admonition to live a devout life rather than carry out a terrorist attack. Its ominous meaning

pg100 became clear only in retrospect. The FBI found no de�nite link between Abdulazeez and any known terrorist group. In many ways, he seems to have been a suicidal young man looking for a religiously justi�able way to kill himself. Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik

On the morning of December 2, 2015, Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple, left their infant daughter with Farook's mother and drove to his place of employment, the o�ce of the San Bernardino County health department at the Inland Regional Center. There they opened �re with AR-15 ri�es and semiautomatic pistols on the o�ce holiday party, killing 14 people and injuring 24 others. The two �ed the scene and died in a gun battle when police surrounded their SUV. The attackers surprised many terrorism analysts who had never expected a suicide attack to be carried out by a married couple, let alone a couple with a child. The incident also raised the question of whether Malik radicalized Farook, he radicalized her, or the two journeyed down the path of extremism together. Their choice of target suggests that, once again, personal motives were mixed with ideological convictions.

Born to Pakistani immigrant parents in Chicago, Illinois on June 14, 1987, Rizwan Farook grew up in what court documents described as a troubled home. According to those records, his mother, Ra�a, accused his father of being physically and verbally abusive, describing him as "negligent and an alcoholic." The couple separated in October 2008. How precisely this turmoil contributed to Farook's radicalization remains unclear, but it probably traumatized him. The young man earned a bachelor's degree and had worked for the San Bernardino Health Department for about �ve years prior to the attack.

Tashfeen Malik was born in Pakistan in 1986 but moved to Saudi Arabia with her parents in 1990. She was studying the Quran at the al-Huda Institute for women in 2013 and 2014 when she began corresponding with Farook via the Internet. According to then–FBI director James Comey, they expressed their "joint commitment to jihad and to martyrdom." In October 2013, the two met in Saudi Arabia while Farook was making the Haj pilgrimage. In July of the following year, she got a �ancée visa to enter the United States, and they married in August. Their daughter was born the following May.

The authorities have found no evidence indicating that the couple received help from any extremist organization. The neighbor who sold Farook weapons sought to make money but did not know of their plans. Their choice of target and its timing were personal as well as ideological. Farook had complained to his father that people at work had made fun of him for his beard and that he had quarreled with a Jewish coworker on the

pg101 day of the attack. Malik had also stated in an online post that she did not think Muslims should have to attend a non-Muslim holiday event. Some evidence suggests that Malik was the dominant partner in their relationship. Coworkers noticed a change in Farook's behavior after he married her. He became more religiously observant and critical of Muslims who were not. Survivors of the massacre said that Malik �red �rst and that Farook hesitated. She was also the one who pledged allegiance online to ISIS for both of

21

22

23

24

25 26

them before the attack. Omar Mateen

The deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 occurred in the early hours of June 12, 2016. Omar Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and opened �re with a SIG Sauer MCX semiautomatic ri�e and a Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol, killing 49 people and wounding 53 others. Mateen took hostages and held the police o� for several hours before a SWAT team breached the building wall and killed him. After the attack began, he called 911 and swore allegiance to the Islamic State. During the hostage situation, he called a local news station to say he was acting on behalf of ISIS. He also posted on Facebook during the attack. "You kill innocent women and children by doing us [sic] airstrikes," he wrote. "Now taste the Islamic state vengeance." Despite his pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State, authorities found no evidence of a connection between him and the extremist group. He acted alone.

Like many lone wolves, Mateen had lived a troubled life before his shooting rampage. The child of Afghan immigrants, he was born in New York City on November 16, 1986, but spent most of his childhood in Port St. Lucie, Florida. He earned an associate's degree in criminal justice technology in 2006, held a job as a security guard at the time of the attack, and hoped to become a police o�cer. Nonetheless, he had had di�culty �tting in for most of his life. An elementary school report described him as "constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive," and prone to talking about violence. He married an Uzbek immigrant in 2009, but she divorced him on the grounds of domestic abuse. At her trial as an accomplice, the lawyers for his second wife Noor Salman claimed that he physically and sexually assaulted. A jury acquitted her on all counts.

