Lone Wolf Terrorism

"On December 17, 2008, United States Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan visited the website of radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi. He sent a message to Aulaqi. The Federal Bureau of Investigation acquired the message. A second message followed on January 1, 2009. Members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in the San Diego Field Office reviewed the messages. Concerned by the message's content and implications that the sender was a U.S. military officer, San Diego set a lead to International Terrorism Operations Section 1 at FBI Headquarters and the JTTF in the Washington, D.C., Field Office (WFO). Five months later, WFO conducted an assessment of Hasan, who worked as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. WFO queried certain FBI and Department of Defense (DoD) databases and reviewed the limited set of Army personnel records available to DoD personnel serving on JTTFs. […] Effective July 15, 2009, the Army assigned Hasan to the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, Texas. In October 2009, the Army notified Hasan that he would be deployed to Afghanistan in November 2009. On November 5, 2009, Hasan entered the Fort Hood deployment center. He carried two pistols. He jumped on a desk and shouted 'Allahu Akbar!' - Arabic for 'God is great!' Then he opened fire, killing twelve U.S. soldiers and one DoD employee, and injuring forty-two others. The FBI immediately conducted an internal review of how San Diego and WFO handled Hasan's communications with Aulaqi. As a result of the review, the FBI took specific steps to improve its ability to detect and deter threats like Hasan. […] FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, determined that an additional, independent investigation of the FBI's actions was appropriate."

"More than 2.3 million Americans in the military have volunteered to go into harm's way overseas to combat terrorists since 9/11. But these heroes 'who shall have borne the battle,' as President Lincoln called war veterans, also have been in danger here at home -- where they should be safe and secure. The threat is real. The Department of Defense considers the U.S. Homeland the most dangerous place for a G.I. outside of foreign warzones -- and the top threat they face here is from violent Islamist extremists. […] A significant and growing number of military personnel, such as alleged Fort Hood mass murderer Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, pose a serious danger to their brothers and sisters in arms who wear the same uniform. At least 33 threats, plots and strikes against U.S. military communities since 9/11 have been part of a surge of homegrown terrorism which Attorney General Eric Holder has said 'keeps me up at night.' After Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed May 1, the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Defense Intelligence Agency warned thousands of U.S. law enforcement and security agencies about possible retaliatory attacks by Al Qaeda, its allies or unaffiliated homegrown terrorists on our military. Weeks after the Pakistan raid, two radicalized U.S. citizens allegedly plotted to attack military personnel in Seattle. The Majority Staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security has been conducting an investigation, which finds that 70% of the plots against military targets occurred since mid-2009 -- including the two successful homeland attacks since 9/11."

"In March 2014, the Committee on Homeland Security completed its investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing, which occurred on April 15, 2013, and released a report entitled 'The Road to Boston: Counterterrorism Challenges and Lessons from the Marathon Bombings'. The report identified four key areas needing improvement and issued seven recommendations to help strengthen the Federal government's counterterrorism efforts. Since the report was released the Committee has continued to monitor the progress of the Federal government in closing the gaps that contributed to the tragic events in Boston. The Committee has actively exercised its oversight responsibility, and engaged with the Executive Branch, State and local officials, and outside experts in a robust dialogue to monitor progress in the four areas identified for improvement."

From the opening statement of Joseph I. Lieberman: "Two weeks ago, Senator Collins and I issued this report based on our bipartisan staff investigation. It was, as we have indicated, into the Fort Hood massacre that left 13 innocent people dead and 32 others, including Sergeant Lunsford, wounded. Our report--titled 'A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government's Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack'--concluded, painfully, that the attack at Fort Hood was preventable. The Department of Defense (DOD) missed several opportunities to reprimand and discharge Army Major Nidal Hasan for his growing and surprisingly open embrace of violent Islamist extremism, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) neglected to investigate him thoroughly after it learned that Hasan, a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, after all, was communicating with a suspected terrorist already the subject of a major FBI counterterrorism investigation. More broadly, our investigation uncovered a troubling lack of awareness among some U.S. Government officials about violent Islamist extremism, the ideology that inspires it, its manifestations, and how best we can prevent and confront it. Today we are going to hear reactions to our report's findings and recommendations and discuss how our government must proceed if it is to prevent future homegrown terrorism broadly and the loss of innocent American life at the hands of violent Islamist extremists." Statements, letters, and materials submitted for the record include those of the following: Joseph I. Lieberman, Charles E. Allen, John M. Keane, J. Philip Mudd, Samuel J. Rascoff, Susan Collins, and Ron Johnson.

This bibliography, compiled by Greta E. Marlatt at the Naval Postgraduate School, contains a list of resources related to lone wolf terrorism. Resources include both books and periodicals. The list is organized alphabetically and links to resources are provided when available electronically. This bibliography was last updated August 2019.

From the thesis abstract: "While scholars study the radicalization process that produces lone-wolf terrorists in America, news stories regularly report on Muslim Americans leaving their local communities to join terrorist organizations. Currently, radicalizing individuals to act as lone wolves is the most successful method of Islamist attack on the American homeland. A novel approach to analyzing radicalization is employment of the prisoner's dilemma, which examines the motivations behind individual decision-making. The prisoner's dilemma is used by game theorists and international-relations scholars to demonstrate how persons who might ordinarily be expected to cooperate may actually work against each other and defect from previous agreements or understandings. Because lone-wolf attacks will likely continue to pose the most frequent threat to the U.S. homeland, it is imperative to learn how potential homegrown terrorists can be encouraged to identify with their local communities rather than defect from the social bonds of church, school, neighborhood, and workplace. This thesis explores how the prisoner's dilemma may reveal ways to discourage radicalism in at-risk Muslim Americans."

"Our Independent Review of the Washington Navy Yard Shooting has identified structural gaps and weaknesses in Department of Defense (DoD) security programs, policies and procedures. Fixing these flaws is essential to prevent future tragedies, and to ensure that those who died on September 16, 2013 did not perish in vain. The changes we recommend are fundamental and far-reaching, and reflect the need to replace the underlying premise of installation and personnel security. For decades, DoD has framed installation security as a perimeter problem: Defend the perimeter, and installations can keep threats at bay. This paradigm is outdated. Threats to our personnel and classified information increasingly lie within our installations, and come from DoD employees and contractors who are trusted insiders. The Department of Defense needs to strengthen security from within, and reframe its policies and programs to counter insider threats. The current official definition of insider threats focuses on those who use their 'authorized access, wittingly or unwittingly, to do harm to the security of the United States.' The definition goes on to include 'espionage, terrorism, or unauthorized disclosure' as examples. Although acts of workplace violence are not specifically mentioned, we found that many security gaps and weaknesses are common to all such insider challenges. Our report seeks to improve security against the full range of threats within DoD facilities, from severely troubled employees to those who knowingly serve America's adversaries."