Illuminating the Dark Arts of War: Terrorism, Sabotage, and Subversion in Homeland Security and the New Conflict 9781501301018, 9781441129550, 9781441170699

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Introduction What is one to think of a religious minority that practices a religion hardly known to most Americans, yet is despised by some; a group that celebrates their faith in an odd language; some of whose women veil and seclude themselves; a religion that often seeks to establish its own schools and some of whose leaders encourage its members to remain separate from the larger society; a religious minority whose members maintain suspicious links with various foreign lands and organizations and whose clerical function is frequently carried out by foreigners, often ignorant of American customs and habits; a minority that has been subject to harassment, violence, and discrimination; and, finally, a religious group some of whose members, both recent immigrants and homegrown, have become radicalized and are willing to use violence, and have engaged in acts of terrorism on American soil and supported terrorism in other parts of the world? What is one to think, that is, of American Catholics in the nineteenth century, especially the Irish version thereof and, in this case, not just in the nineteenth century? In the pages that follow, we will have occasion to reflect on the violent passage of Catholics from suspect minority to valued fellow citizens. The point to note here is that recalling America’s violent past can help us understand contemporary violence and the religious minorities and other groups associated with it. The point of such recollection is not to repeat the now banal claim that America has a violent history. It is rather to understand this violence, why and how it occurs, what threat it poses, and what its consequences are. Since the first step toward understanding is gaining some perspective, Chapter 1 of this book will review our previous experience with homegrown terrorism. Although many current commentators appear to forget it, this is not a new phenomenon in American history. Nor is our time the first time that Americans have faced terrorism originating overseas but targeting Americans at home and abroad; considered the cost to civil liberties of suppressing violence; or worried about possible subversive threats. New technologies and lethal threats have perturbed America in the past as well. None of these past experiences is identical with any of the present, but they deserve some

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consideration for what they might teach us about violence and its causes and consequences in American life. Offering historical perspective is necessary but not sufficient. Above all, this book aims to analyze what our historical and contemporary experience reveals. It does not claim that the threats it considers—terrorism, sabotage, and subversion—are the only threats to homeland security or that they are more important than the threats it does not consider, such as natural disasters, ruinous budgetary policies, cultural squalor, failing schools, or any number of other threats to a secure and decent political life. Indeed, in terms of sheer destruction, natural disasters have done more harm to the United States than the “dark arts” discussed here. The book focuses on these threats because they are one kind of threat to the United States. One characteristic they share, which distinguishes them from natural disasters, is that they result from an intention to harm. Since they do, our actions can change and shape that intention. This is not true of natural disasters. We may eventually do something about the weather, but it will not be because we have changed its intentions. In order to understand how to respond to intentional harm, however, we must first understand that intention. The book does not consider all violence. It focuses on political violence, intentional violence claimed to serve not the self-interest of those who carry it out but the good of all. It is not concerned with random acts of meanness, opportunistic street crime, or organized crime. Its concern is not violence carried out only to express hatred for a member of a race or religious group, what we now call hate crimes. Its concern is with violence carried out for some political reason. Clearly no iron curtain separates these different kinds of violence. An act may have several purposes. A Ku Klux Klan attack on a black person may have expressed hatred but it also may have been calculated to intimidate the victim and other blacks from voting. Burning a Catholic convent may have been an expression of hatred for an alien religion but it may also have been intended to intimidate Catholics from pressing to have their Bible used in public schools. However complex the motivation that leads to violence, the concern here is with violence, or that aspect of violence, that has a political purpose. The ultimate defense of this focus is the argument, made in Chapter 2, that the political character of violence has important consequences for both those who carry it out and those who suffer it. Within the category of political violence, the book distinguishes between terrorism and sabotage. The difference between the two is the difference between will and ability. Terrorism is violence carried out to affect the willingness of people to persist in a given course of action. Animal rights terrorists, for example, fire bomb the house of an animal researcher in the hope of intimidating her to give up her research. Sabotage is violence carried out to

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destroy or degrade the ability of an individual, organization, or country to do what it wants to do. Releasing research animals from their cages may scare someone into giving up his research, but it also puts an end to that particular bit of research. Blowing up munitions plants or infecting horses, as German agents did in the United States in World War I, may intimidate; but the principal purpose of such action is to affect not the will but the ability of the United States to wage war. Again, an act may be intended as both terrorism and sabotage. Osama bin Laden may have thought that destroying the World Trade Center would not only intimidate Americans but also damage, if not destroy, the American economy. Yet, however complex the motives for an act of violence, we can discern at least these two different motives: to affect the will to fight or to affect the ability to fight. The ultimate justification (discussed in Chapter 4) for making the distinction between sabotage and terrorism is that it helps us to understand and deal with the different threats we face. The book is not limited to the discussion of political violence. Throughout American history, various groups have fallen under suspicion of subverting the American regime. Catholics, Mormons, Masons, socialists, communists, and others have faced these charges. Subversion was a major issue in American politics 60 years ago and has returned as a less salient issue today, in the concern that some Muslims and Christians also want to subvert the American regime. Discussing this issue (Chapter 5) raises inevitably the question of what constitutes legitimate government and whether in a democracy, in which citizens may express any opinion they care to and work for any kind of political outcome they prefer, subversion can actually be said to occur. Although distinct, terrorism, sabotage, and subversion should be considered together because historically they have been linked. Efforts to overthrow or threaten an established government typically combine all three. This was the practice of Leninist–Maoist governments and movements in the twentieth century, for example. Beyond historical precedent, these activities belong together because they are all carried out clandestinely. Obviously, when the terrorist or sabotage bombing occurs, it is not clandestine. But the group doing it is. It must hide. Subversion differs from regular political activity not only because it hopes to change that activity in some fundamental way but also because it is hidden. Paying attention to the clandestine character of the individuals and organizations engaged in terrorism, sabotage, and subversion is important for two reasons. First, clandestinity affects the individuals and organizations that use it. As we will see in Chapter 2, for example, clandestinity is a large part of the reason that terrorism and terrorist organizations have inherent limits. Second, the clandestine nature of terrorism, sabotage, and subversion help characterize these activities and distinguish them from other forms of violence and political activity. Both sabotage and aerial bombing,

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for example, aim to destroy the capability of a nation to wage war. Sabotage, unlike bombing, however, is clandestine. Saboteurs do not approach their target wearing the uniforms and insignia of a foreign army. Similarly, terrorists do not wear uniforms; they do not engage in open warfare and attack combatants. Terrorists, like saboteurs and those engaged in subversion, act secretly and, most important, and unlike regular military forces, without any visible indication that they are agents of a state, even when they are. Secrecy is of course a tactical necessity for those engaged in illegal work. If they do not hide, they will be killed or captured. Clandestinity, however, has broader implications connected to the historical development of sovereignty and the rules and laws that try to govern the actions of sovereign powers. The history of political violence is in part the story of states gaining control over the means of violence, organizing legitimate violence into domestic (police) and foreign (military) components, and directing the military against the militaries of other states and, in all but extreme circumstances, using only police forces domestically. Over time, in those states that we recognize as liberal democratic regimes, violence or force used domestically came to be governed by more restrictions than violence used externally. In liberal democracies, the police operate on an understanding of force different from that which governs militaries. Even externally, however, over time restraints on the use of force developed. Religious and philosophical principles are part of the explanation for this development but the impulse behind it was not entirely altruistic. The population of a state is its richest resource and therefore deserves protection. States learned this and acted accordingly, establishing certain conventions of behavior among themselves. For example, civilians were no longer legitimate targets. In part to make this convention operable, another developed. Military forces needed to be uniformed and in other ways distinct from civilian populations. If they were, when captured, they were treated as prisoners of war and were afforded certain safeguards. If acting clandestinely, without visible identification as agents of a state, they were not. This convention supported the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, and thus the protection of the latter, but it was also a way for states to establish that only violence sanctioned by a state and clearly identified with a state was legitimate. Sometimes, these conventions were even written down, as in the case of the Geneva conventions, a collection of treaties meant to restrict the use of violence in war.1 Of course, states have not always abided by the conventions they established. States have used clandestine agents, their own personnel or others, to carry out acts of terrorism, sabotage, and subversion. We have noted above the German use of saboteurs against the United States in World War I, a tactic they tried again during World War II. Subversion was an important

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component of the Soviet Union’s statecraft. The role of states in the “dark arts” of terrorism, sabotage, and subversion is thus a theme in this book, especially in Chapters 4 and 5. To whatever extent honored, the legal and other differences between covert and overt violence are part of the established system of world politics, in which sovereign nation-states compete and cooperate. Non-state actors also operate in this established system and within the states that compose it, independently or in service to a state. When they challenge this order or its states and use violence, non-state actors always act clandestinely and often target noncombatants, since they cannot challenge openly state military or police forces. They do not consider their violence illegitimate because it violates conventions by being clandestine and against noncombatants; they do not accept the world order of sovereign states or the domestic laws of the states they oppose. Terrorism, therefore, is not only violence carried out to affect the willingness of people to persist in a given course of action. It is such violence carried out clandestinely against noncombatants. Violent challenges to the reigning domestic or international order by nonstate actors are not new, of course. The Irish Republican Brotherhood and then the Irish Republican Army challenged Great Britain over the status of Ireland for more than a century. Remnants still carry on the fight against the British. Anarchists, acting individually and in groups, challenged both individual states and the world order of sovereign states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some have claimed, however, that the al Qaeda movement, other non-state actors, and even individuals not affiliated with any movement or group pose challenges to sovereign states and the current world order greater than any they have previously faced. This has led to claims that we face a new kind of terrorism, and that the very nature of conflict is changing. In assessing the threats posed to homeland security by terrorism, sabotage, and subversion, we are thus also addressing the larger issue of the claimed change in the nature of conflict. According to its advocates, who do not agree in all details or in degree of alarm and emphasize different points, what we might the call the “new” conflict has several key characteristics. The principal characteristic is that for the first time since the emergence of the modern nation-state system (customarily dated as 1648), non-state actors have become the principal threat to states and their peoples. These actors—for example, al Qaeda and its affiliated groups and local enthusiasts—use terrorism, sabotage, and subversion to pose serious, even existential threats to states. The two most important causes of this epochal change, according to new conflict theorists, are technology and the globalization that technology helps promote; the key technologies are those involving destructive power and communications and information.

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The revolution in information and communications technology allows groups to disperse, operate efficiently over large areas, and gather resources more widely and effectively than ever before. This has led non-state actors to adopt network forms of organization. The cumbersome hierarchies of state power cannot compete with these networks, which are agile, adaptive organizations. Nation-states possess networks as well, but these are in the form of infrastructure, such as electric power distribution systems, that are vulnerable to the swarming attacks of networked non-state actors. The underlying infrastructural network vulnerability of states is now the internet, on which more and more of their infrastructure depends. A highly vulnerable backbone network, the internet can be exploited by non-state actors without much trouble. Thus the internet empowers non-state actors and actually weakens nation-states. This means that non-state actors can now strike economic targets and even threaten whole economies. This danger is compounded by the increasing availability of highly lethal technologies. Destructive power of unprecedented degree has escaped, is escaping, or will soon escape the control of states, which for the past several centuries have had a monopoly over such destructive force. The United States and other states are thus cumbersome and fragile and doomed to fail, unless they become more like the enemies they face, for “it takes a network to fight a network.”2 As the following chapters show, all of these claims are either wrong or in need of revision. Nevertheless, even as claims about the “new” terrorism have quieted, talk of the new conflict has proliferated. Spawned as the original dotcom bubble grew, talk of the new conflict survived the bubble’s popping and continues to show a certain irrational exuberance. Or so we must conclude from the following examination of terrorism, sabotage, and subversion as threats to America’s homeland security. These activities are threats in different ways and in different degrees, but it is important to understand their scope and gravity. Discussion of the new terrorism and the new conflict has misrepresented both, however, and thus confused us about how to respond, an issue Chapter 6 and the Conclusion focus on. It is not clear of course that any analysis of the threat, no matter how accurate, will ultimately affect how governments and their people respond. If there is irrational exuberance in discussion of the new conflict, there may be rational alarm pushing both the US government and its people to misinterpret and exaggerate threats to homeland security. As the government has made money available to address threats to homeland security, it has created incentives among experts and analysts to exaggerate the threat. Politicians themselves fear being outbid by rivals, who are always willing to claim their opponent is not doing enough to protect the American people, and thus they have a reason to announce a “zero tolerance” policy for terrorist attacks. The

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people themselves, of course, expect protection, especially given the sums spent, the continual talk of terrorism, and the sacrifices of convenience and privacy they have made. Each emerging terrorist plot revives public concern about security, especially since the government has set the standard at zero attacks and government officials, politicians, and experts have no reason to put the threat in context. And if the president tried to put the threat into perspective, this would, again, only incite his rivals to claim he is weak on terrorism, thus making some people believe that the government is not taking the threat seriously. Concern would thus increase, generating more incentives to exaggerate the threat by the government or the party out of power and by those the government pays to study it. The result of all this is what one author calls the homeland security dilemma: “the more security you have, the more security you will need.” Talk of and investment in security raise expectations of safety and causes outrage when an attack occurs, which causes more talk of and investment in security, in an endless cycle. The underlying cause of this security dilemma is “probability neglect.” Although an American may be more likely to die by drowning in a bathtub than in a terrorist attack, the terrorist attack is more feared because it is unfamiliar and entirely out of our control.3 There is some truth to the notion of a homeland security dilemma. Yet, the American people have maintained a fairly steady and, it seems, reasonable view of the terrorism threat.4 Apparently, the public sifts what politicians, experts, and terrorists do and say to reach some understanding of the likelihood of terrorist attack. There is no reason to believe, therefore, that historical perspective and determined analysis cannot be part of the public deliberation concerning the threats we face and what to do about it. This is especially true since one thing we come to understand when we examine terrorism, and the other threats discussed here, is that they are not out of our control. In hopes of contributing to public deliberation, this book offers perspective on the threat and an analysis of the robust countermeasures within our power. Anyone offering perspective on homeland security threats risks having that perspective and his credibility undermined by the next attack. By the time this book appears or as it is perused at some later date, another devastating attack may have occurred. For the record, then, let it be noted that the book was written on the assumption that such an attack may well occur. Indeed, it was written to provide perspective especially in the aftermath of such an attack. *

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The original idea for this book and some of its arguments developed while I was teaching in the homeland security master’s degree program sponsored by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. I benefited from the comments

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of Paul Stockton, the first Director of the Center, on early drafts of Chapter 2 and of Chris Bellavita, also at the Center, on Chapter 6 before it appeared as “Terrorism, Networks, and Strategy: Why the Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong,” in Homeland Security Affairs. It appears here in a much modified form. (Part of Chapter 3 also appeared in Homeland Security Affairs as “Jihad Dramatically Transformed? Sageman on Jihad and the Internet.”) Chris Belllavita’s comments also improved the Conclusion, part of which draws on an article that appeared in On Principle (August 2010), a publication of the John Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. Dorothy Denning and Michael Freeman, my colleagues in the Defense Analysis Department at the Postgraduate School, offered helpful comments on Chapters 3 and 2, respectively. Christopher Lamb argued with me about Chapter 5 and also had useful things to say on an earlier version of Chapter 1. I have also benefited from conversations with Chris on a number of topics addressed in this book. Some of those conversations took place as we prepared for and taught a course on conflict in the twentieth century sponsored by the Ashbrook Center. Julie Ponzi offered advice about Chapter 5 as well. Ellen Tucker asked pointed questions about the arguments in the book as they developed and offered advice for clarifying their written form. Sarah Tucker, Jeff Pawling and Sara Fisher helped with research, as did Nathan Tucker, who also assisted with some questions about Islamic law. I am grateful to all for their help. Thanks also to Marie-Claire Antoine and the editorial staff at Continuum. For not benefiting more from all this assistance and for the faults that remain, I alone am responsible.

Notes 1 http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/genevaconventions; Janice E. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 2 John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, and Michele Zanini, “Networks, Net War, and Information-Age Terrorism,” in Countering the New Terrorism, ed. Ian O. Lesser et al. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999), p. 55; Stanley A. McChrystal, “It Takes a Network: The New Frontline of Modern Warfare,” Foreign Policy (March/April, 2011). For other accounts of the “new conflict,” see John Arquilla, Aspects of Netwar and the Conflict with al Qaeda (Monterey, CA: Information Operations Center, 2009); John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (Hoboken, NJ: 2007); Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008); Herfried Munkler, The New Wars (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005); Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global

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Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). For a sober account see Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Vintage, 2008). 3 Frank P. Harvey, The Homeland Security Dilemma: Fear, Failure and the Future of American Security (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 1–2, 54–5; John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (New York: Free Press, 2006). 4 “Despite Years of Terror Scares, Public’s Concerns Remain Fairly Steady,” Pew Research Center, December 2, 2010. Partisan identification and gender apparently affect perceptions of security. See, “At 9th Anniversary of 9/11, Sense of Safety Declines,” ABC News/Washington Post Poll, September 9, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/9th-anniversary-911-sense-safetydeclines/story?id=11587752.

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Some aspects of political violence in America All but spared from violence originating outside the United States, Americans developed a rich tradition of homegrown violence. Rioting, tarring and feathering, lynching, mobbing, massacring, along with rebellion and terrorism have all been part of American life since the country’s founding. In colonial times, although sometimes simply an exercise in rowdyism, riots were most often an expression of communal grievances over land, violation of community standards, or imperial intrusion. The colonies experienced anti-debt, antiinoculation, and anti-British riots, among other kinds. Regulators or, as they would later be called, vigilantes, operated in the Carolina back country prior to the Revolution bringing criminals and unpopular officials to justice and punishment. Rarely did such riots result in death or serious physical injury, although tarring and feathering and other abuse could kill. Ritual humiliation of wrongdoers and destruction of property were the aims. In an era of constrained participation in political life, riots were one way for the people to make their views known and defend their communities.1 Rioting (e.g. the Boston Tea Party) helped precipitate the American Revolution. Rioting was widespread through the colonies as resistance to Britain grew but most prevalent in cities. Participants often hid their identities, dressing as Indians or masking their faces. The Boston Massacre was a mob action that led to the deaths of five colonists when British soldiers responded with force. The revolutionary war was also a civil war. Citizen fought citizen, often outside the control of any established authority, British or American.