Mateen seemed to have had radical leanings in his early teens when he joked about the 9/11 attacks. The FBI investigated him in 2013 after he made statements claiming connections to al-Qaeda and Hezbollah but found these claims not credible. The following year, the Bureau investigated him again when one of his acquaintances from a local mosque carried out a suicide bombing in Syria, but the FBI found that the two knew each other only casually.

pg102 Evidence suggests that Mateen had been radicalized online. Because he targeted a nightclub frequented by LGBTQ people, authorities speculated that he might have been a closeted homosexual who carried out the attack to expiate his own guilt. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, rumors about him attending Pulse and other clubs and using a gay dating application abounded, but these allegations proved to be baseless. Mateen was looking for a crowded venue to produce a mass casualty event. He may not even have known that the Pulse served a gay clientele.

Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov

On October 31, 2017, Sayfullo Saipov drove a rental truck down a bike path in New York City, killing 8 people and injuring 11 others. Police shot him in the abdomen before apprehending him. He is currently awaiting trial. Prior to the attack, the 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant appeared to be well adapted to life in the United States. He immigrated in 2010, married another Uzbek-American, and had three children. He had worked as a truck driver and had owned two trucking businesses in Ohio before moving to Florida, where, according to some reports, he had trouble �nding work and had �nancial di�culties. In March 2017, he moved to Paterson, New Jersey, where he worked as an Uber driver. Other than speeding tickets and an arrest for failing to appear in court for one of them, Saipov had a clean record. He does not appear to have had the serious personal problems characteristic of other lone wolves.

Despite coming from a region of the world with a strong jihadist presence, Saipov was radicalized in the United States. Saipov waived his Miranda rights and admitted during interrogation that he had been inspired to carry out the attack by watching videos on his cell phone. A search of his phone found 90 ISIS videos stored. He also stated that he had begun planning the attack about a year prior to carrying it out. Another cell phone Saipov owned contained searches for truck rentals and Halloween festivities in New York City, indicating he deliberately chose both the time and place of the attack. Finally, the defendant asked that the ISIS �ag be hung in hospital room and stated that he "felt good" about what he had done.

Pro�les and Patterns

27

28

29 30

31

32

33

34

The six cases and eight perpetrators examined here demonstrate the di�culty of developing a precise pro�le of the typical Islamist lone wolf, but they also reveal some suggestive patterns. With the exception of Nidal Hassan, all the perpetrators were under the age of 30, conforming to the pattern of terrorist attackers who belong to groups. All but one, Tashfeen Malik, were male, which also �ts the pattern. Surprisingly, marital status was not an indicator of propensity for violence. Five were married at the time of the attack, and three had children. The perpetrators also call

pg103 into question the claim that immigrants pose a serious security risk. Only two were recent immigrants, and, with the possible exception of Tashfeen Malik, all seem to have been radicalized in the United States, including Saipov, who like Malik came to the United States as an adult. Although some had �nancial di�culties, none could be considered poor, and several were comfortably middle-class. Lack of education does not explain their radicalization. Hassan had a medical degree, Farook and Malik had bachelor's degrees, and Mateen had an associate's degree.

Most of the perpetrators had two striking characteristics in common. First, all but two (Malik and Saipov) were generation 1.5 or 2—people who immigrated as children or those born to immigrant parents. These groups seem to be particularly vulnerable to radicalization. Often they neither identify with the culture from which their parents came nor feel welcome in their new home. Desire for purpose, validation, and belonging may attract them to extremist groups. Second, all but two of the perpetrators had serious personal problems, including violent and/or asocial behavior. Again, Malik and Saipov are the outliers; however, little is known about these two before they came to the United States, so they may not be as di�erent as they appear. Personal issues usually mingle with ideological motives to inspire lone wolves. RADICAL-RIGHT LONE WOLVES

The ideology of far-right extremist groups has inspired more lone-wolf terrorism than has Islamist jihadism. Because violent acts by people espousing white nationalist and other racist ideologies are usually classi�ed as hate crimes, their cumulative e�ect can easily be missed. Two treatises written by far-right extremists articulated how lone wolves acting on behalf of white supremacist ideology could bring about the political change they desired: William Pierce's 1978 dystopian novel The Turner Diaries and Louis Beam's 1983 essay, "Leaderless Resistance."

Published by Pierce under the pen name "Andrew Macdonald," The Turner Diaries documents through the eyes of one of its leaders, Earl Turner, an insurgency against the U.S. government following its systematic e�ort to con�scate all guns owned by private citizens as the �rst step in creating a totalitarian state. A group known as the Organization �ghts back, eventually carving out a white republic in southern California, from which it expands to control �rst the country and then the world. It "ethnically cleanses" Jews and people of color from the area it controls. The Organization is a clandestine network of cells capable of operating independently and in cooperation with one another.

