Terrorist Threats to the United States

September 10, 2010 at 8:30 am · Filed under Security

According to this report – Assessing the Terrorist Threat –  authored by the original 9/11 Commission members and issued by the National Security Preparedness Group, while al-Qaeda still possess the capability of inflicting damage on this country, homegrown, self-radicalized American citizens now pose as great a threat. The report finds that al-Qaeda does not have the wherewithal to launch attacks meant to kill thousands of people; the nightmare scenarios of al-Qaeda using weapons of mass destruction are nothing more than illusion. Self-radicalized Americans, on the other hand, are increasing in number and the report urges more cooperation among federal and local agencies. News coverage is found at: The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.  More information can be found in: the recently-released Country Reports on Terrorism from the State Department; this 2007 report from the NYPD –  Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat; this 2010 paper from RAND – Would-Be Warriors: Incidents of  Jihadist Terrorist Radicalization in the United States Since September 11, 2001; this 2010 CSIS report – A Growing Terrorist Threat? Assessing “Homegrown” Extremism in the United States; and this 2008 Congressional report – Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat. And we would be remiss if we did not include at least one report from the formidable Congressional Research Service – Al Qaeda and Affiliates: Historical Perspective, Global Presence, and Implications for U.S. Policy (February 2010).

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