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Patriots and Tories plundered each other’s property, sometimes burning or pulling down houses stone by stone, and abused and harassed each other physically, often as rumors of treasonous plots and betrayals spread through town or countryside. The term “lynching” supposedly derives from a Virginian named Charles Lynch, for whom the city of Lynchburg, Virginia, is named, who distributed extra-legal justice and punishment among Tories. 2 As the war progressed, the violence grew worse; fatalities and physical destruction increased. In addition to this communal violence, of course, various armed bands on both sides ambushed and attacked each other, independent of or in cooperation with the more organized armed forces they supported. Rioting as part of the resistance to Britain was most often controlled by local community leaders. They limited violence apparently in hopes of increasing support for the patriot cause. Early in the resistance there was no thought of independence and the rioting fit more or less within the traditional prerogatives of a British subject, the kind of rioting that had occurred in Great Britain and in colonial America. As resistance continued and some began to think of independence, limiting violence seemed most likely to build support among those wavering in the colonies and among political figures in Great Britain opposed to British policy. Nationally, the resistance had no formal organization or central authority. It was “an informal network of autonomous”3 Committees of Correspondence in each colony that kept the committees in other colonies informed. Effective in the early stages of the resistance, this network approach proved inadequate for turning resistance into an independence movement, a deficiency that led to the establishment of the Continental Congress. The Congress and the decentralized confederation system it managed proved inadequate for conducting the Revolutionary war and managing the concerns of the newly independent states. It was replaced by a system that centralized power and authority, a process which continued as the years passed. Following the establishment of the federal government, resistance to central authority continued. Shay’s (1786), the Whiskey (1794) and Fries’ (1799) rebellions were similar to the Regulator movement in being examples of a kind of folk tradition of violent resistance to central authority, with Washington assuming the role that London had played. In Maine, these frontier disturbances (in this case over land rights) continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century. Slaves contributed to this tradition by organizing rebellions of their own, Nat Turner’s in 1832 being perhaps the best known. Rioting and mobbing continued as well. In fact, they grew worse in the first decades of the nineteenth century, reaching a peak in the 1830s not surpassed since. The period from “late June through October 21, 1835” contained “a maximum of mob mayhem, in numbers and variety of riot never before or since

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surpassed in the United States.”4 Slavery was the occasion for much of this violence. Mobs attacked abolitionists or slaves suspected of plotting rebellion. Antiabolition rioting occurred in the north and south, although rioting in the south seems generally to have been more fatal than rioting in the north. Riots occurred for reasons not directly related to slavery, however. Supporters of the Whig or Democratic parties ambushed each other’s parades on polling days. Anti-Catholic mobs burned a convent in 1834. One riot occurred over which version of the Bible to use in the schools, Catholic or Protestant. Mormons also suffered at the hands of mobs. Irish workers experienced the fury of the mob on many occasions, as did German immigrants, because they accepted lower wages and took the jobs of established workers. The Irish reciprocated with mob attacks on their enemies, including Blacks, who threatened to take jobs from the Irish. Rioting also targeted gamblers and brothels; occurred over a failed fireworks display; and was resorted to in theaters when patrons disapproved of the production. Rival volunteer fire departments attacked each other. In one noteworthy case, in 1857, rival police departments, one set up by the governor the other by the mayor, both intent on controlling patronage, battled in New York City until the military intervened. These kinds of riots occurred throughout the antebellum period and afterward. In Philadelphia, brotherly love expressed itself in riots involving, among others, Irish immigrants, handloom weavers, volunteer fire companies, and antiabolitionists. The worst rioting was in 1844. It killed 18, injured at least 90, and destroyed “an enormous amount of property.” In New York City, major riots occurred in 1806, 1826, 1834, 1837, 1849, 1855, 1857, 1863, 1870–71, 1874, and 1900 over or involving Irish immigrants, beer, Blacks, the price of bread and flour, abolitionism, the draft, and a labor meeting, among other issues.5 Examining this record of mayhem, historians note several things. Rioting in the antebellum period was more lethal than before. Rioters now fired at their opponents; on a number of occasions they brought cannon to bear. Rioting became less ritualistic and more furious. The intent was no longer to humiliate, for example, as a way to control and reintegrate wayward individuals into the community, but to harm. This change might have been the result of the increasing individualism of American society, as open markets and western lands gave individuals a mobility that broke down the communal identities of earlier years. Community leaders were less likely to be in charge of rioters in the antebellum period than before. The communications revolution (increasing numbers of newspapers and the wide-spread use of telegraphs, added to the mail system) gave abolitionists the opportunity to spread their views, which often led to violence. Better communications also allowed Americans throughout the country to learn quickly about violent outbreaks, which led to demonstrations and speeches occasioning more violence.6 Mob action in

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support of local community norms seems to have decreased, while rioting over immediate personal interests (wages, working conditions) and political issues of national import (slavery, immigration) seem to have increased. Decreasing communal identity led to more violence against persons. It is easier to kill someone you do not know or whose relatives and friends are not one’s neighbors. Also, as the increasing individualism of American life broke communal ties, Americans looked for “affinity” groups to replace their local communities. People identified themselves as Irish or German or Mormon or Catholic and later as members of unions or various farmer alliances. Competition with and animosity from those outside the group helped give these groups an identity; self-defense, a motive for cohesion. Blacks and Irish battled repeatedly as they competed for work. Proponents and opponents of slavery clashed frequently. In later periods, unions and company police fought regularly. A historian of rioting notes that these dynamics were present in America by 1820 and continued to operate until the 1940s, producing “the most gruesome and sanguine [period of] civil strife in American history.”7 Much of this violence was either to enforce the law when formal policing was not available (and not in existence in the United States until about the mid-nineteenth century) or to enforce community norms. Lynching served both purposes. Much of the violence, however, served larger political purposes: to intimidate loyalists and encourage rebels; to suppress abolitionism or to intimidate free Blacks and slaves. The more the violence had a political objective and the more it targeted those not directly involved in the dispute (any Irish, rather than those who were working where others thought they should not, for example), the more it resembled what we today call terrorism. Some of the political violence was carefully organized, although it could always spiral out of control, and sustained. Much of it was more haphazard, if not spontaneous, flaring then fading. Throughout the antebellum period, and later as we will see, Americans seemed caught between their revolutionary origin and the demands of civil life. During the War of 1812, as rioters attacked the office of a newspaper whose pro-British views they did not like, one of them said that “the laws of the land [must] sleep” so that “the laws of nature and reason” could prevail. This was the justification not only for rioting but for all forms of vigilantism: extra-legal violence that claimed to serve justice. This appeal to nature and reason was the birthright, so to speak, of Americans, enshrined in their national birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. It inspired but also frightened them. On more than one occasion, excessive violence cost those enforcing “the laws of nature and reason” the support of the public. In Maine in 1808 and 1809, riotous disputes over land rights led to injuries and several deaths, costing the land rights movement so much public support that

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it crumbled. The killing of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist editor in Illinois in 1837 as he defended his press, helped turn opinion in the north against mob action.8 Riot and rebellion were important kinds of political violence in antebellum America but not the only kind. A riot involves a small number of people (at least a dozen in some definitions) in violence measured in hours or at most days. Rebellions involve more people, hundreds or thousands, in violence that lasts months, if not years. Toward the end of the antebellum period, the slavery issue produced a kind of political violence carried out by small groups but lasting longer than a riot. John Brown epitomizes this development and brings us closer to what we now commonly call terrorism. Brown became convinced that he could free the slaves by leading them in a rebellion. Once the slaves stood up for themselves, he reasoned, Whites would respect their humanity. His sons having preceded him to the Kansas territory, where proand antislavery forces were battling over whether the territory would enter the Union free or slave, Brown followed them in 1855. From this point until his execution in 1859, Brown worked for the antislavery cause, raising money to buy weapons for antislavery militias and organizing his own small force to carry out attacks against slavery supporters. In response to South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks nearly caning to death antislavery senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor and a pro-slavery attack on antislavery Lawrence, inroduced into text Kansas, Brown led his troop to a pro-slavery settlement where they hacked to death five men. Fleeing Kansas, Brown went to Boston, where abolitionists hid him in the house of someone not known as an abolitionist. After laying low for a bit, Brown set out to raise money for a grand scheme to use the Appalachian mountains as a hideout and rallying point to which slaves could flee. To start this rebellion, Brown decided to raid the armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, with a small band of men. Brown had some financial support from a group of wealthy Bostonian abolitionists called the Secret Six. Fundraising, however, proved difficult, as did gathering volunteers. Brown’s plans were vague (as secrecy required) and his manner odd and a bit frightening. Public appearances in churches and other places often led to a minimal response. Still seeking funds and support, Brown returned to Kansas and led a raid into Missouri, freeing 11 slaves and killing a slave owner. This venture improved his fundraising. Returning east, he made final preparations for the raid on Harper’s Ferry, which took place in October 1859. Cut off by local militia and eventually by federal troops (commanded by Robert E. Lee), Brown and the surviving members of the raiding party were captured (J. E. B. Stuart was the arresting officer). Brown, two of whose sons were shot and killed during the raid, was tried a few weeks later and hung on December 2. In his brief

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captivity, Brown succeeded in publicizing his cause, presenting himself as a martyr for the antislavery movement. To the extent that Brown could make his actions understandable, if not appealing, he did so by appropriating the two most powerful ideas in antebellum America, the revolutionary doctrine of the Declaration of Independence and the tenets of Christianity. On more than one occasion, Brown justified his actions by appealing to the golden rule, once declaring: “I believe in the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. I think they both mean the same thing.” Indeed, in 1858, Brown wrote a Declaration of Liberty for slaves and their supporters, apparently unfinished, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, and included a version of the golden rule. Paraphrasing the Declaration, quoting the Bible (Mt. 7:2) and Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18), and ending with an apocalyptic flourish entirely absent from the original, Brown’s remarkable Declaration displays the ideas that legitimated his violence, at least in his own and his supporters’ minds.9 Of course, these ideas do not by themselves explain Brown’s actions. A thoughtful analysis of Brown argues that his violent acts are best explained as the intersection of: national-antislavery politics; the struggle in Kansas over whether it should be a slave or free state, which was a part of these politics; a post-millennial religious culture (the belief that Christ returns to earth after human effort brings about a transformation of politics and society); local struggles and conflicts in Kansas between slave and free state advocates; Brown’s family connections, his position as a patriarch, and his relationship with his father; and Brown’s own personality.10 To this mix of politics, religion, and psychology, we might add some other items. Brown moved in the world of abolitionism and used that network of support to develop his ideas and further his plans. Brown would not have been able to do what he did without the money of his abolitionist friends and others, whose wealth supported him directly or indirectly. Brown’s activities thus presuppose the liberal politics and free markets that allowed individuals to create and hold wealth, as well as to discuss and publicize slavery’s role in the otherwise liberal political economy that enriched their lives. The transportation and communication revolutions of antebellum America also had a role in Brown’s activities. They contributed to: the creation of the wealth that supported him; helped create the kind of mobile society that brought large numbers to Kansas and other western settlements; allowed Brown to move between these settlements and his supporters in the east; and publicized his acts. This last point is worth considering in more detail. Brown was not educated and did not possess a compelling prose style. In pleading his case to various audiences, however, he developed some skill in justifying his actions. He reached his greatest audience, however, through the new media

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of the penny dailies that proliferated in antebellum America. For example, a correspondent for the New York Times “embedded” with Brown prior to his raid into Missouri and then publicized it. Brown’s journey to Canada through hard winter weather with the slaves freed in the Missouri raid, avoiding federal troops and fighting off a Missouri posse, “created a national sensation.” Brown took advantage of his publicity by publishing an article that compared his restrained raid into Missouri with the greater violence of pro-slavery raiders into Kansas. Following the “terrorist spectacular” of the raid on Harper’s Ferry, he commanded the news for weeks “as no one had before.” Reporters rushed to interview him. He took advantage of the attention, presented his cause, and defined himself as a martyr to it. Brown’s abolitionist efforts were never more than “undermanned, shoestring, mostly paper conspiracy” but his ability to command and manipulate the media allowed him to become something greater, to the terror of some, satisfaction of others, and fascination of all.11 Brown represents a kind of violence different from what had prevailed in America. He is in fact a kind of precursor of the terrorism of the early twentyfirst century. Without too much stretching, we may fit him into a familiar profile. Brown received support through nongovernmental organizations; received money from wealthy individuals; burned with religious zeal; came to see himself as a martyr; and committed stunning acts of violence. More tellingly, it is possible to see Brown as someone caught between older communal values and a newer emphasis on individualism. Brown did not believe that he had achieved what he should achieve by the old standard but did not fit easily in the new world.12 The idea of someone being caught between two worlds, not fitting easily in either, is one typical way of explaining the turn to violence, particularly in the case of those who in their unease identify with a religious tradition they feel is threatened.13 However successful educationally or professionally, those who do not fit in may come to feel marginalized. In these circumstances, religion may provide a sense of belonging, as it has for many Catholics, Mormons, Methodists, Baptists, and others in the United States. If that religion sees itself as threatened, it may inspire violent forms of protection. Even martyrdom for the sake of the religion may be appealing. With regard to Brown in particular, assuming the mantle of martyrdom was a way to transcend the impossible situation in which he found himself, a way of redeeming his failure to achieve what he expected of himself and his country. For him, the sin of slavery was an evil that challenged his duty as a Christian to prepare a way for Christ’s return. Among the remarkable aspects of Brown’s story is that after having committed his atrocities in Kansas and Missouri, he was able to travel around the country, make public appearances, raise money, and develop his plans for

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the raid on Harper’s Ferry without being arrested. He did take some minimal precautions but he never seems to have been in danger of arrest. One reason he was able to move around so freely was the help he received from his various supporters. Another was weak policing. Uniformed police as we now know them did not exist in the United States until just before the Civil War, when they developed out of the medieval institution of constables and night watchmen that had prevailed since colonial times. The transition to this system occurred slowly at first in Boston (1838–59), New York (1843–53), and Philadelphia (1850–61), subsequently spreading to other cities. By the early twentieth century it was fully in place at about the number of police per capita that has prevailed since. Concern over riots and disorder was one reason for the creation of the police but they quickly picked up a number of social welfare functions (looking for lost children, housing transients, or the homeless) and proved incapable of handling riots. Crime control or prevention was not a priority. There was no national police force at this time, of course. Marshalls or sheriffs and posses, another ancient institution, operated in rural areas and the territories. The military was a last resort force of order. Brown moved and operated as he did because there was little to prevent him from doing so. America was a notably uncontrolled sort of place at this time. A drunk wandered into the White House in 1840 and spent the night there undisturbed.14 During the vast bloodletting of the Civil War, Americans continued to engage in extra-legal violence. As they had during the Revolutionary War, partisan groups rode the countryside killing and looting. “The guerrilla conflict in all its guises—Unionist and rebel guerrillas, partisan rangers, lone bushwhackers, guerrilla hunters, deserter bands, and outlaw gangs—made the war a far bloodier affair than the armies alone could have done.” Supposedly acting in support of the Union or Confederate cause, much of this violence was little different from banditry in intent or effect. The violence started early. Soon after Lincoln’s election, abolitionists hung pro-slavery Kansans. Militias formed in South Carolina to attack Unionists and any Blacks who appeared threatening. On April 19, 1861, a week after the attack on Fort Sumter, southern supporters and local riff-raff in Baltimore attacked a Massachusetts regiment traveling to Washington. Seventeen died and almost a hundred were injured in the fighting. Violence continued in Maryland during the war, as it did in other border states, as southern sympathizers attacked Unionists, sabotaged army provisions, and spied for the Confederacy.15 Endemic in antebellum America, rioting occurred in many urban areas as the Civil War continued. Rioters attacked southern or northern sympathizers, destroyed newspaper offices whose publications contradicted their opinions, and registered their opposition to the draft and the presence of freedmen or escaped slaves. Much of this violence pitted Irish immigrants against Blacks,

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since they continued to compete for the same jobs. In Cincinnati, in 1862, a relationship between an Irish girl and a Black stevedore provoked Irish stevedores resentful over job competition to attack Blacks, who responded in kind. The worst rioting of the period was in New York City in 1863. A limited demonstration against the draft led to more violent protests against Blacks and Republicans. Police were attacked because they had rounded up deserters. Rioters burned, looted, and lynched, attacking the wealthy, Republicans, and working class Blacks over three days in July. A police telegraph system reported mob violence in various parts of the city but the police force was not sufficient to deal with the disorder. Arriving from the battlefield of Gettysburg, military units eventually restored order, battling the armed mobs with cannons, bullets, and bayonets. Hundreds were wounded and killed, and much property destroyed.16 Following the war, conflicts between Unionists and Confederates, Republicans and Democrats continued in the south. As elections returned to the region, contestants could fight by ballot as well as bullet. Often, ballot called forth bullet, especially after the initial elections brought Blacks and their Republican supporters into office. In response, southerners formed militias to reestablish White rule. The Ku Klux Klan operated across the south. The Klan, however, was not centrally organized. It operated through local initiative, with various local Klan organizations sharing only tactics and the common purpose of reestablishing White rule. Other localized organizations included the Southern Cross, the Knights of the White Camelia, the White League, the White Brotherhood, and the Red Shirts. Populated with Confederate veterans, these organizations were frequently led by former commanders of the Confederate Army. They were in fact continuing the Civil War by other means. Having lost on the battlefield, Confederates fought on using terrorism. Leaders of the Confederacy had declined the opportunity to fight a guerrilla war after Appomattox but southerners made that choice for themselves. In addition to these organizations, much of the violence inflicted on Blacks and Republicans was carried out by unnamed loosely structured groups of vigilantes. Across the south, various agricultural and democratic clubs, formed after the war to control the Freedmen’s labor, became rifle clubs in order to stop Blacks voting and to scare off Republican and Black officeholders. These groups formed quickly and operated efficiently because they were often the continuation of the secessionist militias and Confederate Army units that the militias had in turn become. Organizers of the violence took advantage of technology, using the telegraph to spread word of a raid or to call for reinforcements.17 Blacks fought back, forming their own militias and organizing as they could. Some governors were able to limit the violence and even succeed against the Klan and other groups, sometimes by suspending normal judicial processes

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to deal with the violence. Habeas corpus was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina in 1871, for example. In the immediate postwar years, the federal military intervened and the federal government tried and convicted those involved in some of the attacks on Blacks. Four hundred and sixty-five were convicted in Mississippi in late 1871 and early 1872, although they received suspended sentences. These legal measures were sufficient to force the Klan in Mississippi to operate clandestinely. Federal efforts also included the use of detectives (borrowed from the Secret Service since the newly formed Department of Justice [1870] did not have any) to investigate violations of federal law in the south. The detective work included penetrating the Klan under the cover, for example, of being a recently arrived Northerner who favored White rule. Detectives also collected intelligence from Black informants. These efforts largely broke up the Klan in both Mississippi and South Carolina.18 Over time, however, support in the north for reconstructing the south faded and the federal government withdrew. Blacks and Republicans were overwhelmed by violence; Reconstruction ended; White rule returned. Terrorism in the post–Civil War south occurred neither everywhere nor constantly. It was an important factor for the failure of Reconstruction, however. No reliable estimate of the total killed in the Reconstruction violence is available. One estimate mentions 1,000 killed in Louisiana leading up to the presidential election of 1868. Violence after that worsened, especially as other elections neared. Newspaper and other reports suggest hundreds of attacks each causing tens of casualties and fatalities across Mississippi in 1874 and 1876. Attacks in other states may have caused similar casualties. There were, of course, a number of assassinations and lynchings. To justify their violence, the “Redeemers” of the south appealed, as John Brown had done, to Christianity and the Declaration of Independence, although they ignored the self-evidence of human equality. According to the Redeemers, as their long list of grievances demonstrated, Washington was now oppressing the south as London had once oppressed the colonies. Adopting a revivalist mode, the Redeemers spoke of their crusade to save the south, which was suffering “Egyptian bondage.” Republicans who returned to the Democratic Party were said to be “crossing Jordan.”19 As the violence continued, the number of Freedmen and Republicans voting plummeted. In all, the violence deprived Blacks and Republicans of their rights to assemble, speak, and vote, and often to life, liberty, and property, to say nothing of the pursuit of happiness. Although more lethal than most of the violent outbreaks Americans had previously experienced, the violence of Reconstruction was similar to what had gone before in that it often included parades and spectacles intended to shame those who deviated from the prevailing moral standard of the White

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community by associating with Blacks or taking up the cause of the Freedmen. Violence was an integral part of these demonstrations. Above all, the purpose of the violence was political. The Klan and other groups, whether organized or ad hoc, were “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party,” whose purpose was to destroy the Republican Party, control Black labor, and assure White supremacy.20 Carried out clandestinely, often in disguise, targeting noncombatants, intended not just to harm its immediate victims but to intimidate all Republicans and Blacks, this political violence fits easily into our understanding of terrorism. Support in the north for Reconstruction declined for a number of reasons. One was the economic depression that began in 1873. Voters turned on the Republicans in the 1874 election, bringing the Democrats to power in the House of Representatives and undermining support for federal efforts in the south. This removed restraints on violence in the south, as economic conditions helped provoke conflict elsewhere. As the Depression lingered during the decade, labor unrest increased leading to a series of violent incidents, the largest of which was the Railroad strike of 1877. Beginning with one railroad that cut wages and then spreading to others, the strike led to demonstrations, rioting, and violence in a number of cities across the country, as strikers battled police, state militias, and federal troops. The Railroad strike inaugurated a period of labor violence that lasted into the 1930s. In addition to numerous smaller incidents, significant episodes included: the Southwestern Railroad strike of 1886; the Homestead strike in 1892; the Pullman strike in 1894; the Latimer massacre of miners in 1897; the Ludlow massacre in 1914; and the West Virginia mine war of 1921. In the Ludlow massacre, Colorado militia fired on miners, who counterattacked. Two hundred died, including women and children asphyxiated in a fire set by militia. Federal troops finally suppressed the violence, as they did in many of the other cases.21 Other incidents of labor violence included: the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886, which killed seven policemen (whose anniversary was commemorated with two bombings in Chicago in 1969 and 1970 by the Weather Underground of a statue of a policeman); the assassination of Frank Steunenberg, governor of Idaho in 1905, after he helped break a strike by the Western Federation of Miners; the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910 that killed 21 in the midst of labor agitation and organizing; the bombing campaign carried out by the International Association of Bridge Structural Iron Workers from 1906 to 1911 against bridge building companies and others; and the simultaneous explosion of eight bombs in American cities on June 2, 1919. 22 This listing of events does not give any sense of the dynamics of these labor struggles. To get that sense, consider the Mollie Maguires, who conducted a terrorism campaign in the coal fields of Pennsylvania. The original Mollies

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were a secret society that arose in certain counties in Ireland to resist violently changes to the traditional use of land. Immigrants from Ireland brought the tradition to the coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania, reviving it to redress their grievances. The Mollies began a campaign of assassination against coal company officials during the Civil War. When a union developed in the late 1860s that improved working conditions and pay, the Mollies ceased their activities. After a railroad company bought up the mines and broke the union by resisting a long strike, Molly activity revived in the mid-1870s. In response to the increased level of violence, the railroad enlisted the help of the Pinkerton detective agency, which used an Irishman to penetrate the Mollies. His testimony and that of informants led to the conviction of 17, most of whom were hanged. Following the hangings, Molly activity subsided.23 The Mollies combined traditional redress of communal grievances with modern labor agitation. Neither suited their circumstances. Eastern Pennsylvania was not Ireland. Outside of their own group, there was no communal way of life into which their Irish traditions fit. Nor did union activity fit into the American legal structure in post–Civil War America. Common law had viewed labor organizations as illegal conspiracies, a view that changed beginning in the 1840s. At the time the Mollies were active, however, the law did not recognize a right to organize or strike. “Even union advocates viewed organization as a fruit of victorious struggle rather than as a right.” The struggle and sometimes violent conflict continued for several decades. Owners could use any legal means to prevent their workers organizing, including their own armed guards. “Under such circumstances, a labor dispute became in the most literal sense a call to arms on both sides. . . . Troops and armed workers and armies of company goons marched, bivouacked, deployed, and exchanged fire in open warfare. Murder, arson, and dynamiting took their toll.”24 By one count, there were 160 or more cases in which Federal or state troops intervened in strikes and 700 in which deaths occurred.25 The conflict did not ease until changes in the law helped labor–management relations in the 1930s (e.g. the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Labor Relations or Wagner Act). The Acts themselves expressed the public’s sense that unions were a legitimate way for labor to defend its interests. The case of the Mollies exemplifies the general pattern in which effective union activity reduced the need for violence. For the Mollies, terrorism was inversely related to the union: when a union was possible, terrorism became less likely. This pattern appears again in the case of labor organizers in Chicago. At first, they organized politically and worked to pass laws limiting the work day to eight or ten hours or ran for office. As the laws were ignored and election results subverted, some despaired of achieving reform through the political system and turned to violence. They did so, like others before