The underground units consist of members who are known to the authorities and have been marked for arrest. Their function is to destroy the System [government] through direct action. The "legal" units consist of members not presently known to

pg104 the System [i.e., the government]. (Indeed, it would be impossible to prove that most of them are members. In this we have taken a page from the communists' book.) Their role is to provide us with intelligence, funding, legal defense, and other support.

Louis Beam echoes some of the ideas espoused by The Turner Diaries in his succinct blueprint for armed resistance to what he sees as government tyranny. He built upon the work of Colonel Ulius Louis Amos, who in 1962 wrote about how Americans might respond to a communist takeover of the United States by waging a campaign of "leaderless resistance." Beam explained how Amos's strategy could be used against the U.S. government. He argued that resistance groups organized in a hierarchical pyramid were too vulnerable to penetration and disruption by government agents. A communist-style, linked-cell system, on the other hand, required resources that the antigovernment resistance movement in the United States did not have. He advocated instead a "phantom cell" organization in which small groups and individuals could act without direction

35

as opportunity permitted on behalf of a common ideology. "No one need issue any order," he declared. "Those idealists committed to the cause of freedom will act when they feel the time is ripe, or will take their cue from others who precede them." Beam's essay on "leaderless" resistance became a blueprint for domestic lone-wolf terrorism. The connection between these treatises and attacks by lone wolves is hard to determine. Most perpetrators did not read either publication. However, the ideas these works contain have percolated through the white supremacist and other far-right movements to such a degree that many people have been exposed to the ideas they contain without even knowing it. Lone wolves engage in leaderless resistance, whether or not they realize it. An examination of some of these individuals reveals common characteristics as well as individual di�erences.

Eric Rudolph

In some ways, Eric Rudolph resembled the traditional lone wolf in that he developed his own rather idiosyncratic worldview. He formed his ideology, however, out of the whole cloth of views common among people on the radical right. "He had borrowed ideas from a lot of di�erent places and formed his own personal ideology," concluded Chris Swecker, head of the Charlotte, North Carolina, FBI o�ce at the time of Rudolph's arrest in that jurisdiction. "He clearly was anti-government and anti-abortion, anti-gay, 'anti' a lot of things. The bombings really sprang from his own unique biases and prejudices. He had his own way of looking at the world and didn't get along with a lot of people." Viewed from a di�erent perspective, Rudolph �ts the pattern of the leaderless resister, which explains the support he enjoyed from like-minded people, some of whom probably aided him during his years on the run.

pg105 Between 1996 and 1998, Rudolph planted four bombs. He detonated the �rst on July 27, 1996, at the Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, killing two people. On January 6, 1997, he bombed an abortion clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, injuring seven people. A month later, he detonated another device at a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, injuring four people. Police deactivated a second device at the site before it exploded. Finally, on January 29, 1998, he bombed a women's health clinic, killing a security guard and seriously injuring a nurse. The FBI put Rudolph on its "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in May 1998. He eluded capture for �ve years, using his survival skills to hide in wilderness areas of North Carolina, perhaps with some help from sympathetic locals. Captured in May 2003, he pled guilty to all charges and is serving multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Rudolph displayed the same blend of asocial behavior and ideological conviction common among Islamist lone wolves. He had a turbulent childhood. His father died when he was a teenager, and his mother moved Eric and an older brother to a Christian Identity compound in Missouri, where they lived for less than a year. The impressionable and isolated young man may have acquired some of his views at this location. In an interview after his sentencing, Rudolph's mother Pat denied sharing the group's racist and anti- Semitic views but voiced her own distrust of government. Rudolph dropped out of high school after ninth grade and joined the Army in 1987. He was discharged in 1989 for marijuana use. He decided upon his violent course of action sometime over the next few years.

During his trial and in subsequent statements, including an autobiography published with the help of his brother, Rudolph explained his motives. He justi�ed the clinic bombings as moral acts designed to save the lives of the unborn. He claimed that he intended the Olympic Park bombing as the �rst in a series of attacks designed to force closing the games and thus embarrass the government for allowing abortions. He claimed that he had intended to issue a warning prior to detonation and apologized for the deaths he caused. Rudolph also railed against homosexuality and feminism, which he deemed inimical to the family and traditional values, themes popular among far-right extremist groups. He denied being racist but asserted that "institutional racism today targets primarily whites, through discriminatory policies such as A�rmative Action, racial quotas, 'hate crimes' laws, sensitivity training, and speech codes," an argument frequently made by white supremacists.

Timothy McVeigh

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a rental truck �lled with fertilizer laced with accelerant next to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When he detonated his homemade bomb, the blast

pg106

36

37

38

39

tore the side o� the building, killing 168 people, 19 of them children at a day care center, and injuring more than 700 others. With the help of Terry Nichols, McVeigh had carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States to date and the second deadliest in American history, surpassed only by 9/11. Police apprehended him a few hours later in a tra�c stop. On June 2, 1997, a jury convicted McVeigh on federal charges and sentenced him to death. He was executed on June 11, 2001. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the supermax federal prison in Colorado.

McVeigh �ts the pattern of the lone wolf engaged in leaderless resistance to a T. He read and enthusiastically endorsed The Turner Diaries, distributing copies of the book at gun shows. His attack mimicked Earl Turner's bombing of the FBI building in the novel. Police found a page from the book in his car when they arrested him. It read:

The real value of our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties. For one thing, our e�orts against the System gained immeasurably in credibility. More important, though, is what we taught the politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned today that not one of them is beyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks in the city, or they can hide behind the concrete walls and alarm systems of their country estates, but we can still �nd them and kill them.

As he waited on death row, McVeigh sent a letter to FOX News reporter Rita Crosby, explaining his motives for the terrorist attack. He said that he bombed the Murrah Federal Building to make a statement. "Foremost, the bombing was a retaliatory strike," he stated, "a counter attack, for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco)." He added that he had also carried out the attack as a preemptive strike against federal agents behaving like soldiers attacking the American people. Finally, he declared his actions "morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. . . . Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option." Like virtually all such perpetrators, he died remorseless. McVeigh showed some of the same signs of dysfunction exhibited by other lone wolves. His parents separated twice before divorcing, and on one occasion, he lived with his father after his mother left with his two sisters. After graduating high school, he entered a two-year business college but dropped out. He joined the Army and fought in the Gulf War, but he later left the service, as a sergeant. In 1993, he began traveling the country, distributing antigovernment literature. He did not hold any long-term job or seem to have formed any close relationships.

pg107 Anders Breivik

Anders Breivik is Norwegian. However, he embraced an ideology popular with far-right extremist groups in the United States and was active on the American white nationalist website Stormfront. His case illustrates not only the extremist ideology prevalent in many Western countries but also the international links between groups and individuals. On July 22, 2011, the 32-year-old disguised himself as a policeman and planted a van �lled with explosives in the government districts of Oslo, Norway. The blast killed eight people. Before anyone �gured out what had occurred, Breivik took a boat to the nearby island of Utøya and shot dead 69 teens and young adults attending a Norwegian Labor Party youth camp.

Breivik wrote a rambling 1,500-page manifesto detailing preparations for the attack and explaining his reasons for carrying it out. The document predicts a race war in Europe culminating in 2083, the date that also serves as the document's title, with a genocide against Muslims. Breivik decried the purported Islamization of Europe and claimed to have been personally victimized by Muslim immigrants. His manifesto also protested multiculturalism, Marxism, and feminism. He blamed the Norwegian Labor Party for promoting these movements and ideas and for indoctrinating youth to support them. Breivik claimed that his radicalization began with the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia on behalf of Muslim Kosovars. The document also contains a detailed account of his preparations for the bombing and the camp massacre and a daily journal ending on the day of the attack.

40

41

42

An initial psychiatric evaluation declared Breivik to be a paranoid schizophrenic and, therefore, unable to stand trial, but a subsequent evaluation contradicted that conclusion, declaring him sane at the time of the attack and sane at the time of the evaluation. Con�icting diagnoses suggest that whatever his precise state of mind, Breivik was hardly normal. He had had a troubled youth. His parents divorced within a year of his birth, and his manifesto/journal complained of his father's absence and his mother's upbringing of him. "I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminize [sic] me to a certain degree," he wrote. He described his mother's new husband as a "primitive sexual beast." He admitted to using steroids and in his July 2, 2011, entry said that going o� them made him more aggressive. His chaotic manifesto is more reminiscent of Ted Kaczynski than Dylan Roof, no matter what his clinical diagnosis. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of the right helped focus his anger on a group of innocent victims. Dylan Roof