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them, quoting the Declaration of Independence, particularly its “justification for armed resistance.”26 Typically, the more workers were involved in politics, the less they used violence. Political representation or responsiveness made violence unnecessary. Police, for example, are so rooted in their communities that they are likely to respond in ways compatible with community prejudices and viewpoints. If workers were part of the community and had political weight, they were less likely to suffer from policing that took the owners side.27 Violence still accompanied labor–management strife but bringing unions within the processes of law offered a nonviolent means to address disputes. Labor violence is now nothing like what it was in the 60-year period between 1870 and 1930. Violence involving labor was not the only kind of violence present in post– Civil War America. Inspired by the struggle for independence in Ireland, Irish immigrants in the United States organized themselves as the Fenians, a secret brotherhood, and raised money to fight the British. As a way of attacking Great Britain, they organized three invasions of Canada from the United States (1866, 1870, 1871), all of which failed to accomplish anything. One Fenian in New Jersey tried unsuccessfully to develop a submarine to attack British ships in American waters. After this failure, the Fenians organized a dynamite bombing campaign in Great Britain that peaked during 1883–85. As the example of the submarine indicates, the Fenians were much taken with technology. They speculated about using balloons to cruise above London, destroying the city by dropping bombs. Like others, they saw technology, particularly dynamite, as giving immense power to the poor and the few to battle the rich and the many and believed, therefore, that technology would transform warfare and politics. Having assumed that a broad-armed insurrection was the only way to fight the British, some Fenians came to believe they could bomb their way to victory. Dynamite, invented in 1866, fascinated not just the Fenians. It was a fascination of the age, as popular journals published articles instructing readers on how to make explosives and put together bombs. Mixing up explosive mixtures at home was not uncommon. As parcel bombs and other improvised explosive devices proliferated, journals began to reconsider this publication policy. The Fenians mistook the power of the new technology, however. Having failed in their attacks on Canada, in submarine warfare, and in their bombing campaign, the Fenians in the United States had disbanded by the end of the 1880s. Contributing to their decline were the internal disagreements that arose over the morality and efficacy of the dynamite bombs.28 Occurring simultaneously and sometimes intermingled with labor violence was violence by anarchists, most of which occurred between 1880 and 1920. In addition to the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, notable

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examples of anarchist violence included the attempted assassination of industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892; bombings in New York City in 1908; San Francisco in 1916 (10 killed, 40 injured); and Milwaukee, Wisconsin (9 policemen killed in 1917); a letter bomb campaign in 1919 (37 bombs addressed to important people, such as US senators); and the bombing of the House of Morgan on Wall Street in 1920, killing 38 and injuring 143.29 Like many that were to follow, this bomb contained metal fragments to increase its damage. The anarchists who operated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were sometimes homegrown (McKinley’s assassin, for example) and sometimes immigrants (Alexander Berkman, Henry Clay Frick’s attempted assassin). The immigrants added a transnational component to American violence because they were part of an international movement. The anarchists use of dynamite, picking up where the Fenians left off, added an advanced (for the time) technological element. It was no longer necessary to organize a mob to raze a building stone by stone, as in Colonial times. One or two people could now destroy a whole building by themselves. This anarchist violence, the strike-sponsoring activities of the labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Russian Revolution contributed to the “Red Scare” of 1919–20, which featured police raids and laws restricting speech and political activity. Although labor and anarchist violence were intermingled and, from the viewpoint of many owners, politicians, and journalists, indistinguishable, they were different. They differed in purpose and method. Labor violence was part of a struggle to get into the system; anarchist violence was an effort to destroy it. While some workers read Marx and believed in social revolution and the destruction of capitalism and thus shared a revolutionary intent with the anarchists, most did not. Most saw themselves as demanding the respect and justice they believed the American tradition taught them was their due. Evidence of this, an analyst of industrial violence notes, is that photographic and written evidence reveals “that the workers picketed, paraded and/or fought under the American flag,” while “European strikers often forsook their national colors for the red flag of social revolution or the black flag of anarchism.”30 While it is not the case that American workers always marched under the American flag, the contrast with Europe is still valid. Socialist and communist parties did not have the support in the United States that they had in Europe. Further evidence that labor violence was largely about getting into the system was the subsidence of this violence as the American system began to accommodate workers;31 meanwhile anarchist violence has persisted. Access to and participation in the system, not its destruction, was the goal of labor. As to method, it is important to note that most labor violence arose in conjunction with organized and public demonstrations. Battles with

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police, militia, federal troops, and company guards took place in and around public demonstrations. We have noted some exceptions to this rule above. On occasion, a particular union at a particular time, for example, would use clandestine violence. For anarchists, on the other hand, such violence was the norm. Unions relied on numbers, on the solidarity of workers to give laboring men and women political power. Again, this tactic suited their purpose: to join the established order. Anarchists more often acted alone or in small groups. The representative violence of anarchism was the assassination of a head of state or key politician or industrialist and the dynamite bomb. One anarchist leader declared: “dynamite is the diffusion of power. It is democratic; it makes everybody equal.”32 The new lethal technology of dynamite gave anarchists power, or so they thought, and allowed them to spurn mass action, essential to the labor movement, a wholly political form of protest incompatible with their revolutionary intent. As immigration increased, violence involving ethnic groups also increased. Czechs, Poles, Italians, Chinese, and others took up the pioneering efforts of the Irish, serving as targets and, often, fighting back. In the later nineteenth century, as Slavs replaced the Irish in Pennsylvania’s mines, the violence continued. Immigrant women participated in the violence, for example, bringing various domestic implements to bear on strikebreakers. As these examples indicate, immigrants were involved in labor violence but they were also involved in purely immigrant violence, as those already in place attacked the newcomers. The Chinese bore the brunt of these attacks but other national groups, such as the Greeks and Indians, suffered as well. An anti-Italian riot occurred in New Orleans in 1891, triggered by suspected Mafia activity. When some alleged Mafia members were acquitted, local notables called a meeting and appealed, as an antebellum rioter had before them, to a basic American conception of natural justice: “when the law is powerless the rights delegated by the people are relegated back to the people, and they are justified in doing that which the courts have failed to do.”33 Eleven Italians still in jail died in the ensuing riot, some shot, some lynched. Sometimes violence occurred because immigrants carried on disputes from the homeland (Irish Catholics and Protestants) or found that life in America caused new disputes (traditional and secular Jews). Fear of strangers, competition for jobs, defense of community norms, religious distinctions, and political differences contributed in one way or another to almost all of this violence. Often these elements combined in ways that leave observers still puzzling over a precise cause. For example, a riot in Cincinnati in 1884 involving German Americans that killed at least 35 people seems to have involved a mix of ethnic, vigilante, and economic motives; however, no one is quite sure. 34

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Throughout the post–Civil War period, violence continued against Blacks. The years 1889–1919 saw the highest level of lynching in American history (2,535 cases by one count in this period). As in Reconstruction, Whites seen as sympathetic to Blacks or out of step with the community’s moral code also suffered (653 were lynched in this period; overall, about 27% of the 4,742 lynching victims between 1882 and 1964 were White). The decades before World War I saw serious urban racial riots as well. The first of these occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. Another occurred in Atlanta in 1906. As Blacks migrated, riots occurred in East St Louis, Illinois (1917), Chicago (1919), and Tulsa (1921), among other places. In the latter case, the riot started when Blacks came to the defense of a Black threatened with lynching because he was accused (wrongly, it turned out) of harassing a White woman. Whites attacked the Blacks and, as the Blacks fought back, in larger numbers attacked the entire Black community over three days. Reports indicated that more than 200 Blacks and 50 Whites died and that machine guns were used in the course of the fighting.35 If labor violence was largely about getting workers into the American political and economic system, racial violence was largely about keeping Blacks out. The rioting in Wilmington, for example, was part of an effort to remove from office Populist-Republican officeholders, who had allowed Blacks increased political power. Racial violence in the first decades of the twentieth century coincided with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The favorable depiction of the Klan in the movie “Birth of a Nation” (1915) and an effective promotional scheme, which allowed recruiters and organizers to make a lot of money, stimulated Klan growth. This new Klan was anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, and anti-communist, as well as anti-Black. It became a national movement in the 1920s, operating even in New England and the West, but soon started to decline because of the criminal behavior of its leadership and a backlash against its violence and intimidation. Although there were numerous far right organizations in the United States in the 1930s (Khaki Shirts, White Shirts, and Silver Shirts, among others) modeled after foreign fascist movements, they committed few acts of violence. The Black Legion, an offshoot of the Klan, operating largely in Michigan against labor organizers, communists, and those it deemed social misfits, was an exception, over 50 of its members eventually “charged with terrorist activities and murder.” The resulting trials led to the collapse of the organization by the end of the 1930s. Lynching declined in the 1920s and 1930s, the number falling to single digits by the middle of the latter decade.36 Americans responded to the violence around them by organizing to protect themselves. Individuals kept their guns loaded and joined with their neighbors to protect their homes and families. Freedmen, immigrants, workers,

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and factory owners all created armed militias and deployed them as they could. Businessmen and factory owners in Chicago, for example, established a militia, later legalized, which they called the First Regiment of the Illinois national guard. Private police forces and guards multiplied. Rural areas had their own organizations. One of these was the Anti-Horse Thief Association, which began in Kansas after the Civil War and spread throughout the Midwest and the West. It eventually turned into a fraternal and reform organization, although never entirely giving up its purpose of catching thieves to supplement rather than circumvent the law.37 Circumventing the law was the purpose of the various vigilante groups that operated throughout the country. Uniquely American, vigilantism “arose in response to a typical American problem: the absence of effective law and order in a frontier region.”38 Hundreds of vigilante organizations have operated throughout American history. Vigilantism, and all of the other popular protective and enforcement efforts that took place outside the control of established governance, found justification in the idea of popular sovereignty, as the New Orleans civic leader argued when encouraging extra-legal justice against the suspected Mafiosi. If the people were the ultimate source of political and legal authority, how could it be wrong for them to exercise it directly?39 It is impossible to know whether vigilantism led to more injustice than it corrected but it evidently resulted in injustice. Not all of the response to violence in America was extra-legal, of course. As we noted, urban police forces were the first organized legal response. Police were at first armed only with clubs, which were thought to be effective for controlling mobs. Eventually, the police carried weapons. In Chicago, this happened unofficially, as the police responded to increased violence, as citizens did, by acting on their assumed right to protect themselves. The unofficial weapons were at first concealed, only official and openly carried decades later. As the police proved unable to deal with rioting and other kinds of violence, especially the labor violence of the later nineteenth century, states deployed their militias. These organizations too proved inept at dealing with violence and were eventually replaced by or upgraded into national guard units. “The rapid development of the national guard system in the 1880s was largely a response to the great urban labor riots of 1877. . . . By 1892, the system was complete throughout the nation.” To go along with the new units, local leaders constructed armories designed to look like castles to overawe the riotous lower orders and serve as a base of operations in times of civil disorder. After the Haymarket violence, civic leaders in Chicago donated land so that the federal government would build an army fort near the city. Fort Sheridan was finished in 1887. Troops from the Fort deployed to Chicago during the Pullman Strike in 1894. States also created state police forces. Pennsylvania was the first to do so, in 1905. These law enforcement units

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and the local police, which continued to grow in number and began to escape control by political partisans, rendered private detectives, most famously those of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, redundant for public service.40 None of these enhancements of state power occurred without controversy. The transition from constables and watchmen to uniformed police, for example, met with the objections that a uniformed police force was too expensive, too much like a standing army, the historic enemy of citizens’ liberties, and undemocratic. Police uniforms were like military uniforms, yet simpler. They carried distinctions of rank, as military uniforms did, symbolizing that the police stood apart from other citizens and had their own organizational structure, but were not as different from civilian dress as military uniforms and thus, presumably, not as threatening as the military’s. Still, some, including police officers, found the uniforms, badges and rank insignia to be antiegalitarian and thus un-American. As police numbers increased and capabilities improved, the rise of the uniformed police was part of a long-term movement from personal, communal, and decentralized power and authority to a bureaucratic, statist, and centralized kind. The same movement occurred in the military sphere. The move from state militia to a national guard improved training and capabilities, while reducing inappropriate personal or political influence, but also severed the connection between America’s reserve military capability and its towns and communities.41 As America’s population, diversity, and urbanization increased at an astounding rate, inevitably these changes molded the character of American republicanism. Given the current importance ascribed to communications and decentralized, networked forms of organization, it is worth noting that the communications revolution of the nineteenth century led to increased centralization (and thus hierarchy, see Chapter 6) and was a significant part of the state’s growing power at the expense of individual and local autonomy. In New York City for most of the nineteenth century, for example, civil administration was difficult, if not impossible, because there was no way to efficiently communicate with all parts of the city. The government and its agencies could not easily know what was going on throughout the city and had a hard time imposing their directives. As the police had a telegraph system, used as we noted during the draft riots in 1863, they were capable to some degree of acting in an organized fashion over the entire metropolitan area; however, the police force was far from being thoroughly centralized. As communications improved throughout the city, the government was able to increase its power and effectiveness, centralizing control in ways that had not been possible before. Increased communication brought more information to the government, and with this increased knowledge came increased power.42 This process of increasing and centralizing power through improving information collection, analysis, and

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communication continued through the twentieth century. It continues into the twenty-first century with the deployment of surveillance cameras by police in cities and military systems that aspire to comprehensive surveillance of urban areas.43 Although now aimed at targets overseas, there is no technical reason why these powerful military surveillance technologies could not be used in the United States, vastly enhancing the power of the state. Although the power of America’s governments and their coercive capabilities increased in the 70 years following the Civil War, this was not the major reason why rioting and other forms of political violence decreased during this period. The principal reason was the ability of the American political-economic system to absorb those contending for a place in it. In various ways, immigrant groups and workers ultimately found political representation and, especially after World War II, shared the benefits of economic growth. The ongoing exception was Black Americans but even they suffered less from lynching, if not discrimination, by the 1930s. The decline of violence over labor and ethnic issues ushered in approximately 30 years in which terrorism and other forms of political violence were hardly present in American life, making this period one of the least violent in American history.44 Rioting still occurred but less frequently. Race riots, for example, occurred in Detroit (1943), killing 34, three quarters of them Black, and in Harlem, New York (1935, 1943). Rioting against Mexicans, the so-called Zoot Suit Riots, occurred in Los Angeles in 1943. These decades of relative domestic calm made the revival of violence after World War II more shocking. Not only did domestic terrorism return, Americans also experienced what would become sustained targeting overseas by terrorists. Domestically, the Klan returned to activity in the 1950s, as the civil rights movement gained strength. “Klansmen were responsible for most of the more that 130 bombings that took place in the South from January 1, 1956 to June 1, 1963 and were implicated in dozens of shootings, hangings and mutilations.”45 Some of the more notorious attacks and killings included the bombing of a Black church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, which killed four young girls, and the murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner also in 1963. New groups also began to operate in the United States after World War II. In 1950, Puerto Ricans who wanted independence for their island tried to assassinate President Truman. Colleagues attacked the House of Representatives in 1954, wounding five Congressmen. These were the first incidents in a long campaign of violence that resumed in 1969, “peaked in the late 1970s and then declined erratically” continuing into the 1990s. By one count, the campaign included “365 bombings, ten shootings, six robberies, and two rocket attacks.” Targeting mostly property and symbols of American power, the Puerto Rican nationalists still

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killed at least 18 on the island and the mainland.46 Puerto Rican nationalism was an example of the self-styled, anti-imperialist violence characteristic of post–World War II international politics. Following anarchism, it is another example of a transnational movement associated with terrorist attacks in the United States. Nationalist anti-imperialism led to attacks on American diplomats, military personnel, businessmen, and tourists around the world. None of these attacks was considered relevant to what we now call homeland security because no one believed that those carrying them out had the motive or means to attack inside the United States. As these attacks occurred, Americans continued to deal with the resurgence of terrorism and political violence in the United States. Much of what the Klan and other White supremacist groups did might now be labeled “hate crimes.” They were acts of violence committed against someone because of his or her race or religion without any political objective in mind. Much of the violence was also or simultaneously terrorism: violence intended to achieve a political objective, for example, halting or slowing the civil rights movement through intimidation. Some Blacks responded to this violence and more general discrimination as their ancestors had by forming armed groups. The Black Panthers, formed in 1966, were the most notorious of these. In the late 1960s, police and the Panthers were involved in 12 shootouts, leading to the death of 8 Panthers and 2 policemen. The Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Panthers, was formed by those who believed in attacking the police. (The Black Panthers claimed to use violence only in selfdefense.) The Black Liberation Army ambushed and killed 26 Police officers between 1970 and 1973. The 1960s also saw a return to urban rioting, with disturbances occurring in a number of cities. The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence counted 239 riots between 1963 and 1968 occurring in 125 cities. These included riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. The rioting produced 8,000 injuries and 190 deaths. It was so widespread in part because television spread knowledge of the riots and methods of rioting.47 In addition to racially motivated violence, and partly in opposition to it, leftwing violence became prominent again in the later 1960s. Some protests against the war in Vietnam turned violent and became in effect riots but the largest upsurge in left-wing violence was carried out by small groups acting clandestinely. In 1969, members of Students for a Democratic Society decided to use terrorism to fight American imperialism. Known as the Weathermen or the Weather Underground, the group carried out a series of bombings into the early 1970s before it faded away. The Weathermen were a small part of left-wing violence. According to one count, between January 1969 and April

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1970, new left or anti-imperialist groups carried out about 2,800 attacks.48 Some members of the Weather Underground combined with remnants of the Black Liberation Army to form the May 19 Communist Organization. This group for the most part conducted robberies. In one of these, of an armored car north of New York City in 1981, the group killed a guard. An ensuing police chase led to the death of two policemen and to the arrest of four of the group’s members. Other anti-imperialist or left-wing terrorist action continued at very low levels into the early 1980s.49 By and large, leftists and anti-imperialists targeted property, not people. The Weather Underground is credited with the bombings of the US Senate (March 1, 1971) and the US State Department building (January 29, 1975), neither of which produced injuries. Leftist antiimperialist violence did cause a number of deaths, however, including that of Robert Fassnacht, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, and the father of a three-year-old boy and twin one-year-old girls, killed in a bombing of a mathematics building to protest the Vietnam War in August 1970. The 1970s witnessed a variety of terrorist attacks in the United States. Some representative incidents include the hijacking of a flight from New York’s LaGuardia airport by Croatian nationalists; the bombing of the Hilton hotel in New York City by Puerto Rican nationalists, following a speech by the governor of Puerto Rico; a series of attacks carried out against corporate targets by the leftist New World Liberation Front; the first attack on an abortion clinic, February 23, 1977; the takeover of the B’nai B’rith offices in Washington, DC by a group of Hanafi Muslims, who demanded that Black Muslims accused of attacking them be turned over to them by the police and that the movie “Mohammed, Messenger of God” no longer be shown, an attack that produced 1 fatality and injured 19; the first attack from the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski), who eventually carried out 16 letter bombings between 1978 and 1995; an attack by Ku Klux Klan members on a “Death to the Klan” rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, organized by the Communist Workers party, that killed 5 and wounded 11; and a series of attacks against Blacks and “race mixers” between 1977 and 1980 by White racist Joseph Paul Franklin, whose exploits William Pierce, a neo-Nazi leader, used as the basis for his novel Hunter.50 Domestic terrorism peaked in the mid-1970s but then started declining, a trend that continued through the 1990s and into the new century.51 Urban rioting also decreased from the peak of the 1960s and became infrequent, certainly compared with other periods in American history. Overseas, the trends were different. The number of international terrorist attacks against Americans grew steadily from the late 1960s (from 71 in 1968 to 225 in 1972).52 There were more international terrorist attacks in 1978 than in any year since recordkeeping had begun in 1968. More attacks occurred in 1980 and 1981 than in