On the evening of June 17, 2015, 21-year-old Dylan Roof went to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. About an

pg108 hour into a Bible study he was attending, Roof pulled out a Glock 45 pistol and opened �re on the group. He killed nine people and injured one before leaving the church. Security footage of Roof allowed law enforcement to distribute his photo. Acting on a tip from a woman who recognized him, police arrested Roof in Shelby, North Carolina, the following day. A jury convicted him on 33 federal counts and recommended the death penalty, which the judge handed down on January 10, 2017. Roof later pled guilty to state charges, accepting a life sentence in lieu of another death sentence. He is currently awaiting execution at the Federal Prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Timothy McVeigh was executed.

Roof left ample evidence of his motive and his path to radicalization. He said that he intended his attack to start a race war that would result in the reassertion of white power. Before opening �re, he declared his intent to "shoot black people," and when asked by one of his victims to stop, he replied, "No, you've raped our women and are taking over our country. . . . I have to do what I have to do." In a written statement found after the shooting, Roof explained how he became convinced he had to act, as he saw it, in defense of his race. After looking up the Trayvon Martin case, he said he Googled "black on white crime" and had "never been the same since that day." According to his manifesto, the "�rst website" he came to was the "Council of Conservative Citizens," where he found "pages upon pages of the brutal black upon white murders." For the rest of the document, Roof ranted about African Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Asians and the need to take back the country from them. He concluded that someone had to act, "to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me."

Dylan Roof did not su�er from a diagnosable mental illness. Like most lone wolves, however, he had a troubled past. Born in 1994 to a couple that had divorced and temporarily reconciled, Roof moved back and forth between the homes of his parents throughout his childhood. Both his parents struggled �nancially, and his stepmother claimed Roof's father was abusive. Roof dropped out of high school and, according to several reports, abused drugs and alcohol. Despite his turbulent life, Roof never showed signs of violence. His �rst run-in with the law occurred in February 2015, when police arrested him at a shopping mall for possession of suboxone, a controlled painkiller. Store employees called police, concerned that the young man came in dressed in black and asked suspicious questions about sta�ng and store hours. He may have been casing the mall as a possible target.

The most perplexing aspect of Roof's childhood is the apparent absence of racial animosity. He lived in middle-class neighborhoods, attended integrated schools, and had African American friends. He appears to have been radicalized online, and his case reveals the role that sites like that of Council of Conservative Citizens play in inspiring terrorists, even if they do not openly encourage violence or even condone it. The group's disavowal

pg109 of Roof after the shooting does not undo the in�uence its ideology had on him. Maladjusted though he may have been, Roof might never have acted violently were his discontent not focused on a suitable scapegoat.

James Alex Fields

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

Twenty-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. went to Charlottesville, Virginia, to attend the Unite the Right rally on August 11–12, 2017. He was photographed wearing a white polo shirt like those sported by members of the far-right extremist group Vanguard America and holding one of its shields on Saturday. That afternoon, he drove his car into a crowd of counter demonstrators, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. He �ed the scene, but police apprehended him soon after. He was convicted of a state murder charge in December 2018, and plead guilty to Federal hate crimes in March 2019. He is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

Of all the lone wolves examined here, Fields has the most pathological background. At his court appearance, he admitted to su�ering from bipolar and attention de�cit– hyperactivity disorders, depression, and anxiety and to taking medication for some of these conditions. Raised by his widowed single mother, he had a history of violence. Police records indicate that she had called 911 at least nine times because she feared her violent son, who on one occasion, she said, threatened her with a knife, hit her, and locked her in a washroom. Fields's high school history teacher claimed the boy had shown an unhealthy interest in the Nazis and said another teacher had �led a report about him over disturbing views expressed in an assignment. Fields enlisted in the army in 2015 but was released four months later for "failing to make training standards."

As with Roof, the case of James Alex Fields Jr. illustrates the deadly synergy between hate groups and lone wolves who act based upon on the extremist ideology of those groups. Vanguard America is a white nationalist group whose motto is "blood and soil," which clearly invokes Nazi ideology. After the Charlottesville attack, the group tweeted a disclaimer. "The driver who hit the counter-protestors today was in no way a member of Vanguard America," it declared. "The shields seen do not denote members, nor does the white shirt. The shields were freely handed out to anyone in attendance." Despite its denial, the group's ideology and iconography clearly in�uenced Fields. Brenton Tarrant

New Zealand authorities have charged Brenton Tarrant for murder in a shooting rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on

pg110 March 15, 2019, that killed 50 people during Friday prayers. Before the deadly attack, the 28-year-old Australian immigrant sent a rambling 74-page manifesto to government o�cials. He espoused a white supremacist ideology, declared himself a fascist, and expressed admiration for Anders Breivik and Dylan Roof. Authorities believe that Tarrant acted alone and have found no evidence of ties to any extremist group. He appears to have been radicalized online.

Investigations into Tarrant's background revealed an unremarkable childhood, although his parents divorced when he was young and his father died in 2010. These events may have had a traumatizing e�ect on him. After his father's death Tarrant appears to have lived a rootless existence, traveling the world, before settling in New Zealand. He expressed anger at what he saw as the invasion of western countries by Muslim immigrants and was apparently upset by the series of terrorist attacks in Europe during 2016– 2017. Tarrant claimed he had been planning the attack for two years.

Pro�les and Patterns

The six perpetrators discussed in this section represent a small sample of the hundreds of people who engage in violence on behalf of far-right ideologies. Most incidents are prosecuted as assaults or murders. Some rise to the level of a hate crime. In aggregate, these ideologically motivated attacks amount to domestic terrorism. While six individuals hardly constitute a large enough sample from which to develop a pro�le, the perpetrators had certain characteristics in common with one another. All six were young men between the ages of 20 and 32. None had every been married. While they seemed to be of above-average intelligence, none did particularly well in school. Only McVeigh had any postsecondary education, and he dropped out of business college. Rudolph, Roof, and Fields all dropped out of high school. On average, the domestic lone wolves were less educated and less able to form relationships than their Islamist counterparts. Although all demonstrated asocial behavior, only Fields had been diagnosed with mental illness, although some clinicians considered that Breivik may also have been mentally ill. CONCLUSION

Islamist and far-right-extremist lone wolves have two things in common. First, the majority of perpetrators in both groups had su�ered some personal trauma that may have made them vulnerable to radicalization. Divorced parents alone do not explain their propensity for violence. Domestic violence, being frequently moved, substance abuse, insecurity, and other factors left these individuals with a profound sense of personal

54

55

56 57

58

59

60

pg111 grievance and isolation that, combined with an extremist ideology, produced deadly results. The Internet and social media played a signi�cant role in radicalizing them. ISIS, of course, openly calls for lone wolves to strike and even provides them instructions on how to do so. Far-right extremist groups in the United States usually avoid such incitement and sometimes even condemn violence. Nonetheless, their rhetoric has inspired some people to carry out lone-wolf attacks. Their views contribute to legitimatizing an ideology that promotes terrorism.

The frequency and intensity of lone-wolf attacks on behalf of both radical Islamist and far-right ideologies suggests that this style of attack is likely to continue and perhaps become more prevalent. As the cases considered here suggest, �rearms have become the most common and most e�ective weapons used by lone wolves. In the years since Oklahoma City, and particularly after 9/11, it has become more di�cult to get materials necessary to make truck bombs and even harder to park close enough to large public building to do serious damage. Almost anyone, however, can easily obtain semiautomatic ri�es and pistols. Roof, Mateen, Tarrant and Breivik demonstrated how these weapons can be employed with relative ease to carry out a mass-casualty attack. Breivik killed far more people with his guns than he did with his bomb. The 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, and the 2017 Christmas Market attack in Berlin, Germany, as well as the Halloween 2017 attack in New York City, illustrate that vehicles can also be turned into lethal terrorist weapons. Combining the two could prove devastating. Finally, the lone-wolf attacks examined in this chapter illustrate that ideology matters more than groups. None of the perpetrators belonged to an extremist organization, but all espoused an extremist ideology held by such groups.

pg112 Thomas R. Mockaitis COPYRIGHT 2023 ABC-CLIO, LLC

This content may be used for non-commercial, course and research purposes only.

MLA Citation Mockaitis, Thomas R. "Chapter 5: Lone Wolves On The Prowl." Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat, Praeger, 2019. Praeger Security International, psi.praeger.com. Accessed 13 Sept. 2023.   http://psi.praeger.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/Topics/Display/2212454?sid=2212451&cid=138&oid=0&subId=42 Entry ID: 2212451