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any other years except 1972 and 1978. More of these attacks were causing casualties than earlier in the 1970s, and they targeted Americans more often than any other nationality. In 1980, two out of every five international terrorist attacks were against American persons or property. None of this terrorism posed a threat to Americans in the United States. Foreign terrorists or their sympathizers raised money in the United States and purchased weapons here but only rarely carried out an operation. When they did, it was often aimed at their foreign enemy, not at the United States or its citizens. For example, the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide carried out seven attacks in the United States from 1980 to 1982 against Turkish targets. But even counting such attacks, terrorism in the United States was decreasing. As the Reagan administration settled into office in 1981, 33 terrorist attacks occurred in the United States or its territories. Puerto Rican nationalists carried out 9, the Jewish Defense League 6, assorted leftists 5, an anti-Castro organization 3, Black nationalists 1, and assorted immigrant or nationalist or liberation groups the rest, attacking the facilities or personnel (embassies and diplomats, for example) of the governments they opposed. These attacks killed one and wounded four.53 Also active in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were various movements with long histories. Sporadic violence accompanied these movements but they are important for demonstrating the persistence of ideas that some believe justify violence. For example, when we read of a farmer threatened with foreclosure and auction saying: “I think it is time for us to rise up and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors, nor lawyers,”54 we might think of the rhetoric of some involved in the anti-farm foreclosure movement of the 1980s; yet these were words uttered in the 1780s during an earlier farm crisis that also led to violence (Shays’ Rebellion). One student of such movements has spoken of a tradition of “Euro-American, community-based, collective insurgency.”55 This tradition, which has blended with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, begins with the Carolina Regulators and the Shaysites of the post-Revolution era, runs through the Farmer’s Alliance, the Farmer’s Union, the American Society of Equity, and the Non-Partisan League, and continues in the various farm, militia, and Posse Comitatus groups that operated in the closing years of the twentieth century. Anarchists, who might be seen as a version of the Jeffersonian natural rights tradition, also reappeared in the 1990s, protesting globalization. In 1999, they were responsible for violence and rioting in Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization. Although domestic political violence in the United States was declining from about the mid-1970s, the violence of previous years and ongoing attacks did cause the federal government to respond. Since there were no federal laws

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that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to act against domestic terrorism, its legal response was at first limited. This began to change in the 1960s with passage of federal civil rights legislation. The Organized Crime Control Act (1970) gave the FBI the ability to investigate terrorist activity because the Act covered “the importation, manufacture, distribution, and storage of explosive materials. . . . The Antihijacking Act of 1974 is noteworthy because it was the first law to specifically address an issue intimately connected to terrorism.”56 Such legislation gave the FBI the authority to pursue terrorism cases as crimes. In 1980, the FBI developed the first Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in New York City in response to attacks carried out by the Puerto Rican nationalist and Omega 7, an anti-Cuban group. A JTTF combined federal, state, and local law enforcement and intelligence agencies in one organization to better coordinate efforts against terrorism. In 1982, Director William H. Webster made counterterrorism an FBI priority program. In 1983 the FBI began training its Hostage Rescue Team, which was in operation by the start of the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984. The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 gave the FBI authority to investigate anyone developing, transferring, or possessing biological weapons and was one of several laws in the 1980s that expanded the FBI’s role against terrorism. The 1984 Crime Control Act and the 1986 Diplomatic Security Act were two others.57 At first limited in what it could do legally, and in part in response to these limitations, the FBI did engage in extra-legal campaigns against extremists. It undertook these efforts at the request of presidents and on its own initiative. The FBI had undertaken such actions in the 1930s and 1940s against Fascist and Communist groups and others associated with them. Beginning in 1956, it began extra-legal campaigns that eventually targeted White hate groups, militant Blacks, and the antiwar movement. Dubbed COINTELPRO, a compression of “counterintelligence program,” these efforts included wire taps, break-ins, and deception measures (anonymous letters, fabricated evidence that members of these organizations were FBI informants) designed to disrupt the targeted organizations. The program ended in 1971. Available evidence suggests that the various COINTELPRO efforts did cause disruption and probably limited the ability of targeted organizations to commit acts of violence.58 In addition to the legal and extra-legal efforts of the FBI, the US government took other steps to deal with domestic terrorism. In the 1970s, it considered the possibility of a terrorist attack inside the United States with a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon and planned how to respond. By 1975, the government had put together the National Emergency Support Team to respond to a nuclear incident. The government also claimed to have increased the security of the nation’s infrastructure, focusing particularly on the electric power system.59

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All of these efforts by the federal government were extensions of the process of centralization of power and authority that began in some sense with the Civil War and continued throughout the remainder of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not having been designed for such a role, the federal government did not handle its growing power and authority gracefully. The issue here is not primarily the abuse of power, as we might expect when noting the extra-legal efforts of the FBI. The federal system and the larger political system have sound means for dealing with such abuses in the separation of powers and freedom of the press. The more fundamental problem is that very separation of powers, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the federal government to coordinate effectively what it does.60 One aspect of this problem is the largely independent departments, agencies, and bureaus through which the US government exercises its vast powers. The independence of these agencies frustrates cooperation and diminishes effective response. A small episode from the late 1970s illustrates the problem. On August 17, 1978, two men walked into the Yugoslav Consulate in Chicago and took the staff hostage in an attempt to force the release of Stepjan Bilandzic, reportedly the founder of the Croatian National Resistance, who was being held in West Germany for the attempted murder of a Yugoslav diplomat. As the US government began to respond, the State Department claimed the lead because foreign diplomats were involved, while the FBI claimed the lead because the incident was in the United States. Since this was a crisis holding the attention of some highranking government officials, the dispute was resolved quickly. In day-today operations, however, such issues tend to drag on without resolution. Eventually, such problems of coordination between agencies contributed to, perhaps were the principal cause of, the failure of the US government to prevent the 9/11 terror attacks.61 Although domestic terrorism did occur in the 1980s, its diminishing frequency made it a routine problem dealt with by the FBI and local and state law enforcement. By the early 1990s, terrorism had ceased to be in the first rank of national security issues. Both the number of international terrorist attacks and the number of casualties, despite an occasional spike from an event like the bombing of Pan Am 103, had been declining since 1985.62 In the United States, few were killed or wounded in terrorist attacks in the 1980s; since 1986, none had been. In years, such as 1982 or 1986, in which there had been more than a few wounded, one attack was usually responsible. For example, in 1986, the Jewish Defense League carried out an attack in New York City with tear gas that wounded 17.63 A White supremacist group, the Order, killed Jewish talk show host Alan Berg and committed a number of bank robberies, but was rapidly overwhelmed by law enforcement. Although casualties from terrorism were not high (see Figure 1.1), violence against property continued,

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100 90 80 70 60 50

Wounded

40

Killed

30 20 10 0 1980

1992

Figure 1.1 Casualties of domestic terrorism, 1980–92 Source: FBI, Terrorism 2002–2005.

with abortion clinic bombings increasing and attacks in defense of animals or the environment beginning in the 1980s (the first attack by the Animal Liberation Front against a research lab in the University of California, Davis, was in 1987) and continuing into the 1990s and beyond. Another pattern that continued to play out in the 1980s was the infiltration of various legitimate protest movements by racist and anti-Semitic extremists. Both the antitax movement of the 1970s and the farm protest movement of the 1970s and 1980s suffered this fate, as would the militia movement in the 1990s. The extremist elements produced some confrontations with law enforcement and some isolated acts of violence. Aggressive law enforcement aimed at marginal groups led to violence at Ruby Ridge (1992) and the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas (1993). All of this violence, again, was occurring during a period of relative calm, so it produced little political effect. By one count, only 141 of the 4,200 words in Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic party nominating convention in 1992 dealt with foreign policy. There was no mention of domestic terrorism.64 Five days after President Clinton was sworn in, Mir Aimal Kasi, who had arrived in the United States from Pakistan in 1991, shot to death two employees of the Central Intelligence Agency just outside the Agency’s gates and then fled to Pakistan. He was angry at the United State for its support of Israel and its treatment of Muslims. A month after Clinton assumed office, Ramzi Yousef and his colleagues exploded a van packed with explosives inside the World Trade Center, killing six, the only American fatalities from terrorism in 1993, and injuring hundreds. This attack was followed by the arrest four

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months later of the blind Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman and several of his followers on charges of conspiring to bomb targets in New York City, including the United Nations and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels under the Hudson river. This group was associated with Yousef and those who bombed the World Trade Center, although all the details of the connections and Yousef’s connections to militant Islamic movements were not immediately known. Because these connections were not known, it was several years before it became clear that these attacks in 1993 represented the third example of a transnational movement producing terrorism in the United States. Violent Islamists had joined the ranks of the anarchists and nationalists. The use of the chemical agent sarin by Aum Shinrikyo in an attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995 added another new element to the terrorist threat, since it raised concern that other terrorists might take inspiration from what Aum had done. As noted, 20 years before US government officials had considered this possibility, but it had not been considered a real possibility until Aum’s attack. Several years after this attack, however, the US government was still ill-prepared to deal with such an attack in the United States.65 Another new development also indicated to some that the threat from terrorism was changing. Various analysts and officials began to discuss information warfare.66 Originally developed in military circles and referring to efforts to affect or control the electronic and human elements of an opponent’s decision-making, the term “information warfare” came to include the possibility that terrorists might attack the information infrastructure upon which modern economies and societies depend. As the 1990s progressed, and more and more activity, from buying and selling books to the control of water, electricity, and other utilities migrated online, concern grew that America was becoming vulnerable through attacks on its information processing and communications systems. This rising concern reached Richard Clarke on the national security council staff. He was persuaded that it had merit. He even spoke once of an “electronic Pearl Harbor.” Research carried out in the late 1990s concluded that the threat of terrorists attacking information infrastructure was not as great as many feared, however. Technical and other costs for such attacks were high and benefits probably low, at least for most groups. Although acknowledging that the threat might grow over time, the research concluded that terrorists were more likely to use the emerging internet to support their operations than to attack their opponents.67 This prediction has been borne out. (Chapter 3 discusses the internet and terrorism; Chapter 4 attacks on infrastructure.) In addition to these new developments, familiar kinds of violence continued. Significant urban racial riots occurred in Miami in 1989, after a Hispanic police officer shot a Black, and in Los Angeles in 1992, after Los Angeles police were accused of brutality in arresting a Black. A videotape made of the arrest by a passerby was shown on television, triggering the riot. Right-wing

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terrorism continued in the 1990s as well. On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, who appealed to the Declaration of Independence to justify his action, detonated a large truck bomb outside the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. McVeigh was thought to have some connection to the militia movement, which had been growing in strength during the 1990s. Partly because of this supposed connection, the militia movement began to lose strength. (According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of militia and so-called patriot groups increased significantly following President Obama’s election in 2008.) In July 1996, a bomb exploded at the Atlanta Olympics, killing two and injuring dozens. This turned out to be the work of Eric Rudolph, who was responsible for three other attacks, bombings of two abortion clinics, which killed 1 and injured 9, and of an “alternative lifestyle nightclub,” which injured 5. By one count, antiabortion violence from 1977 to 1993 included “39 bombings, 99 acid attacks, and 154 arson cases.” In addition, an abortion provider was killed in 1994 and two more in 1998. Antiabortion violence has been declining, however, since the early 1990s. In the 1990s and into the new century, right-wing extremists were also associated with a string of incidents involving biological and chemical agents and, in at least one case, an effort to blow up a large propane gas facility, the explosion of which would have caused immense damage.68 This violence and other less traditional kinds (e.g. 12 letter bombs mailed to addresses in the United States from Egypt and a Palestinian firing at tourists on the observation deck of the Empire State Building) did not change the pattern of a long-term decline in domestic political violence (Figure 1.2).

1200 1000 800 600

Wounded Killed

400 200 0 1993

2007

Figure 1.2 Casualties of Domestic Terrorism, 1993–2007 Source: FBI, Terrorism 2002–2005; Global Terrorism Database.

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The number of terrorist attacks fell steadily from the late 1980s through the 1990s. Excluding the first World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of the Murrah Federal building by Timothy McVeigh, between 1980 and 2000 an average of 10 people a year were injured by terrorism in the United States and 1 killed, making terrorism much less lethal than lightning strikes, bathtub drowning, or any number of other ways in which Americans die every day. Animal liberation and earth liberation terrorists carried out a large number of attacks (over 2,000 between 1979 and 2008; attacks peaked in 1999– 2002 and then declined 69) but all against property. There was some concern about planned WMD attacks or attacks on critical infrastructure but little evidence that these threats were significant enough to change the overall picture. Not even the slowly growing concern with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda changed this understanding because the threat he and his organization posed was not considered a domestic threat. In the early 1990s, some analysts began to argue that terrorism was changing, and a “new” terrorism emerging that was less organized, more lethal, more fanatical (or religious) and, therefore, more likely to use weapons of mass destruction. The activities of Yousef, McVeigh, and Aum Shinrikyo gave rise to this argument but it never convinced everyone. As the 1990s wore on, evidence for it became more equivocal. Some of its most prominent exponents started backing away from it.70 The terror attacks of 9/11 changed the perception of the threat from terrorism. It was undeniable that foreign terrorists could cause tremendous damage in the United States. Such events as José Padilla’s planned attack (2002), originally thought to include a radiological device, and subsequent plots reinforced the view that there was a persistent dangerous foreign terrorist threat in the United States. There seemed to be a worrying number of people living in the United States who identified with the views of al Qaeda and were willing to carry out attacks in its name or inspired by its ideas. Growing attacks on computer systems, although hardly any were clearly the work of terrorists, heightened the sense that there was a growing threat to the homeland. All levels of government responded to these threats. The FBI received new operational authorities and reorganized to focus on domestic terrorism. The FBI increased the number of its JTTFs. By 2010, 100 were operating around the United States. Local and state police forces reestablished or reinvigorated police intelligence functions that were suspended or curtailed in the aftermath of revelations of abuses in the 1970s. Leading the way among non-federal law enforcement was the New York City Police Department but others engaged in it as well. The military set up NORTHCOM, a military command whose job it was to coordinate military efforts in homeland defense.

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The results of these efforts appeared to bear fruit in the years after 2001, as the police and FBI stopped a number of plots, several involving connections between American citizens and terrorist organizations abroad.71 As in the past, efforts to enhance domestic security proved controversial. According to one count by a civil libertarian, the transgressions of the second Bush administration included: indefinite detention, with no access to judicial review, of more than a thousand noncitizens who were lawfully in the United States and had not been charged with a crime; blanket secrecy concerning the identity of these detainees; refusal to permit many of these detainees to communicate with an attorney; an unprecedented assertion of authority to eavesdrop on constitutionally protected attorney-client communications; secret deportation proceedings; the incarceration for more than two years of an American citizen, arrested on American soil, incommunicado, with no access to a lawyer, solely on the basis of executive determination that he was an “enemy combatant;” significant new limitations on the scope of the Freedom of Information Act; expanded authority to conduct undercover infiltration and surveillance of political and religious groups; increased power to wiretap, engage in electronic eavesdropping, and covertly review internet and e-mail communications; new power secretly to review banking, brokerage, and other financial records; and expanded authority to conduct clandestine physical searches.72 In 2009, it emerged that the Bush administration had even contemplated using military forces in 2002 to arrest a group of people in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York, suspected of working with al Qaeda.73 In its defense, the Bush administration argued for the constitutionality of its actions but most clearly for their practical consequences: no attacks occurred in the United States after 9/11. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to know how much the absence of an attack was owing to the more controversial aspects of the Bush administration’s policies (and those the Obama administration continued), improved work by the FBI and state and local police, or the ineptitude of our enemies. No doubt all are part of the explanation. However, it is not clear that government efforts have reduced the threat much because there may not have been much of a threat to begin with. If we consider the number of plots involving Muslim extremism that have occurred since the attacks in 2001 and the number of people involved (Figure 1.3), we can discern no overall trend. This means that we cannot identify a result from the counterterrorism efforts we have

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100 90 80 70 60 50

Plots

40

People

30 20 10 0 2002

2010

Figure 1.3 Plots and number of people since 2001 Source: Jenkins, Would-Be Warriors.

pursued.74 Between 1980 and 2001, the FBI lists only four terrorist attacks in the United States associated with Islamic extremism.75 The greater number of plots identified after 2001 may indicate not an increased threat but only better detection of the threat that existed. The high percentage of cases since 2001 that have involved informants (by one count 46% of individuals involved in Islamic extremism in the United States were in contact with informants76) suggests that more aggressive prevention measures may be at least partly responsible for the number of cases that have come to light since 2001. The issue here is not entrapment in a legal sense but understanding how and why terrorism comes about and the role of leaders or facilitators in that process, a role that informants may play. Chapter 2 addresses this issue. Certainly, if we consider Islamic extremist plots and the other kinds of attacks or plots that have occurred since 2001, it does not alter the overall trend of the past several decades: declining numbers of terrorist attacks and casualties, punctuated occasionally by a larger attack. Consider a contrast between the 1970s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. The 1970s saw “60 to 70 terrorist incidents, mostly bombings, on U.S. soil every year—a level of terrorist activity 15 to 20 times that seen in the years since 9/11, even when foiled plots are counted as incidents.” More than five times as many people died in terrorist attacks between 1970 and 1978 as have died from Islamic extremism since 9/11.77 More generally, domestic terrorism over the last 60 years has not been a large problem. One analyst reports that “for the [terrorist] groups [in the United States] on which information is available,

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the median membership is ten, the group is active for less than two years and carries out seven attacks. The means are somewhat higher [“because of a handful of groups”]: fifty-two members, a life of three years, and sixteen attacks.”78 The United States has not suffered from enduring, competent, lethal organizations such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque terrorist organization. Along with declines in rioting and other forms of extra-legal violence, the relatively low level of terrorist activity in recent decades is part of the transformation of the United States into an increasingly peaceful place. The trend in the United States is similar to worldwide trends.79 Not only has the United States become less violent, the violence that has occurred since the 1960s has been for the most part different from much of the violence in our history. Over the past 40 years very little, if any, political violence has been carried out in the United States by those, such as workers and immigrants in the past, wanting to get into the American system. This is not primarily because all groups have been brought into the system or participate in it as fully and successfully as they believe they should. It is instead that inclusion rather than exclusion has become the norm and, especially since the civil rights movement, nonviolent means of demonstrating for inclusion and its benefits have become well-known and, in effect, institutionalized. The antiabortion rescue movement, for example, “began as peaceful civil disobedience modeled on the example of the civil rights movement.” This inclusiveness has made political violence less necessary. Conversely, exclusion can promote violence. The use of violence by some antiabortion activists coincided with the curtailment of their legal means of protest, including the techniques that the civil rights movement had used.80 This is the same pattern we saw with labor violence. In addition, those not taking advantage of the nonviolent means of demonstrating for inclusion or a larger share of the system’s benefits are those who reject the system: anarchists; right-wing extremists who deny equality; and Muslims and Christians who deny the separation of church and state or see secular America as a threat to their religious way of life. (We discuss this last group in more detail in Chapter 5.) If those still engaging in violence do not want in, this may imply that their violence will be more long-lasting than other violence the United States has known. If they do not want to be included, they cannot be accommodated. They can only be opposed, as they fight on. If more long-lasting, the violence of these separatists may be at a low level, since they will lack support (most of their natural constituency wants to integrate). For example, those among America’s Muslim population who reject the United States and use violence against it are a tiny fraction of the larger Muslim population and have not been able to produce much violent action. Some have been turned in by members

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of the larger Muslim community. The suggestion that separatist or rejectionist attitudes may result in low-level, long-lasting violence does not take into account how technology might affect the violence that terrorists create. We turn to this issue in Chapter 3. As these last several paragraphs indicate, the following chapters unpack the meaning of this brief survey of American political violence. It is worth noting here, however, a few overriding themes. One is the role of the Declaration of Independence. John Brown, freedmen after the Civil War, anti-Reconstruction southerners, labor leaders, anarchists, and Timothy McVeigh have all used its language and argument. The Declaration places a notion of right at the core of our political life. If politics is a choice between or a combination of might and right, then the Declaration is the touchstone for right. Martin Luther King was not the first to say to those in power that if they deny certain citizens their rights they must repudiate the Declaration and its assertion of equality, and thus their own claim to be American, or admit they act unjustly. At the same time, of course, the Declaration justifies the use of might and, more disturbingly, leaves judgment about the use of might to individuals. The Declaration offers then both a principle of right that allows politics to be something other than a mere matter of force and a justification for the use of force. The Declaration is thus part of the explanation for the striking degree to which in American history individuals by themselves or in groups have used violence in political disputes. It is also important to note, however, that the level of violence in American life has declined over the years. In the aftermath of the Civil War, which made Americans more familiar with guns, owning or carrying a weapon was common, even in a city like Chicago. One of Chicago’s downtown streets was known as “Hair Trigger Block.”81 Such carrying is less common in early-twenty-first-century America and often illegal. At the same time that violence and gun carrying has decreased, government power and control over coercive means has steadily increased. The response of the federal, state, and local governments to the 9/11 attacks was another step in this process that began with the formation of urban police forces and continued with the establishment of the national guard and state police forces. There may be no cause and effect between the increase in the coercive means available to the state and the decline in violence, however. The police were unable to control, much less deter, riots, the job for which they were principally created, and the national guard has not done any better. The government’s contribution to the decrease in violence may have been its increasing mastery of noncoercive measures to settle political differences (e.g. labor dispute arbitration), combined with a public more open to full citizenship for a growing number of people. However this may be, the decrease of force in the hands of citizens at

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least relative to the increase of coercive and other powers in the hands of the state over the last century or more casts doubt on the claims of the “new” conflict advocates that the power of non-state actors has increased as the power of states has declined. If looking to the past does not support such claims, then perhaps examining political violence today and thinking about its future will. This is another issue addressed in the chapters that follow.

Notes 1 Paul A. Gilje, Rioting in America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 12–34. 2 Christopher Waldrep, Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 99–104; Richard M. Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University, 1975), pp. 59–60. 3 David C. Rapoport, “Before the Bombs there Were the Mobs: American Experiences with Terror,” Terrorism and Political Violence 20(2008): 174. 4 David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828–1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. ix. 5 Gilje, Rioting in America, pp. 60–80; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 430–9; Eric H. Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 43, 196; James M. Gallman, “Preserving the Peace: Order and Disorder in Civil War Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History 55, 4(1988): 20. 6 Gilje, Rioting in America, pp. 86, 67, 68, 53; Howe, What hath God Wrought, pp. 432, 433. 7 Gilje, Rioting in America, p. 10. 8 Gilje, Rioting in America, pp. 56, 60; Howe, What hath God Wrought, p. 433. 9 Michael Fellman, In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 27, 39; Richard J. Hinton, James Brown and His Men (1894; Scituate, MA: Digital Scanning Incorporated, 2001), pp. 637–43; Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War against Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 213–15. 10 McGlone, John Brown’s War against Slavery. 11 McGlone, John Brown’s War against Slavery, pp. 211–12, 203, 219. 12 McGlone, John Brown’s War against Slavery, pp. 39, 80, 200, 313, 322. 13 Ed Husain, The Islamist (New York: Penguin Group, 2007), pp. 73–74 and Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), pp. 304–5, 106.

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14 Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860–1920 , pp. 42, 63; Eric H. Monkkonen, “History of Urban Police,” Crime and Justice 15(1992): 553, 554; Gallman, “Preserving the Peace,” p. 212. 15 Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press, 2009), pp. 2–6, 277; Fellman, In the Name of God and Country, p. 102. 16 Gilje, Rioting in America, pp. 91–4. 17 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863 –1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 425; Sutherland, A Savage Conflict, pp. 267–74; W. Scott Poole, “Religion, Gender, and the Lost Cause in South Carolina’s 1876 Governor’s Race: ‘Hampton or Hell!’” The Journal of Southern History 68(August 2002): 576, 588–9; Fellman, In the Name of God and Country, pp. 102, 109, 119. 18 Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 439–40; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The FBI: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 2–4, 25. 19 Fellman, In the Name of God and Country, pp. 117, 103–41; Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 442–4; Mitchell Snay, Fenians, Freedmen and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), pp. 31–4, 30, 39, 144; Poole, “Religion, Gender, and the Lost Cause,” 585–6. 20 Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 425–6. 21 Gilje, Rioting in America, p. 120. 22 Philip Taft and Philip Ross, “American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome,” in Riot, Rout and Tumult: Readings in American Social and Political Violence, ed. Roger Lane and John J. Turner, Jr. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). 23 Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 24 H. M. Gitelman, “Perspectives on American Industrial Violence,” The Business History Review 47(Spring 1973): 6. 25 James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America (New York; Anchor Books, 2007), pp. 308–9, citing Richard Hofstadter. 26 Green, Death in the Haymarket, pp. 76, 85–101. 27 Gitelman, “Perspectives on American Industrial Violence,” p. 18. 28 Snay, Fenians, Freedmen and Southern Whites, p. 171; Niall Whelehan, “‘Cheap as Soap and Common as Sugar’: The Fenians, Dynamite and Scientific Warfare,” in The Black Hand of Republicanism: Fenianism in Modern Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), pp. 105–20. 29 Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 160–1. Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 205–6.

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30 Gitelman, “Perspectives on American Industrial Violence,” p. 22; Ted Robert Gurr, “The History of Protest, Rebellion, and Reform in America: An Overview,” Violence in America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion, Reform, ed. Ted Robert Gurr (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989), p. 15. 31 Karen Rasler, “War, Accommodation, and Violence in the United States, 1890–1970,” The American Political Science Review 80(September 1986): 921–45. 32 Green, Death in the Haymarket, p. 235. 33 Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace, eds, American Violence: A Documentary History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 332. 34 Gilje, Rioting in America, pp. 123–30, 142. 35 Lynching statistics, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/ lynchingyear.html; Gilje, Rioting in America, pp. 108–15. 36 Eckard V. Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism from the Ku Klux Klan to the Order, 1915 to 1988,” in Gurr, Violence in America, pp. 136–7, 138. 37 Cindy Higgins, “Frontier Protective and Social Network: The Anti-Horse Thief Association in Kansas,” Journal of the West 42(Fall 2003): 63–73. Green, Death in the Haymarket, p. 49. 38 Richard M. Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence,” in Gurr, Violence in America, p. 37. 39 Brown, Strain of Violence, pp. 59–63, 116–17, 152–3. 40 Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence,” p. 35. Gilje, Rioting in America, 139–42; Richard C. Marohn, “The Arming of the Chicago Police in the Nineteenth Century,” Chicago History 11(Spring, 1982): 47, 49. 41 Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, pp. 59, 45; Barry M. Stentiford, “The Meaning of a Name: The Rise of the National Guard and the End of a Town Militia,” Military History 72(July 2008): 727–54. 42 Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, p. 153; Seymour J. Mandelbaum, Boss Tweed’s New York (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965). 43 “Ohio to Link Thousands of Surveillance Cameras,” Morning Journal, October 25, 2010, http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2010/10/25/ news/doc4cc5868fc39f8505331907.txt?viewmode=fullstory; Julian Barnes, “Military Refines a ‘Constant Stare against Our Enemy’; The Rapidly Increasing Surveillance Power of Unmanned Aircraft Gives U.S. Officials an Option Besides Troops,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2009, p. A1. 44 Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, pp. 3–4. 45 Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism from the Ku Klux Klan to the Order,” in Gurr, Violence in America, p. 143. 46 Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to al Qaeda (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 17. 47 Gilje, Rioting in America, p. 158. 48 Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 632.

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49 Ted Robert Gurr, “Political Terrorism: Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Trends,” in Gurr, Violence in America, pp. 201, 211–17. 50 Christopher Hewitt, Political Violence and Terrorism in Modern America: A Chronology (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005); David Clayton Johnston, “William Pierce, 69, Neo-Nazi Leader, Dies,” New York Times, July 24, 2002. 51 Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, http://www.start.umd.edu/datarivers/vis/ GtdExplorer.swf; Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” 203–5; U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Terrorism 2002–2005 , p. 15, http:// www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.pdf . 52 Patterns of International Terrorism: 1980 (Washington, D.C., 1981), p. 21. 53 Terrorism 2002–2005 , pp. 57–8 54 Catherine McNicol Stock, Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 39. 55 Stock, Rural Radicals, p. 29. 56 Terrorism 2002–2005 , pp. 35, 36. 57 Terrorism 2002–2005 , pp. 36, 37, 39, 40. 58 James Kirkpatrick Davis, Spying on America: The FBI’s Domestic Counterintelligence Program (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992); Athan G. Theoharis, The FBI: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), pp. 120–3; John Drabble, “The FBI, COINTELPRO-White Hate, and the Decline of the Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Alabama, 1964– 1971,” Alabama Review 61(January 2008): 3–47. 59 Ambassador Anthony Quainton, “Statement before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Judiciary Committee, Held in Newark, New Jersey, May 19, 1980,” Department of State Bulletin 80(July 1980): 75–7. 60 Forging a New Shield: Transforming Government for the 21st Century, Project on National Security Reform (November 2008), http://pnsr.org/data/files/ pnsr_forging_a_new_shield_report.pdf. 61 Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, n. d.), pp. 71–107. 62 Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1993 (Washington, DC: Department of State, 1994), available at http://www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/Patterns-of-GlobalTerrorism.asp?Start=0&RecordType=&Sort=. 63 Terrorism 2002–2005 , pp. 31, 61. 64 A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, DC, July 1994), p. 15; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 11, 2001 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), p. 240. 65 Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 254–5.

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66 “Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Hearing on Current and Projected National Security Threats,” January 28, 1998, www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1998/ dci_speech012898.html. 67 David Tucker, “The Future of Armed Resistance: Cyberterror? Mass Destruction?” Final Report on a Conference Held May 15–17, 2000 at the University Pantheon-Assas (Paris II), The Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare, Naval Postgraduate School, 2000; Major Bill Nelson, USAF, Major Rodney Choi, USMC, Major Michael Iacobucci, USA, Major Mark Mitchell, USA, Captain Greg Gagnon, USAF, “Cyberterror: Prospects and Implications,” The Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare, Naval Postgraduate School, 1999. 68 Mark Potok, “The Year in Hate and Extremism, 2010,” Intelligence Report 141(Spring 2011), http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/ browse-all-issues/2011/spring/the-year-in-hate-extremism-2010; Jon A. Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 55–6; Edward J. Valla and Gregory Comcowich, “Domestic Terrorism: Forgotten, but Not Gone,” in Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency, ed. Jeffrey H. Norwitz (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 2008), pp. 176–7. 69 Terrorism, 2002–2005 ; FBI, “Putting Intel to Work against ALF and ELF Terrorists,” June 3, 2008, http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/june/ ecoterror_063008. 70 Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, “America and the New Terrorism,” Survival 42 (Spring 2000): 59–75; Bruce Hoffman, “The American Perspective,” Survival 42(Summer 2000): 161–6; Simon and Benjamin’s response, “Imaginary Threats?” Survival 42(Summer, 2000): 169–72. 71 Jena Baker McNeil, “26 Foiled Terror Plots Show Success of Information Sharing,” Backgrounder, No. 2634 (Heritage Foundation, September 29, 2009). 72 Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), p. 552. 73 Mark Mazzetti, “Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests,” New York Times, July 24, 2009, p. A1. 74 Brian Michael Jenkins, “Would-Be Warriors: Incidents of Jihadist Terrorist Radicalization in the United States since September 11, 2001” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2010). 75 Terrorism 2002–2005, terrorism-2002-2005.

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/

76 Attackers Database, Center for Homeland Defense and Security, http://www. chds.us/?chds:attacks/attackers. 77 Jenkins, “Would-Be Warriors,” p. 8. 78 Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America, p. 60.

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79 For statistics on global violence, see J. Joseph Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict, 2011, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/pc/. 80 Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, p. 54; Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768–2004 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004); “Safety Valve Closed: The Removal of Nonviolent Outlets for Dissent and the Onset of Anti-Abortion Violence,” Harvard Law Review 113(March 2000): 1210–27; Christopher P. Keleher, “Double Standards: The Suppression of Abortion Protesters Free Speech Rights,” De Paul Law Review 51(Spring 2002): 825–910. 81 Marohn, “The Arming of the Chicago Police in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 41.

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2

Terrorism Terrorism has been part of the American experience for a long time. From the beginning it has been a homegrown phenomenon. Throughout their history, Americans individually and in small groups have used tar and feather, noose and bomb, bullet and whip against each other more or less clandestinely for political purposes, as the previous chapter reported. In this chapter, we examine how terrorism comes about, the limitations of this strategy, and how it ends. We begin by considering terrorism as if it were the result only of individual decision. While such an approach can teach us much about why terrorism occurs, it cannot teach us everything. To learn more, we next consider the role of leaders, and the importance of group psychology, social dynamics, and ideas that legitimate violence. As these explanations unfold, we will consider the role of the media, a longstanding concern in discussions of terrorism, as well as the role of religion and the character of the homegrown threat, two topics that have become prominent in the later stages of the American experience with terrorism. As the analysis progresses, it moves from a discussion of terrorism that could apply to terrorists anywhere to a discussion that spotlights terrorism in the United States. This is particularly the case when the chapter presents an analysis of the strategic competition between terrorists and a government and its people, as preparation for discussing the homegrown threat. The central point of the chapter is that terrorism is a paradoxical if not internally contradictory activity because it is a clandestine yet political activity. Inherently contradictory, it is unlikely to succeed. The chapter concludes by calling into question the relevance of such an analysis, given the development and dispersion of increasingly powerful and lethal technologies. Examining these technologies and their impact on terrorism is the subject of Chapter 3.

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Terrorism and individual choice One way to understand why someone decides to become a terrorist is to see the decision as a response to a perceived political grievance or problem: terrorism is a means that the aggrieved individual uses to redress his grievance. A political, as opposed to a personal, grievance is one that requires changing how one’s group or nation lives or acts, rather than changing only one’s own personal circumstances. Having a political grievance is not unusual. Wanting to address it is not unusual either. Using violence against noncombatants to redress the grievance is unusual, however, whether we consider the number of individuals who decide to do it or the number of non-state organizations that have adopted this strategy. One way to understand why terrorism is so relatively rare is to see it from the viewpoint of the individual with the grievance. From this viewpoint, terrorism comes about only after a series of choices, each freighted with different costs and possible benefits. We might summarize these choices as follows (see Figure 2.1). Having recognized that he has a political grievance, an individual must decide whether or not to do something about it. (When talking about terrorists, we are most often talking about males.) Is it felt deeply enough to try to change things? Either because the costs of change appear too high or because political

Oppression/Injustice

Unrecognized

Recognized

Rejected

Accepted

Exit

Political action

Everyday forms of resistance

Institutional action

Non-institutional action

Violent action Individual

Nonviolent action

Organized

Figure 2.1 The path to terrorism Source: Adapted from Schock, Unarmed Insurrections.

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change is simply not important, a person might decide to live with the grievance. Living with the grievance might mean continuing to grumble about it or trying to transcend it through some sort of spiritual means. If the aggrieved individual decides not to accept his situation, several possibilities open up. The individual might emigrate, for example, or move somewhere else in the United States, if possible. If leaving is not possible, the individual still has a choice to make. He might try to address his grievance by acting publicly and politically or, if the costs of doing so are too high, he might act secretly against those he sees as responsible for his aggrieved condition. If, for example, the individual is a worker who cannot join a union or vote for a party favorable to workers, he might commit acts of industrial sabotage. Such acts would not be part of a campaign designed to change things as much as a way of making his oppressors pay some price for their oppression and to sustain the selfrespect of the saboteur. If political action is possible, another choice appears. The aggrieved individual can use existing institutions, such as labor unions or political parties, to address his grievance. If he judges these to be inadequate, he could choose noninstitutional means, such as a street demonstration or some new social or political movement. The civil rights movement in the United States, for example, was a noninstitutional means of addressing the grievances of blacks. It was also nonviolent. But nonviolence, of course, is not the only option. If noninstitutional and nonviolent means seem inadequate, as they ultimately did to some Blacks, then an individual might choose violent means. John Brown was a member of an antislavery organization but he was tired of only talking about slavery and decided to take action. Finally, having decided to use violence, an individual could do so by himself or as part of an organization. As we have seen in Chapter 1, the grievances associated with terrorism in the United States are varied. They have never been only economic deprivation or political repression. They have included farm foreclosures, national liberation (Puerto Rican terrorists), a generalized alienation from society and sympathy with the disadvantaged (the Weather Underground), the availability of abortions, the existence of government (anarchists), the existence of the federal government and perhaps state governments (the Posse Comitatus movement), oppression of animals and degradation of the environment. The Islamists who attacked the United States on September 11 appear to have done so because they became convinced that the United States threatened Islam and was responsible for political and other problems in the Arab world. Much right-wing violence in the United States has come from people convinced that an international Jewish conspiracy runs the world and deprives Whites, who originally were the chosen people, of their God-given place in the world.

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What all these various grievances have in common is not economic or political disadvantage. Indeed, much data gathering and analysis shows that economic deprivation is not in any simple or general way the cause of terrorism.1 Rather, the grievances all represent some judgment that an injustice exists. These judgments rest on various ideas of how the world ought to work or look. Abortion should not be available; animals should not be used for the benefit of humans; Palestinians should have a homeland; the state of Israel should not exist; governmental power should exist only at the county level. These ideas are critical to the sense of grievance that people develop. Grievances are not only or perhaps sometimes not at all a question of commonly identifiable factors, such as income level or distribution. Certainly, humans have physical needs that must be met if they are to survive. If people cannot meet these, we might assume that they will feel aggrieved. But perhaps they will consider their deprived condition an act of God, against whom a feeling of grievance is impious, and will seek spiritual redress. Those whose basic physical needs have been met or more than met, may still feel dissatisfaction but what turns this into a political grievance, as opposed to a life of meditation or reflection, for example, is a set of ideas about how the capitalist system works or a new interpretation of Islam. Bill Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground, explained himself once by saying: “I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.”2 Osama bin Laden might say the same. In other words, commonly identifiable facts require interpretation. Grievances, therefore, are in large part ideational. Individuals create or define them or persuade themselves and others that they have them. Many privileged people, feeling a vague dissatisfaction, go to the spa to relax rather than to the urban underground or a cave in the Hindu Kush. Not only do ideas provide the ends that action should bring about, they also justify violent means. Jihad is defined as a duty for all Muslims, for example; or suicide, prohibited by the Koran, becomes not suicide but martyrdom, if done to protect Islam. As we noted in Chapter 1, Timothy McVeigh was fond of quoting the Declaration of Independence and its argument that resistance to tyranny was a right and duty. He used this argument to justify his destruction of the Murrah Federal Building and killing 168 in 1995. Other ideas justify other kinds of violence. Respect for life requires resistance to the taking of animal life for the benefit of humans but at the same time requires that such resistance not destroy life, although it may destroy property. Killing Jews is acceptable because they are usurpers and a threat to the liberty of Whites. Killing Blacks is alright because they are “mud people,” less than human. As individuals create or define grievances and persuade themselves and others that they have them, so can they persuade themselves and others to take violent action to redress them.

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When an individual decides to use violence to redress his grievances, this does not mean that he has agreed to join an underground terrorist organization or live a clandestine life. One could join street protests, for example, if such were occurring, and tar and feather someone or smash store windows without having to choose a clandestine way of life. If arrested, even if convicted and jailed, upon release an individual would again face the choice of nonviolent or violent protest without having to decide for or against a clandestine life. The cycle of violent protest, arrest, and release might be repeated. At some point, however, an individual might decide that more or less random street violence is not sufficient. To redress his grievance, he might decide to engage in more serious, unambiguously premeditated violence, to make political violence more an occupation than a hobby. On the assumption that this individual wants to live or remain free to fight another day, this choice for serious sustained violence is a choice for clandestinity, for hiding one’s identity from the police. Individuals choose the clandestine underground life of political violence relatively infrequently because its risks or costs are high, higher than involvement in even a violent street protest. A terrorist might be sentenced to a long prison term or even death, for example. But the clandestine life, in its fullest form, imposes other costs, such as separation from kin and friends, perhaps even exile, and the possible loss of a normal life of marriage and family. There are also the everyday psychological costs of concealment and anxiety about exposure. In addition, a clandestine organization may make demands on its members that go beyond what they thought they were signing up for. Not all of these costs in all of their detail will be apparent to an individual as he considers the clandestine life, of course, but in general the riskiness of this life is not hidden. The cost of the clandestine life is an important part of its dynamic, and affects calculations about leaving as well as joining. Having chosen clandestinity, an individual may then choose to act on his own or join an organization. So-called lone wolves, individuals acting on their own or with only an accomplice or two, to carry out a particular operation have received a good deal of attention. They are thought to present a particular problem, being undetectable until they act. Ramzi Yousef, who organized the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, is a prominent example of a lone wolf. Others include Eric Rudolph, who carried out a series of bombings from 1996 to 1998, Buford Furrow, who attacked a Jewish community center in Los Angeles and killed a postal worker in 1999, and Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010. The document most often associated with the lone wolf phenomenon is “Leaderless Resistance,” by Louis Beam, a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan. For Beam, leaderless resistance means individuals or small groups operating

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independently of each other without reporting “to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction, as would those who belong to a typical pyramid organization.”3 This dispersed form of resistance can work, Beam claims, because those involved in it share an understanding of their objective and can be trusted to sort out how to achieve it most effectively in their local circumstances. In proof of this claim, Beam appealed to the historical example of the resistance movement that led to the American Revolution and its decentralized leadership. It is important to note, given the concern over lone wolves, that for Beam leaderless resistance was not a brilliant organizational innovation but “a child of necessity.” He believed the evidence indicated that law enforcement would penetrate radical right-wing organizations. So effective was law enforcement in Beam’s eyes that he admitted that alternatives to leaderless resistance “have been shown to be unworkable or impractical.” Atomizing the resistance is the only workable response. But how workable is it? What might it achieve? In the first place, leaderless resistance is not an organizational model that will lead to political success. It is in fact the antithesis of political mobilization. To succeed against the British, the American resistance movement had to centralize and become a leadered resistance, as we noted in Chapter 1. Implicit recognition of this may explain why Beam presented leaderless resistance as a counsel of despair, a way of keeping alive a few sparks of resistance in the dark night of repression. But leaderless resistance poses operational as well as political problems. Operating clandestinely, actually carrying out attacks and getting away, is difficult. To succeed, an individual will need to master a number of different skills. For example, he will need to perform reconnaissance, select a target, plan escape routes, acquire resources, build bombs, maintain weapons, and perform a number of counterintelligence evaluations (assessing potential temporary assistants, for example). In other words, he will need to carry out all the functions that a terrorist organization does but with a fraction of the human resources. Lone wolves, then, are likely to conduct simple operations (the equivalent of drive-by shootings, for example, which was literally the case with Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad who conducted such an attack in 2009) or risk operational failure and exposure if they try more complicated operations. The operational biographies of the lone wolves mentioned above support this conclusion. Yousef had the most success, but he was eventually turned in by someone he recruited. Rudolf carried out a few small-scale attacks and then went into the woods. Shahzad’s bomb fizzled. McVeigh (who may have had more accomplices than originally thought)4 and Furrow carried out one attack each. McVeigh and Yousef did manage to do serious damage, of course, but the significant levels of violence they produced had no meaningful political effects.

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Given the limitations of “leaderless resistance” it is perhaps not surprising that most people who choose the clandestine life of political violence have chosen to start or join a clandestine organization. In addition to its practical advantage, an organization offers camaraderie. Although we think of terrorists as hardened killers of innocents, we should not forget that one motive for being a terrorist, especially among young males, is the need to belong to a group, to find “brothers,” committed to some serious important cause greater than themselves. An internet posting on a radical Islamist website captured this need for belonging. It speaks of the wonders of wonders that the new recruit saw when he joined his “Mujahideen brothers.” I saw the brothers sacrifice their persons, their wealth and all that they possessed for their Lord. I saw the brothers who were humble to the Believers and hard upon the infidels. I saw brothers preferring poverty for themselves. I saw brothers rising in the night and fasting in the day. I saw brothers who loved one another. I saw brothers who possessed the qualities of goodness and piety: a great thing.5 Not only can longing for such camaraderie lead someone to join a terrorist organization, the emotional satisfaction from such an association may keep one a member, even if the organization fails in its political tasks. Although an individual will find help and comrades through an organization, the fact that the organization is clandestine poses problems. There is a paradox, after all, in being a clandestine political organization. Achieving a political objective requires building support, and that normally means meeting and influencing people. But for members of a clandestine organization to meet and influence people increases the risk that the authorities will penetrate the organization and arrest or kill its members. Even if a terrorist organization imagines itself to be the violent vanguard of the revolution (or the race war or the second coming or the caliphate) and does not itself intend to build a political movement but rather hopes to inspire one, it will still need to draw in resources and people (even if only as one-to-one replacements) from the outside to keep going. November 17 in Greece may be an example of a terrorist organization that kept up for years a limited campaign of what it hoped was revolutionary vanguard violence. By limiting its ambition and violence, it maintained its security; but in doing so, it limited its operational reach and forfeited any political effectiveness. For the leadership of a terrorist organization, the principal task is to manage the dilemmas generated by the paradox of being a clandestine political organization. Most importantly, the organization must manage the trade-off between security, limiting and controlling what comes into the

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organization, and operational and political effectiveness, going outside the organization into the world. One way that a clandestine organization manages the trade-off is by investing resources in security measures. It may use spotters in cultural organizations, schools, or religious institutions, for example, to identify promising talent and begin the vetting process. Al Qaeda used mosques, Imams, and informal religious groups for this purpose. For example, a cleric in Europe trusted by the leadership in Afghanistan would recommend that devout and motivated Muslims travel to safe houses in Pakistan, from which they would be funneled to camps in Afghanistan. Once there, they would be further scrutinized and perhaps invited to join the inner circles of the organization, including those actually carrying out terrorist attacks. This is an example of a phenomenon that is common to all illegal clandestine organizations. (Some secret organizations, such as the Masons, are not illegal and do not operate under any risk of discovery and punishment.) As they operate at risk, when they go into the world for resources—recruits, money, or information, as they must—illegal clandestine organizations have a strong incentive to go to people they trust. Such people are less likely to turn them in. This means that members of clandestine organizations go to individuals with whom they have preexisting relationships of trust.6 What constitutes such a relationship varies depending on the degree of risk under which the clandestine organization operates (the more risk, the more the relationship must inspire trust), as well as culture and context. Kinship ties, even fairly extended kinship ties, are reliable in some cultures. In others, trust of blood relations may be more circumscribed. Other relationships besides those founded in blood or marriage are possible indicators of trust. In Auschwitz, recruitment into the resistance “took place between former army comrades-in-arms for the military men and between former political co-workers for the political underground.”7 As we noted in Chapter 1, in the post–Civil War south, former confederate military units served as the recruitment pool for various violent anti-Reconstruction organizations. In the case of al Qaeda, in addition to shared operations in Afghanistan, formal or informal religious organizations provided the preexisting relationships of trust that helped gather new personnel and other resources. The necessity of using preexisting relationships has organizational consequences. In principle, the higher the risk that an organization is under, the more important preexisting relationships are likely to be. For an organization that is active, attacking a competent authority, and wishing to maintain its security, these relationships are likely to be very important. To some extent, they “set the limits” of a clandestine organization, limiting its recruiting pool and volunteer support network, for example.8 Not every preexisting relationship will prove trustworthy, of course. But going beyond these relationships does increase risk. If an organization goes beyond them, success will likely require

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it to invest more of its scarce resources in counterintelligence. Both the extent of this limit and the reliability of those within it vary. Experience suggests, for example, that if the preexisting relationship is involvement in extreme rightwing politics, the limit will be tighter and those within it less trustworthy than if the preexisting relationship is an ethnic group, such as the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Ethnicity appears to forge deeper and more durable ties than political beliefs, judging from the longevity of ethnically based terrorist groups compared to those based on political ideas. Religion may be the most durable basis of all for a terrorist group.9 If the preexisting relationship arises from a certain understanding of Islam, for example, then the level of trust is likely to be high and the human resource pool quite large and expandable, since Islam accepts converts. Militant Islamic organizations have used converts in their operations. Whatever the limits of a clandestine group’s core constituency and hence its most easily exploitable resource pool, it is likely to have trouble remaining connected to it.10 There are degrees of the clandestine life, from someone who has a regular job and secretly assists the movement at work or during his time off to the full-time terrorist living completely underground. To the degree that a person is involved in the clandestine world, to that degree he or she will be separated from the world outside the clandestine group. The completely clandestine professional, living underground, on the move constantly from safe-house to safe-house, is most likely to suffer this separation, but even the part-timer will suffer it to some extent. This is so because the separation is not just physical but psychological as well. The more involved someone is in the clandestine life of political violence, the more that person has risked for the cause. The more someone has risked, the more that person is likely to identify with others who live with the same risk and the more likely they are to look down on those who continue to engage in what to the professionals will appear to be the childish play of throwing rocks or overturning police cars during street demonstrations. Over time, the clandestine life will change the perspective of those who live it. The professionals will come to see things differently from those in the larger social, religious, or political movements that they left to join the clandestine struggle. Seeing things differently, the professionals will judge things differently. Their judgments may diverge from those who make up the core constituency. Politically, differences in judgment mean misjudgments. Typically, the professionals or the hard core misjudge the level of violence that their larger constituency will tolerate. Misjudged acts of violence diminish support for the clandestine group.11 As support diminishes, so do the resources that supporters provide. Faced with this decline in resources, a violent clandestine organization is likely to increase its violence, since those who joined did so to use violence. Martha Crenshaw reports, for example, that when the IRA’s (Irish Republican Army) bombing campaign on the British mainland failed to

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produce any political benefit, the IRA increased its bombing, which only added to its political problems.12 As violence fails to increase support or decreases it further, the group can try to coerce support from its core constituency (e.g. revolutionary taxes), or turn to more clearly criminal activity (robbing banks or selling drugs, etc.), or go outside the country and seek foreign aid. All of these choices are likely to further decrease support for the organization, since they make it look like either just another criminal organization or the puppet of outside forces. If it engages in criminal activity, the clandestine organization may also attract criminals and thugs as members. It will take them in because it will need their expertise in counterfeiting or other criminal schemes. As it takes in such people, however, the organization is likely to have a harder time focusing on its original political objectives. Support will decline further. Sympathizers or supporters outside the hard core may become willing to help the authorities. Defections from the organization may occur, creating the possibility of further intelligence gains by the authorities. In short, clandestinity can lead to a spiral of organizational decline, as the decision of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) to give up the armed struggle illustrates. Among other problems, PIRA’s involvement in crime was one reason the group lost support. The religiously inspired group the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, which operated in the United States in the 1980s, went through a process of criminalization similar to that described in this paragraph.13 Figure 2.2 illustrates the process of clandestinity leading a terrorist organization to misjudgments, loss of support, isolation, and eventual dissolution.

• Electoral politics Non-violent

Electoral politics

• Charities • Education

Resistance

Overt

Arrest

Covert

Isolation

Loss of support

Misjudgment

Violent

Criminalization Internationalization

Loss of support

Defection

Intelligence for government

Faction Loss of support

Arrests

Figure 2.2 Operating as a terrorist

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Unfortunately, for reasons we will go on to discuss, the process illustrated in Figure 2.2 is not the fate of all violent clandestine political organizations. But it was the fate of left-wing groups in Europe and the Weather Underground in the United States, for example. The Weather Underground/Black Liberation Army gang that robbed an armored car in Nyack, New York, in 1981 illustrates this isolation leading to ruinous delusion. Only to themselves and a miniscule group of supporters did this gang appear to be the vanguard of a socialist revolution. To everyone else, they were mere criminals pretending to be revolutionaries, who ended up killing two police officers and a Brinks guard. The Order, a right-wing group active in the 1980s, went through the process of decline, although it was never much more than a criminal gang. The Abu Nidal Organization went through a version of this downward spiral as well, taking the foreign-support variant and becoming essentially a mercenary organization in the employ of different Middle Eastern governments. Any terrorist organization that uses the drug trade may be particularly prone to go through this process, since the money this trade generates is so vast that it always threatens to corrupt the political organizations that avail themselves of it. Similarly prone to this downward spiral is any terrorist organization that pursues a purely violent strategy in the belief that acts of violence will by themselves somehow lead to the political outcome it seeks. The public at large typically has less tolerance for violence than the hard core who are committed to violence. The historical evidence is, therefore, that terrorism alone as a strategy is not effective. Terrorists may achieve some tactical successes, they may get some hostages released, or kill a political leader, or terrorize people for a time, but they rarely achieve the political goals they themselves claim they are trying to achieve.14 It is worth pausing to examine this claim about the failure of terrorism, since, as we explained in the Introduction, claims about its effectiveness are part of the argument that we face a “new” terrorism and a “new” conflict, epochal revolutions in human affairs requiring changes to the international order, the character of government, and the liberty of citizens.15 Consider then the bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004. The bombings occurred three days before a Spanish general election, killing 191 and wounding 1,900. The election ousted the conservative government that had backed the invasion of Iraq and brought to power a socialist government committed to ending Spanish involvement there. The bombing was initially perceived as having caused or helped cause the socialist victory and to demonstrate that terrorism carried out by even a small handful of people was powerful enough to change a government. The bombing was deemed a tactical and strategic success for the al Qaeda movement.16

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It was neither. The new government was opposed to Spanish involvement in Iraq but supported Spanish involvement, through NATO, in Afghanistan and had promised to double Spanish forces operating there. The new socialist Prime Minister promised to make fighting terrorism his top priority. If the bombing was intended to weaken Spanish and European commitment to fighting the al Qaeda movement, as part of a strategy to isolate the United States, it did not succeed. The invasion of Iraq had limited support in Europe even before the invasion and the bombing did not decrease that limited support; nor did it succeed as a tactical action to influence the election. The socialists were closing the gap on the conservatives before the bombing and had a slight lead in some polls. Many voters were undecided and ended up voting for the socialist, an established pattern in Spanish elections. Postelection analysis indicates that those who voted against the conservatives did so not because of the bombing but because of the way the Spanish government responded to it, blaming the Basque terrorist group ETA; many interpreted this as a cynical manipulation of the bombing.17 Far from demonstrating the efficacy of terrorism, the Madrid case reinforces the claim that clandestine violence against noncombatants typically does not achieve political results. Indeed, the paradox of a political organization that is clandestine calls out for resolution through an overt political movement and overt political movements are one of the ways that clandestine organizations avoid being cut off from their constituency or public support. Sinn Fein and the PIRA is perhaps the best-known example of this phenomenon. Religious organizations can serve the same function. Hamas and Hezbollah conduct a variety of religious, social, educational, and political activities that allow them to gather resources and shape public opinion. They contest elections and hold office. These activities provide a window to the outside world for their clandestine components or act as a counterweight to the clandestine parts of the organization. Various Christian Identity18 churches in the United States and their leaders serve the same purpose, wittingly or unwittingly. As Beam acknowledged in his essay on leaderless resistance, these churches and other organizations help mobilize resources by indoctrinating newcomers and providing cover for the militants. The FBI has claimed that Eric Rudolph had connections to the Christian Identity movement, although Rudolph has denied this.19 Those interested in using violence to support environmentalism or animal rights can look to a number of overt nonviolent organizations involved in the same cause for support and guidance on strategy, so that they can find the right balance between violence that generates support and violence that discredits the movement and justifies levels of attention from law enforcement that the violent elements of the movement could not withstand.

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While association in some way with overt components of the same movement helps clandestine organizations avoid isolation and loss of support, this association generates problems of its own. Judgments about the right level of violence to use or whether to use violence at all in a given situation are inherently difficult. Evidence in support of one view or another will be ambiguous, as will be measures of effectiveness to assess a strategy once it is adopted. Much room for dispute will exist. Typically, the violent clandestine wing will push for more violence and the overt politicals will urge caution. Something like this occurred both between the Taliban, in a sense the overt political wing of an Islamist movement, and al Qaeda, the terrorist wing of this movement, as well as within al Qaeda itself. As the 9/11 Commission Report tells us, disagreements existed between the Taliban and al Qaeda and within al Qaeda about whether attacking the United States with planes was a wise decision. Those who opposed the attack feared the American response or feared alienating the Taliban or Pakistan, while bin Laden approved it, believing that it would “benefit al Qaeda by attracting more suicide operatives, eliciting greater donations, and increasing the number of sympathizers willing to provide logistical assistance.”20 Managing such disagreements and the tensions they cause in a clandestine organization or an organization that has both clandestine and overt components is difficult. Compromises will be necessary but are unlikely to satisfy those holding the extreme positions. The threat of factionalism, even splintering, will be constant. Much time and energy will be spent trying to hold the organization together. If it splits, the factions may come to see each other as threats rivaling or exceeding those posed by the government and wage war on each other. Internal struggles and rejection by open elements of the organization or movement are also likely to encourage defections to the authorities. These defections provide intelligence to the authorities, which they can then use to improve their targeting of those who remain in the underground. The analysis to this point argues that terrorist organizations are prone to dissolution because it is difficult to overcome the contradiction of being both clandestine and political organizations. Terrorists use violence to achieve political objectives but their use of violence means they must be clandestine or perish quickly. By choosing clandestinity, however, they choose to accept the risk of perishing slowly because clandestinity is incompatible with political success. It cuts off terrorists from their constituents and leads to tactical and strategic blunders and ultimately dissolution or irrelevance. To avoid this fate, terrorists must choose to become criminals simply or move away from clandestinity toward either political participation or more political forms of violence such as insurgency or guerilla warfare. (We discuss the possibility of moving from terrorism to more political forms of violence later in the

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chapter when we discuss the strategic competition between terrorists and the government.) The choice for nonviolent politics rarely manifests itself in a simple act of disarming. Rather, as the IRA-Sinn Fein case shows, the move to politics occurs gradually, haltingly and leaves in place a remnant of those still committed to violence. This remnant, however dangerous, is nevertheless forlorn and without hope of success. Operating as a violent clandestine political organization is difficult but terrorists often get help. The mistaken response of the government often helps them survive and occasionally achieve some of their objectives. Understandably, governments and their citizens want a strong and effective response to terrorism. But initially since the government is unlikely to know who the terrorists are, especially if the terrorists have emerged from a strongly supportive and protective community, the government is likely to use its force in a manner that offends public sentiment. It may allow the police to conduct abusive interrogations, some of whose subjects will inevitably be innocent of terrorism, or suppress civil liberties. 21 Such measures preserve or increase support for the terrorists, in part by making their excesses seem more justifiable, and help counteract the debilitating consequences of clandestinity. The US government’s response to 9/11 overseas followed the typical pattern. If the mistakes of al Qaeda and those who claimed to operate in its name had not been greater with regard to the use of violence, our position might be much worse. In any event, consideration of the effects of clandestinity on terrorism leads to the conclusion that perhaps the fundamental policy principle of any government attacked by terrorists must be “first, do no harm.” A restrained response is probably the most difficult response to make but may well be the most important. It creates the opportunity for the dynamics of clandestinity to lead terrorist groups to failure.

Entrepreneurs and group psychology So far, we have presented the choice for clandestine political violence as an individual response to a perceived grievance or problem. This is not a complete explanation of why terrorism occurs. Examining why this is so explains why terrorist groups, even though prone to failure, manage to endure, in some case, for many years. This phenomenon in turn tells us something more about the efficacy of counterterrorism strategies and which are likely to be most effective. Focusing on individual response to grievance is an incomplete understanding of terrorism for two reasons. First, what we have called the ideational

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character of grievances explains why grievances such as poverty do not by themselves account for individuals joining terrorist organizations. If commonly identifiable grievances were themselves sufficient to explain the existence of terrorism, we should find a closer correlation between the two phenomena, but we do not. Grievances and problems are universal but terrorism and terrorists are not. The number of even deeply aggrieved people far exceeds the number of terrorists. For example, after surveying 233 ethno-political conflicts since World War II, one analyst counted only 35, or about 15 percent, that used terrorism exclusively. Seventy-nine such conflicts, or 33 percent, used guerrilla war, which might have involved some terrorism; but even counting these cases, the incidence of terrorism is significantly less frequent than the incidence of grievances. 22 An interpretation, an idea, is necessary to make terrorism an acceptable response to a grievance or sense of injustice. This helps explain why the individual response to grievance is insufficient to explain terrorism. Almost any one is capable of feeling a grievance but relatively few are capable of using ideas and language to articulate that grievance and make it public and politically relevant. The fact that conditions require an interpretation is not the only reason that the grievances of individuals alone are not sufficient to explain the occurrence of terrorism. A more important reason is that it is hard to see why any individual, as an individual, would ever decide to resist, let alone become a terrorist. People who choose to engage in a life of violent clandestine activity take huge risks. Why should they? Why should they not wait for others in their situation to take the risk, since if these others succeed those who do not take their risks will still gain the benefits? This so-called free-rider problem occurs in all sorts of situations, not just with regard to political protest or violence. One way to understand how it is overcome is to focus on the conjunction of three critical elements: entrepreneurs or leaders, mobilizable resources, and legitimating ideas. Political entrepreneurs use legitimating ideas to turn a mere sense of grievance into a shared experience and, hence, a political reality. To persuade people to join in the risky adventure of terrorism, when they will benefit if the adventure succeeds without them, entrepreneurs use legitimating ideas and violence. Osama bin Laden is probably the most famous example of the terrorist entrepreneur. He took a situation in which many Muslims felt aggrieved and transformed it through an interpretation of those grievances and the world in which they occurred. His use of violence against the United States showed that it was possible to resist and survive, thus encouraging potential members to join and intimidating potential opponents. Through such tactics, bin Laden built a large movement. Not all entrepreneurs are successful. Donald DeFreeze, an escaped convict, formed the

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Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1973 in the San Francisco area with a group of people who believed they saw revolutionary potential (mobilizable resources) in prisoners. The SLA had a short life—it was not a particularly successful startup. It assassinated a public school official, committed robberies, and issued communiqués. Neither its violence nor its ideas appealed to many; it failed to build support. Most of its members were killed by the police after a suspicious and worried neighbor alerted the authorities about odd happenings next door. The survivors went into hiding and years later stood trial for their crimes. Not all entrepreneurs intend to build large or enduring organizations. Probably inspired by The Turner Diaries, a work of fiction that depicts the truck bombing of FBI headquarters, a loosely connected group of like-minded individuals, including Timothy McVeigh, thought up the idea of bombing the Murrah Federal building. He or they then planned it, engineered it, cajoled and coerced people into assisting with it, and mobilized other resources (money, bomb materials, information) to carry out the attack. This organization was small but effective, well designed to carry out its task, delivering what McVeigh thought would be an invigorating example of protest against a threatening federal government. However successful or large, the efforts of bin Laden, DeFreeze, and McVeigh show how grievances, ideas, and entrepreneurs come together to create different kinds of terrorist organizations.23 While it is clear from the history of terrorism that entrepreneurs or leaders are important in the development of terrorist organizations, one might wonder if they alone are enough to overcome the self-interest of potential terrorists in letting others take the risks. Terrorist entrepreneurs, however, have a powerful ally in human psychology.24 The psychology at issue here is not abnormal or pathological. Research has not shown that terrorism is the result of psychopathology. This empirical finding is bolstered by the recognition that psychopaths are probably not the sort of people that an organization at risk, which depends on trust, wants to have as members. This does not mean that no terrorists have psychological problems. It means only that the incidence of people with psychological problems is not greater among terrorists than among the population at large. Indeed, one study of Irish youth found the frequency of psychological problems to be lower among those involved with violent republican or loyalist activities than among juvenile criminals. In another study from Northern Ireland, political murderers were found to suffer significantly less from mental illness than nonpolitical murderers.25 The psychological assistance entrepreneurs receive, then, is from the normal psychology of human beings. A terrorist psychological profile might exist but so far no one has established that it does. One reason it may not be found is that, like other organizations that carry out a variety of tasks, it is

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likely that terrorist organizations consist of different kinds of people suited to these different tasks. But whatever the profile or profiles of terrorists may be, we have no reason now to think that they would fall outside the flexible bounds of normal psychology. Walter Laqueur has objected to this conclusion by arguing that if terrorists were normal—“people like you and methere would be billions of terrorists, but there are only a relatively few.”26 This is a sensible objection, but the weight of the psychological research that has been done pushes us to conclude not that terrorists are psychologically abnormal but that something other than psychopathology allows some but not all ordinary people to engage in the extraordinary activity of terrorism. As we have just argued, entrepreneurs play an important role in this process by showing that resistance is possible and legitimate according to some set of accepted ideas. This kind of entrepreneurial activity is selective. An entrepreneur cannot talk to everyone at once, especially if he is proposing risky illegal activity. He starts with those he trusts, rather than with a broadcast appeal for people to join his terrorist organization. Some may decide to join, others may not. The legitimating ideas entrepreneurs use also serve to select potential members. These ideas will appeal to some and not to others because of upbringing, education, ethnicity, religion, or other reasons. Given the evidence, we should assume that normal psychological mechanisms play a role as well when individuals decide whether or not to join. These mechanisms include the connection between frustration and anger, threat to a worldview and defensive aggression, narcissism and aggression, and alienation and the need to belong. We noted this latter need above, as expressed in the words of praise for his brothers of a recent recruit to an Islamist organization. The need to belong also characterizes the members of cults like Aum Shinrikyo, the group that launched a poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway (1995), but also appears to explain the various communal groups on the right and left that are directly or indirectly associated with terrorism. A propensity to take risks, hostility, and a desire to act, traits not evenly dispersed among a given population, also play a role in selecting from all the normal people in the world those who become terrorists. Rather than there being a single profile for a terrorist, there appear to be a number of different combinations of characteristics forming a series of different paths to terrorism. These paths form from a number of stepping stones that fall together in different combinations: grievances, normal psychological mechanisms, various legitimating ideas, and careful entrepreneurial activity.27 For some relative few, through accident and some degree of design, the stepping stones lead all the way to membership in a violent clandestine organization. That a person would follow one of these paths becomes more plausible when we remember that starting on the path and moving along it is typically

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a gradual process, whose stages we might summarize as a sense that something is wrong, which becomes an interest in reform, followed by a commitment to protest at the lack of reform, culminating in a willingness to use violence when peaceful protest seems to produce no result or appears an inadequate response to the seriousness of the perceived grievance. A study of the small militant groups inspired by al Qaeda that carried out attacks in London, Madrid, and Amsterdam and planned attacks in New York, Portland, Oregon, and other places in the United States found that typically those involved passed through several stages before coming to the point of planning or carrying out an attack. The study notes that most of the people who engaged in terrorist activity were ordinary people, most often with no involvement in crime and with typical levels of education. They tend to be young, between 18 and 35. One difference from the population at large was that the individuals tended to live in ethnic enclaves. Something happens to these ordinary people, they lose a job, experience discrimination, or the death of a family member. This event starts them questioning what they are doing and who they are. If at this point they come into contact with Islamic teaching, they may begin to identify themselves as Muslims, making Islam a more important part of their life. If the Islamic teaching they encounter is Salafist, a version of Islam imitating what it claims to be the practices of those who were contemporaries of the Prophet, the individuals may become alienated from the modern world and their families and friends who inhabit it. They may associate only with others who follow Salafism. As the individual continues his association with like-minded Salafists, he may become indoctrinated with Salafist views and adopt the more extreme ideas of this form of Islam. For example, he may come to see the country he lives in as a threat to Islam. As indoctrination continues, the individual may come to believe that he must respond to the threat by striking back. At this point, he has committed to violence. The report makes clear that individuals do not necessarily pass through all these stages but argues that those who do are likely to be involved in terrorism. It also notes that those who do reach the point of using violence often have the assistance of what the report calls spiritual sanctioners and operational leaders. The former provide justification for acts of violence and the latter facilitate their commission.28 They are the entrepreneurs we have spoken of. Whether we are discussing the stages on the way to Islamic extremism, militant environmentalism, or some other form of extremism, one consistent point in this process is the importance of social networks and small groups. As noted above, individuals who move into a clandestine organization do so out of preexisting social relationships because the trust that allows someone entry into a clandestine organization is part of those relationships. But groups are important at all stages in the process. The decisions that individuals

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make are supported by identification with a group. Research has shown, for example, that individual political action results more from a perceived group interest than from an individual interest.29 Individuals are more inclined to take action to resolve a political problem if they believe that the problem is a problem that their group has. This again shows the limitation in focusing on individual grievance as an explanation for terrorism. A repressive government can discourage participation in protest movements but participation is more likely if the repression gives rise to or reinforces a group identity. In this case, individuals are more likely to take action. The report on the groups inspired by al Qaeda mentions several times the importance of small group dynamics in facilitating the willingness to use violence. Group psychology, then, is more important than individual psychology in explaining how individuals come to join violent clandestine organizations.30 Through friends or other social contacts, an individual moves from sympathy for a cause to membership in a political or social organization that embodies it. Once in the organization, the member becomes socialized to accept group norms. As the group becomes more important to the individuals that compose it, group dynamics push individuals toward more extreme positions. Research shows, for example, that individuals tend to be more violent when part of a group than they would be on their own.31 No member of a group wants to be disliked by others in the group for being the least enthusiastic or committed. Ultimately, group dynamics help persuade some individuals to join the violent clandestine wing of the movement. The same group process continues inside the violent clandestine organization. In the Weather Underground, group pressure made certain sexual practices, as well as violence, acceptable, even though both violated the norms of the society at large and the individuals who had joined the Underground.32 If a group is being actively pursued by the police, then every member of the group has an incentive not to appear to be the least committed because to show limited commitment, for example toward the use of violence, may be seen as evidence that an individual is not really one of the group but an agent of the authorities and thus pose a risk to one’s life. Over time, such pressures tend to make the group more important than the cause. Interpersonal rewards from the group, such as the approbation of fellow members, tend to replace task-environmental rewards, such as saving animals from vivisection, preventing abortions, or creating a homeland for White Americans. These group dynamics or pressures and the social and psychic rewards that individuals receive from the group explain in large measure how ordinary human beings become capable of extraordinary acts of violence. The argument to this point indicates that the process that is now called “radicalization” and applied to militant Muslims is a general pattern in terrorism

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and political violence. We saw it when considering John Brown in Chapter 1. We see again and again individuals moving through a similar trajectory toward terrorism. Individuals become terrorists through social interaction in both a macro and a micro sense: social movements and derivative groups combine with small group dynamics. An individual involved in the antiwar movement, joins Students for a Democratic Society and then the Weather Underground. An individual involved in the German antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s joins the Socialist Patient’s Collective or Kommune 1 and from there moves on to the violent Red Army Faction. Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attackers, moves from an ethnic enclave to a radical mosque and then to a Salafist study group and ultimately to terrorist activity. Ayman al-Zawahiri, often described as al Qaeda’s number two, moves from a traditional Muslim life to the Muslim Brotherhood then to Egyptian Islamic Jihad and finally al Qaeda. Bryant Neal Vinas, born on Long Island, converts to Islam, attends a mosque, then travels to Pakistan where friends or acquaintances facilitate his entry into al Qaeda. The emphasis in this account on group psychology and small group dynamics implies that over time group dynamics may replace strategic political choice, both in the decisions individuals make on the path toward terrorism and once they are part of a clandestine violent organization. Even if an individual began the walk toward membership in a terrorist organization because of a grievance, over time membership in the group is likely to become more important than that original grievance. Comrades become more important than cause, to use Clark McCauley’s terminology. In other words, we began the discussion of violent clandestine organizations on the premise that individuals wished to change a government or its policies and that, under certain circumstances, they chose to reach this objective through membership in a terrorist organization. This assumption was a simplification because it left out the influence of social relations and “supportive networks.” Once an individual enters into a movement, these relations and the movement and small groups it generates become more important. For example, a leader of one of the factions of the Basque group Fatherland and Freedom (ETA) described himself and his faction as committed to the carefully planned use of violence in pursuit of a Basque homeland but admitted that the death or capture of a comrade could cause the group to set aside its strategic approach to violence and simply seek revenge. 33 The argument here is that this is not an isolated example but something fundamental that happens to organizations, including terrorist organizations. If we may classify the activities of terrorists as those that maintain the group (robbing banks, disposing of dissidents) and those that further its stated objectives (targeting occupation forces, or mink ranches, for example), 34 then, over

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time violent clandestine groups develop a tendency to let the former (group maintenance) become more important. Comrades become more important than the cause. This is another way of explaining how terrorist groups become less focused on their original political objectives. Both clandestinity and group dynamics, then, tend to isolate violent clandestine organizations. For the members of such organizations, the world inside the organization and the meaningful world tend to coincide. When the leader of the ETA faction mentioned above and his colleagues in the leadership decided that they should give up the violent struggle and re-enter normal life because through violence they had achieved all that they could reasonably hope to achieve, fully 75 percent of the rank and file in the faction (by the leader’s estimate) rejected the decision of the leadership. For three-quarters of the rank and file, the cause was less important arguably than comradeship and all that membership had come to mean to those in the organization. This is not just an issue of worldview or affective relationships, of course. Membership in the terrorist organization may provide status in the local community or be the only way that some members can earn a living, either because the organization supports them through the donations it receives or “taxes” it imposes or because it gives the members an excuse to rob banks or engage in other criminal activity. We should also note that comrades do not always trump cause. The fact that the leadership of the ETA faction made the decision it made indicates that despite strong attachment to comrades the claims of cause can rule decision-making even after an organization has been in existence for a time. This suggests that another way to understand the relationship between cause and comrades is to think of commitment to the cause and thinking strategically about politics as something characteristic of the leadership of an organization (it is what qualifies and interests them in leading), while commitment to comrades and the organization is something more characteristic of the rank and file of an organization. Some distinction like this shows up in the rhetoric and comments of those involved in the al Qaeda movement. 35 Or it may be that devotion to cause is simply more characteristic of some people and organizations, while devotion to comrades is more characteristic of other people and organizations. Finally, it may be that over time, commitment to comrades supersedes commitment to cause. As the dynamics of cause and comrades help explain the development of terrorist organizations, they may also help explain the differences among terrorists and terrorist organizations over time. We can exemplify much of what we have so far discussed by considering the case of the Molly Maguires presented in Chapter 1. When Molly activity (which included robbery as well as assassination) began, the miners had few

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if any ways to deal with work-related grievances. Some of them fell back on traditional means of redress (almost all the Pennsylvania Mollies came from the counties in Ireland where the Mollies had existed) and organized themselves out of preexisting social relationships or “supportive networks.” When an effective union developed, this less costly alternative to violent clandestine activity replaced Mollyism. Membership in the Mollies, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), and then the union typically overlapped, showing both the importance of preexisting social relations and the way a less costly means of redress can replace terrorism. The revival of the Mollies when the union failed underlines this latter point. Overlapping membership in the AOH and the Mollies also provided the Mollies with cover and, along with membership in the union, may have offered a substitute for the interpersonal rewards members found in the Mollies, making giving up Molly activity easier. When Molly activity revived following the failure of the union, the violence reached a level that provoked a more resolute and capable effort to put an end to it. The use of an Irishman as an undercover investigator as part of this effort, one from the region of Ireland where most of the Mollies originated, highlights the particularity and strength of ethnic ties among the social relationships that may be important for the formation of violent clandestine organizations. The Molly case shows how grievance and group identity, calculation and attachment, inform and affect each other and produce violent clandestine political activity. For the Mollies, the binding element for the group was a common ethnicity, particularized as a connection to a specific part of the home country. Religion is another powerful force that may bind a group together and has become such an important topic in any assessment of terrorism, particularly the new terrorism and beyond that the new conflict, that it is worth considering at length.

The role of religion We have discussed the development of terrorists and terrorism so far without making any special mention of religion. This is unusual since it has become customary now to associate religion and terrorism. This association became more common as the 1990s progressed and terrorist attacks by religious groups increased. Muslim extremists carried out the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and plotted other attacks that would have taken place in and around New York City. The religious cult Aum Shinrikyo carried out a chemical attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995. As we noted above, rightwingers in the United States like Eric Rudolph, had some connection, it was

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thought, to fringe religious groups. The attacks in 2001 made the association of religion and terrorism inescapable.36 What exactly is the relationship between religion and terrorism? Religious doctrine and images can provide the legitimating ideas that help make terrorism an acceptable activity. Religious institutions such as churches, mosques, synagogues, youth clubs, charities, and athletic programs can serve as nodes in the social networks through which individuals begin the journey to terrorism. Religious charitable giving can create a stream of money into which terrorists may dip their cups. Certain religious traditions of leadership or prophesying may create models and expectations that terrorist leaders may copy or exploit, making it easier for them to establish their authority and persuade others to follow. In doing all of these things, however, religion has no special or distinctive link to terrorism. Secular doctrines and institutions may perform the same functions as their religious counterparts. Marxist and racist ideas may legitimate violence, for example. Labor unions and student groups have bred or hidden terrorists. Ethnic diasporas contributed to the support of the IRA and the Tamil Tigers. Ethnic group identity is a way of overcoming or mitigating “free-rider” problems. No one has shown that religion is better at facilitating terrorism than secular ideas and institutions. Some have claimed that religion makes terrorism more violent and lethal. Religiously inspired terrorists, according to these claims, produce casualties and fatalities disproportionate to the number of attacks they carry out. “Although religious terrorists committed only 6 percent of recorded terrorist incidents between 1998 and 2004, their acts were responsible for 30 per cent of the total number of fatalities recorded during that time period.”37 Let us grant that those who built the database from which these figures are drawn defined religion correctly and carefully applied that definition in categorizing incidents as religious (is Hamas’ violence inspired by its religion or its nationalism?).38 What do these figures tell us? They cover a period of six years. They show that during that period religious terrorism was more lethal than other kinds of terrorism not that religious terrorism is always more lethal than other kinds. Generally speaking, modern terrorism has been getting more lethal as time goes by, with rising peaks of lethality every decade or so.39 It used to be enough to kidnap someone, hold him or her for a few days or weeks, get publicity and a concession or two, and then release the hostages. Religious terrorism may now be more lethal than previous kinds of terrorism simply because it is the latest kind of terrorism. Also, we should note that one particularly lethal act can skew the kinds of figures used to show that religious terrorism is more lethal than other kinds. When we remove one or two of these unusually lethal attacks ( e.g. the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center)

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from the data, the figures look different, weakening the claim that religion, as opposed to a few unprecedented attacks, is more lethal. Those contending that religious terrorism is inherently more lethal base this argument on more than just statistical data, of course. They argue that religion promotes violence. For the religious, they claim, violence is a duty, one imposed by God, so religious terrorists ignore moral constraints. They answer only to God, not an earthly constituency, so are not bound by the political constraints that curb the lethal enthusiasm of other terrorists. Religious terrorists also see those outside their religion as the “other” and feel free to annihilate them. Or, the religious see themselves as outside the established order and so feel free to destroy it, whereas other terrorists aim only to reform it.40 To state these arguments so starkly almost suffices for their refutation. They ignore, for example, religious prohibitions on violence and other moral constraints on doing evil, so much a part of all the religious traditions supposed to encourage terrorism. These prohibitions and constraints probably help explain why so many who become attracted to violence end up leaving the mosque they have been attending to participate in small study groups. The preaching in the mosque does not support their growing interest in violence. The arguments for the lethality-inducing character of religion also ignore the fact that religious aims are very often simultaneously political aims and so do not suspend the political constraints that thinking about an earthly constituency entails. The 9/11 Commission report describes bin Laden making very earthly calculations about the possible effects of the attacks he was supporting (e.g. increasing contributions to al Qaeda). Other documentation shows that Muslim extremists think carefully about the effect of their actions on this earth.41 God may be their copilot but he alone is not their audience. It is also not the case that the religiously inspired are the only ones who see others as the “other” or as less than human and thus slaughter without constraint. No one has felt the need to refer to religion to explain Hutu/Tutsi killing. Nor is it the case that only the religiously inspired feel alienated from the established order and wish to destroy it. Millennialism may indeed be a religious attitude and may allow terrible destruction in the hopes of bringing on the new order but this kind of thinking, even if religious, is not identical with religion. One may be religious without wishing to destroy the world as we know it. Nor must this impulse even be religious. If the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century anarchists had had better technology, would they have killed more people in their effort to destroy the old to make way for the new? Arguments for the greater lethality of religious terrorism based on theology or doctrine are not persuasive. Another argument, based on economic reasoning and the characteristics of certain religious organizations, might be. This argument begins by recognizing that terrorism requires security and

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that security is undone by those who defect from terrorist organizations. It then asserts that radical religious organizations, those whose practices are demanding (strict observance of prohibitions and rituals, time spent in religious practice, or specialized religious education), are better at preventing defections than other groups. A group that is better at preventing defections is not only more secure than other groups but can also be more lethal. It can be more lethal because the higher the lethality of a terrorist group, the more the government is willing to pay (rewards for defection, amnesties) to stop it. Only a terrorist group with defection-tested members will survive under these circumstances and be able to carry out very lethal attacks. Radical religious groups are better at weeding out those who might defect because to be a member, one has to make great sacrifices. One might have to give up all of one’s property or sever contact with various aspects of modern life. By making such sacrifices, one demonstrates one’s commitment to the group and one’s willingness to resist the blandishments of the government. Attachment to a radical religious group is also a question of need. These groups tend to be mutual aid societies. If one defects, one loses that aid. The government must replace it. This is especially the case if one has spent years studying religious texts rather than learning skills that employers outside the religious group might value. In this case, the government might have to pay the equivalent of a life time of support in order to buy someone’s services away from the religious group.42 If religious groups are indeed more violent than other terrorist groups, this might be a good explanation. The problem with the explanation, however, is that nonreligious groups also test for defection, and they are not, according to this argument, as lethal as religious groups.43 If defection-proofing is as important for explaining lethality as this argument claims, then all groups that defection-test should be equally lethal. Are religious defection tests (prohibitions and sacrifices) better than other defection tests, so that religious groups are more defection-proof than other groups that defection-test? Perhaps, but no evidence has been presented to support such a claim. If religious groups are more lethal than nonreligious groups and both groups share defectiontesting, then something else besides defection-testing must produce higher lethality. Put another way, defection-proofing may improve the ability of a group to carry out highly lethal attacks but it does not explain the motivation to do so. If religious terrorists are more lethal than other defection-proofing groups, then something besides defection-proofing must explain their motivation to be so lethal. As we have already noted, this “something else” explaining lethality may be a set of attitudes, including millennialism, that are not distinctively religious but that religious groups might share. Other factors may play a role.

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If Hezbollah and Hamas are particularly lethal perhaps it is because they are attacking foreigners and invaders (Americans in Beirut and Israelis in the Middle East). If Hamas has had a particularly swift rise to high levels of lethality,44 perhaps outside training and support has had a role. Hamas received it from Hezbollah; Hezbollah received it from Iran. Iran also supports Hamas. After all, if all the people who do not defect are dumb, unskilled, or inept, then the terrorist group that prevents defections is not likely to become highly lethal, whether rapidly or not. Certain operational environments might also help religious groups. They may thrive and become unusually lethal in some cases simply because of the prohibitions on government action against them. Such was the case with Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, the only group to carry out an attack with a chemical weapon. Another problem with the defection proofing argument is that it assumes that those who are defection-tested into religious groups are actually the people who become the terrorists. The only evidence about selection into a terrorist group offered comes from an official in Hezbollah.45 But the offi cial describes selection and testing methods that are common to all terrorist groups. The Hezbollah official makes no mention of using any specifically religious tests, rituals, or prohibitions in selecting terrorists. Interestingly, in this connection, there is evidence that religious defectiontesting actually makes individuals less useful as terrorists and thus less likely to be selected by terrorist organizations. A madrassa education arguably significantly limits one’s skills and one’s adaptability to the modern world. But to be an effective terrorist, especially an international terrorist, requires such skills and adaptability. Therefore, madrassa students and others who have isolated and limited themselves by joining radical religious groups are less likely to become terrorists than nonmembers of such radical groups. This explains why in fact relatively few madrassa students become terrorists and only seem to be selected as terrorists when other candidates are not available.46 The defection-proofing argument does not prove to be very useful in explaining the lethality of religious groups, although it may help explain the ability of all terrorist groups to operate lethally. But it is still important to understand the idea of defection-proofing. As we have argued, terrorist groups do operate under risk. Limiting defections is important. But the key may not be limiting the defection of those in the terrorist organization. From the viewpoint of terrorism, the real value of mutual aid organizations is not that they provide defection-tested recruits for terrorist organizations but that they buy the loyalty of large numbers of people outside the terrorist organization so that they are unwilling to cooperate with the government and provide information on the terrorists. In other words, the defection-proofing of religious mutual aid organizations takes place not within the terrorist group but among

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those outside of it who may know about it or the individuals who are in it. Mutual aid gives a large number of people an interest in protecting the terrorist group that is also part of the mutual aid network. The large group outside the terrorist organization contains people who are related to those inside the terrorist organization or know them from the neighborhood, the local mosque, or in other ways and could defect (provide information to the government). Anecdotally, there seems to be evidence that much useful information comes from people on the periphery of terrorist organizations. These are, after all, the people the authorities are most likely to come into contact with. If defection-testing and mutual aid insulate the social networks around terrorists from the government, and if religious groups are particularly good at mutual aid, then mutual aid supported defection-testing might explain why religious terrorist organizations appear to last longer than other kinds or terrorist organizations.47 The terrorists have bought the support of the people who could do them the most damage if they cooperated with the authorities. If this last argument about insulating and protecting terrorists is true, then the notion of defection-testing is another way of explaining one of the basic tenets of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. If the government provides services to the population, including security, it is in a better position to cause defections (i.e. gather information) from the people among whom the terrorists or insurgents must operate. If the insurgents or terrorists are better at providing services (mutual aid), then they will have the advantage. While this may be true, it is important to remember a general limitation on the mutual aid defection-testing argument. It would appear to apply best only to those who are deprived and, therefore, need the mutual aid that the terrorist organization provides. It might explain why no one around bin Laden defected but it does not explain loyalty in other terrorist organizations, whose members or supporters have less need of mutual aid. Many members of the Aum Shinrikyo organization, for example, were well-off and skilled, as were left-wing terrorists and their supporters in Europe. Some of these leftist organizations survived for 20 years, with members remaining loyal, if not active, for long periods of time. If those who have the means and skills to go elsewhere stay in organizations or remain loyal to them, then defection-testing may not be important in explaining the longevity of terrorist groups. More important than religious defection-testing (sacrificing property for the group, for example) in explaining longevity may be, as we have argued, the nonmaterial social rewards of group membership. A government must provide substitutes for these nonmaterial rewards, if it wants to pry members out of the clandestine organization. Failing that, the organization will continue, even if ineffectively; the survival of the group having become an end in itself.

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Group dynamics and the limits of counterterrorism strategies Whether we begin with the individual who becomes a terrorist or place him in his group setting, clandestinity and group dynamics tend to isolate terrorists over time. This makes it increasingly difficult for terrorist groups to achieve their political objectives. An important element in this process is the effect that group dynamics has on terrorist decision-making. Group isolation often leads to group cohesiveness, especially if the group comes under pressure from the authorities and the least committed defect. Group cohesiveness in turn leads to “group think,” the tendency for uniformity of opinion to develop in a group, as well as a disinclination to challenge the group opinion once it is established. Group think inhibits strategic thinking by closing off analysis and consideration of alternatives. Group think is perhaps especially likely to form and be powerful in clandestine or underground organizations, whose members have limited or no contact with people outside the organization or come to dismiss their views. This means that group think limits the ability of terrorist groups to respond effectively to the deterrent or coercive counterterrorist strategies aimed at them. For one thing, group think may mean that the group cannot accurately perceive the signals that the government or public is sending. In addition, the government may be sending the wrong signals because it takes as a guide what the group says about its objectives while the group focuses on internal incentives, for example, what comrades think or factional struggles. More generally, the desire to keep the group going means that even if the government devises an effective strategy that counters the strategy of the group, the group may refuse to admit defeat and try to stay in existence by changing its objectives or ideology or simply accepting political irrelevance or criminalization. For some groups or for some members of some groups, fighting is likely to become more important than winning. The isolating effects of group dynamics, like the effects of clandestinity, will not be felt to the same degree by every member of the group; neither are they inevitable. Outwardly focused leadership, especially if shared with an overt organization, can ward them off but this in effect is a movement away from terrorism to a more political strategy. Terrorists typically have enough coercive power to operate as criminals but not enough to operate as a government would. Therefore, they need a political strategy, if they are to gain their political objectives. This means that they must understand the political environment around them. But the isolating effects of clandestinity make this difficult, if not impossible. Unless it is unusually lucky or its opponent unusually

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incompetent, a group that subordinates all decision-making to group dynamics is likely to achieve nothing but its own survival, because it will not organize its limited resources to achieve any political objective. (The resource advantage that governments enjoy over terrorist groups allows governments more leeway to recover from their group-think-induced misjudgments.) Indeed, most terrorist groups have difficulty surviving their first years. If they manage this, they tend to survive for quite a while, although they seldom achieve much as a terrorist group.48 Of course, failure in the short or long term does not mean that the group may not kill many hundreds or even thousands of people in the course of achieving nothing. One might well wonder whether terrorist groups ever really engage in strategic calculation. Group dynamics such as factionalism overwhelm such calculation, one might argue, and groups under pressure from the police are absorbed in tactical issues. They have no time to disengage and reflect on the long-term consequences of various possible courses of action. Or such groups are swayed by ideological or religious ideas and act opportunistically rather than strategically in accordance with these ideas. One analyst made this point by noting that “al Qaeda’s commitment to God is strong. Its commitment to strategy is weak.”49 All of this is true in varying degrees and helps explain why terrorist groups, as terrorist groups, so often achieve little. Yet, the fact remains that terrorist groups act and each act uses limited resources. To the degree that the group does not think about the possible consequences of its actions, to that degree it is more likely to waste those resources. Wasting resources is likely to lead to failure (an inability to achieve political objectives). In short, terrorist groups necessarily have strategies, as do those who oppose them. The only question in each case is whether the strategies are good or bad.

The strategic competition As we have argued, terrorist groups typically do not achieve their political objectives and tend to decline into irrelevance or simple criminal activity. On occasion, however, terrorists do succeed, building their political power. Having examined in detail the organizational and operational dynamics of violent clandestine groups, we can now consider the patterns of terrorist failure and success in more general terms by exploring the strategic competition between terrorists and a government. At issue in this competition is the likelihood that a terrorist campaign can or will transition into a more political

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struggle, whether violent (insurgency) or nonviolent (electoral politics), and what the government must do to prevent this or, in the case of the transition to electoral politics, allow it on terms most favorable to itself. The strategic competition between terrorists and a government takes its character from the objectives of both sides and from the position they find themselves in when they confront each other. The objective of the terrorists is to make some political change; the government wants to prevent that. Initially, the terrorists have an information advantage, while the government has a resource advantage.50 Virtually everything the terrorists need to know, certainly what they need to know to start their campaign, is freely available to them. They can identify targets—government and military installations, offi cials, office buildings—simply by walking around, for example.51 At the same time, the government has little or no information about them. What terrorists lack is the resources, including public support, to exploit the information advantage they possess. The government on the other hand has resources, including public support, to act against terrorists but does not know who the terrorists are. This fundamental strategic situation leads to the fundamental strategic struggle between terrorists and the government. If the terrorists protect their information advantage (remain clandestine), while increasing their resources, including public support, then they will win because public support will allow them to achieve their political objective. If the government increases its information or intelligence on the terrorists, while maintaining its resource advantage, including public support, then it will win because it will be able to destroy the terrorists and not make the political changes the terrorists want. The dilemma for the terrorists is that in order to increase their resources, including public support, they must act on the information they have, including using violence. Every time they act (set off a bomb, assassinate a public official, recruit, raise money), they potentially diminish their information advantage by revealing something about themselves to the government. (This is the tradeoff we discussed previously between security and resources, generated by the paradox of a terrorist organization being a clandestine political movement.) Both sides must calibrate their use of violence, so that they increase their public support (terrorists) or do not squander it (government). This calibration is typically more difficult for the government, at the beginning of the struggle at least, because it has greater coercive power than the terrorists but no very clear ideas about how to use it. As we have argued, the calibration becomes increasingly difficult for the terrorists as the struggle continues because their clandestinity leads to isolation and misjudgment. In the beginning, the terrorists often do not have the resources to use too much violence. Stating the terms of the strategic competition between terrorists and a government shows the disadvantage that terrorists operate under and, hence,

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why they most often fail to achieve their political objectives. Terrorists are in a difficult political situation to begin with because the government typically enjoys an advantage in public support, whether it is freely given or coerced. Over time, clandestinity and group dynamics work against the subtlety of political understanding necessary for the terrorists to navigate this difficult position. Circumstances sometimes favor the terrorists, however. Opposition may be latent; the government’s coercive measures may falter. If so, it is easier for the terrorists to mobilize opposition, overcoming the “free-rider” problem. If the terrorists represent a religious or ethnic majority and the government a religious or ethnic minority, then the terrorists may find it easier to win public support, especially if the majority sees the government as oppressive. If the government is inept and forfeits its advantages, for example, by responding so oppressively to terrorism, or being so corrupt that it alienates public support, or has limited coercive resources, then the terrorists may be able to overcome their strategic disadvantage. In these cases (demographics that favor the terrorists or an inept or ineffective government), terrorists may escape their clandestinity trap and build the political support that allows their opposition to become an insurgency and ultimately a broad political success. If the terrorists have outside support, then the level of public support in their home country is less critical, although as we have argued, if the population in the home country sees that support as a foreign intrusion into their affairs, this will ultimately hurt the terrorists. Outside support, like criminal activity, however, may allow a terrorist organization to stay in existence even if it lacks popular support. There are a number of factors that affect the strategic competition between terrorists and the government in the United States. While race, religion, and ethnicity have all played a role in political violence and terrorism in the United States, none of these factors has allowed a terrorist group to build a successful political movement and achieve its political goals. An ethnic, racial, or economic group (e.g. workers) may form based on its identity but, as we saw in Chapter 1, groups succeed in their political objectives by appealing not to their identity but to the argument of the Declaration of Independence and the rights of American citizens. Even those opposed to Reconstruction and the integration of the Freedmen into American life appealed to the Declaration. The diversity of the American population and America’s political principles has made it virtually impossible for ethnicity or religion to function as the basis for a successful American political movement. What might be more important than ethnicity, race, or religion for explaining the particular results of the strategic competition between terrorism and the government in the United States (many different terrorist groups but none lasting long or doing much damage)? We might surmise that the freedom and opportunities Americans have enjoyed and, consequently perhaps,

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the legitimacy this has given the American regime is a good explanation. Presumably, terrorists are less likely to develop in free countries because in those countries alternatives to terrorism (e.g., political parties) are available. Since, to repeat, the violent clandestine life imposes rather high costs on those who choose it, if there are less costly means, they will be chosen. If someone in a free society is on the way to joining a violent clandestine group, exit from this path will be possible and perhaps increasingly attractive as the costs of the violent clandestine life become apparent, because alternatives will be available. While the research on the relationship between freedom and the prevalence of terrorism is not definitive, it does appear to support the conclusion that the freer a country is, the less likely it is to produce terrorists.52 The freedom Americans enjoy and their sense that it is part of a way of life or regime that deserves support may explain why terrorist organizations do not seem to prosper here, but freedom may also explain why the United States apparently spawns a greater variety of terrorists than most other places.53 The freer a country is, the more operational space it provides would-be terrorists. In the United States, for example, freedom of religion means that the people of the United States allow one another a great deal of leeway in establishing their doctrines and organizing their worship. Some can exploit this freedom to set up “churches” that preach racial hatred and, as Beam noted, act knowingly or not as recruiting stations and hideouts for those interested in clandestine violence. But such hideouts are not necessary if the terrorists are just beginning their activity. Those who attacked on 9/11 did not use elaborate tradecraft to hide their actions. On the contrary, they entered and moved about the country openly, which is easy to do in a free country. In such a place, the police must have cause to gather information on someone and typically act only after a crime has been committed. Not only does democracy make it easier to establish violent clandestine groups, but the fact that they can establish themselves before the government begins to make an effective response means that organizational inertia has time to develop in those organizations that do appear. As we have noted, as an organization becomes more important to its members than the objective they originally joined together to achieve, keeping the group going becomes its most important objective, making it harder to put an end to the group.54 Thus at the same time that freedom allows groups to form in the United States and organizational inertia prolongs their existence, the various opportunities of American life may make it harder for these groups to survive by drawing people to less costly ways of promoting change or enhancing self-esteem than membership in a violent clandestine organization. As we argued earlier in this chapter, opportunity or grievances alone are not sufficient to explain the occurrence of terrorism. Legitimating ideas are

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also necessary. In this regard, the United States is fertile ground for the growth of terrorism. The individualistic, even antigovernment strain of our political ideas, exemplified in our founding document’s assertion of a right of revolution, has from the beginning encouraged individuals to address their grievances by organizing themselves outside established institutions. As we have noted, this tradition inspired both John Brown and Timothy McVeigh. Not every “outsider” organization or movement, or any of them all the time, were or are violent, let alone terrorist, but they are the ground from which indigenous violence and terrorism has and continues to grow, even if perpetrated by individuals who are only on the periphery of such movements. The ideas these groups keep alive legitimate resistance to the government and, for a very few, even violent resistance. In addition to these antigovernment movements, America has had a nativist and racist tradition as well, running from the Know-Nothings of the mid-nineteenth century through the Ku Klux Klan to various white supremacist movements that operate today. Racist and nativist ideas have not allowed terrorists to build political movements but they have continued to spawn terrorism. These various resistance and racist groups are the dark side of the self-organizing civic life that has done so much to establish, preserve, and give character to American democracy. A net assessment of the strategic competition in the United States between terrorists and the government suggests that the advantages are heavily on the side of the government. Freedom and a tradition of antigovernment resistance may allow individual acts of violence and even a great variety of terrorist groups but the widely perceived legitimacy of the American regime, grounded in that very freedom, shifts the public’s support heavily in favor of the established regime, while the traditional array of opportunities available to Americans decreases the mobilizable human resources available to the entrepreneur who wishes to organize a terrorist movement. Thus the United States has produced many and varied terrorists or terrorist groups but none that has managed to build political power and threaten the regime. One element in the strategic competition we have not yet discussed is the media. Acknowledging the importance of public support, discussions of terrorism have long included discussions of the media. “Terrorism . . . may be seen as a violent act that is conceived specifically to attract attention and then, through the publicity it generates, to communicate a message. . . . The modern news media . . . thus play a vital part in the terrorists’ calculus.”55 Indeed, the media help level the playing field in the strategic competition for public support between the terrorists and the government. Terrorists lack resources; they use the media to remedy this deficiency. This is particularly so anywhere the media assume an adversarial stance toward government as part of their professional responsibility in a democracy to inform the public about the government’s

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activities. In such cases, the media feel a need to be seen as independent of the government and even-handed and so report fully what the terrorists are doing and saying. In addition, of course, the media are driven by a fierce competition for audience. The sensationalism of terrorism is readymade to attract one. Independent adversarial media operate in the United States, of course. In addition, so-called new media (websites, blogs, DVDs, twitter, and a host of electronic recording and editing technologies) are available as well. Does this media environment affect the strategic competition between a government and terrorists? Does it favor the terrorists, as some have argued?56 Does it favor them enough that it might actually tip the competition in their favor? To answer these questions, it is useful to start with an example of the role of the old media in an old terrorism event, the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985, as seen through the eyes of then–Secretary of State George Shultz. TWA 847 flew between Athens and Rome. The hijackers took control after the plane took-off from Athens. In the following days, the hijackers had the plane and some of its passengers fly around the Mediterranean before staying in Beirut. According to Shultz, media reporting, including reporting on the movement of US military forces, influenced the decisions of both the terrorists and the governments of the countries where the terrorists landed or wanted to land, complicating the efforts of the United States to resolve the situation. Two days into the crisis, Shultz reported, “I suddenly realized that the American media were there—in Beirut—in among the terrorist establishment and that they were not only going to cover the crisis, they were going to be part of it. . . . This media circus was playing into the terrorists’ hands and making U.S. efforts to deal effectively with this life-and-death crisis far more difficult.”57 Highlighting the resource-leveling effect of the media, Shultz saw the media as providing the terrorists free worldwide advertising for their views. Repeated interviews with the hostages and their distraught family members back in the United States increased pressure on the US government to meet the demands of the terrorists. Of course, Shultz’s responsibilities in the crisis shaped his view of the media’s role. But no account of this episode acquits the media of the charge that it aided the terrorists. If the hijacking had not become a media circus, the terrorists would have had much less leverage over the governments involved. It is not clear that the role of the media can be different, if the press is to be free and function in a competitive marketplace. The only consolation is that media reporting, while it may give terrorists an advantage in particular episodes, does not seem to create any permanent advantage for them.58 The medium is not the message and most people do not like the message that terrorists communicate through the media.

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The new media, which put media production and message control directly into the hands of the terrorists, do not change the balance of power between terrorists and the government. New media allow the terrorists “to completely bypass traditional, established media” and also “circumvent government censorship.”59 In doing so, they empower terrorists but not decisively. First, from the viewpoint of Secretary Shultz, the old media seemed to be entirely in the hands of the terrorists, so it is not clear that their direct control of new media is that much of an advantage. Nor did or does the US government censor reporting, again undermining the claim, as far as the United States is concerned, that the new media give an advantage to terrorists that they did not have before because they now avoid censorship. In fact, the new media pose a problem for the terrorists. They are not alone in having direct control of new media; so do thousands of other voices, all of which compete with the terrorists. Indeed, there is competition even among Islamic extremists for market share.60 The result is a tough media environment in which terrorists do not seem to function very well. Bin Laden, for example, is reputed to be a sophisticated communicator,61 but his popularity was declining for years before his death. Hezbollah has a sophisticated media operation, including its own television station, but in 2010 had a 65 percent disapproval rating in Lebanon, its home territory.62 Racist and neo-Nazi groups in the United States have been active on the worldwide web for years but have not seen any decisive increase in their support. The internet and the web are important to terrorists for reasons other than their hoped-for effect on public opinion (a point addressed in Chapter 3), but with regard to public support, the key element in the strategic competition with the US government, neither the new nor the old media afford the terrorists a decisive advantage. Deeds speak louder than words and terrorists’ words, their message, even if approved by a segment of the public, cannot overcome ultimate disapproval of their deeds. Neither the old nor the new media change the net assessment of the strategic competition between terrorists and the US government. In that competition, for all the reasons we have enumerated, the government has overwhelming decisive advantages. With this circumstance in mind, we may now consider the homegrown threat of terrorism.

The homegrown threat The Irish were not of course the only group from whose ranks terrorists (the Molly Maguires) emerged. As Chapter 1 showed, America’s history of homegrown indigenous violent protest and terrorism has been enriched by many

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contributions. African Americans have resorted to violence, as have Puerto Ricans. Many of the anarchists and early leftists were immigrant Russian Jews. John Brown was an ardent reforming, White, Anglo-Saxon evangelical. And of course Whites or Americans of northern European descent have grouped themselves in various violent organizations, such as militias or Klans. Another group has added to this history, of course. Since 2001 especially, attention has focused on Muslims. In fact, as the first decade of the twentyfirst century drew to a close, Muslims had become virtually synonymous with the phrase “homegrown” threat. There are some reasons to think that Islamic traditions and practices, like those that certain Irish immigrants brought to the United States, lend themselves to the kind of networking that facilitates mobilizing for political, even violent political, activity. (We review these reasons in Chapter 6.) Such generalizations are less helpful with regard to Muslims in the United States, perhaps because of the diversity of America’s Muslim population, the most diverse Muslim population in the world. Sixty-five percent of Muslims in the United States are foreign-born, with the largest number coming from the Middle East. The second largest contingent is from South Asia. Foreignborn Muslims have also come to the United States from Africa, Europe, Iran, and elsewhere. About 40 percent of foreign-born Muslims have come to the United States since 1990. Of the 35 percent of American-born Muslims, about half are African American, making up about 20 percent of the total Muslim population. About one-fifth or one-quarter of Muslims in America are converts; by one estimate about 60 percent of African American Muslims are converts.63 If the Muslim population of the United States is more diverse than the Muslim population of any one European country, it is also better off economically and educationally than European Muslims. Only 2 percent of Muslims in the United States are in the low-income bracket as against 22 percent in Great Britain and 18 percent in France. Unemployment is less pronounced among Muslims in America than among those in Europe, and the evidence suggests that in America occupations of Muslims are more compatible with their level of education than in Europe.64 The fact that Muslims are relatively well-off in the United States has sometimes apparently been thought to insulate the United States from the kind of homegrown attacks experienced in Europe. If so, this was an odd assumption since, as noted earlier, no evidence has emerged indicating that those who are less well-off and less well-educated are more likely to be terrorists. In fact, there is some evidence that among Muslims, relative poverty is associated with not being a terrorist. “In a survey of 6,000 Muslims from 14 countries,” for example, “the poorest respondents were the least sympathetic to terrorism.”65 A sense of being disadvantaged or

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not fitting in may explain why some end up as terrorists but it does not apparently explain why all or anywhere near a majority of those involved in Islamic extremism got involved. Most of those involved were employed; many had families.66 If not poverty or other disadvantage, are there other factors that may explain Islamic extremism in the United States? One that is sometimes mentioned, particularly in the European context, is “clustering” or “ghettoization,”67 Muslims living in largely Muslim communities. While clustering does occur, and among Muslims is thought to be more pronounced in Europe than in the United States,68 it may promote social integration rather than facilitate antisocial violence. Mutual assistance and thus economic success, for example, may occur more easily in ethnically or religiously homogeneous communities. Moreover, there does not appear to be evidence linking clustering with extremism.69 A more specific claim about clustering is that it is not clustering of Muslims that increases the likelihood of extremism but the clustering of ethnic groups that are Muslim.70 In the American context, an example of this would be the recruitment of Somalis from Somali communities in Minnesota to return to Somalia to fight. In this case, ethnicity may have combined with religion and some degree of disadvantage or alienation to explain extremism. (In the context of considering other factors that may explain radicalization, it is worth noting that there is almost no connection in the United States between conversion to Islam in prison and extremism. In 125 cases of Muslim extremists in which information was available, in only eight [6%] were prison converts involved.71) Considering ethnicity and issues in the home countries of immigrants turns attention away from Islam as an explanation or the sole explanation of extremism. Often what is thought to be Islamic is in fact ethnic, whether this be a particular behavior or practice (arranged marriages; female genital mutilation) or motivation (defending Somalia). Although a Muslim may be engaged in a particular activity, it is not necessarily the case that Islam explains why. Consider the Irish Catholic analogy drawn in the Introduction. Did those among this community in the United States who supported the Irish Republican Army do so because they were Irish or because they were Catholic? Ethnicity may trump Islam as an explanation of behavior, motivation, and ideas. US foreign policy affects the home countries of various Diaspora communities in the United States, which in turn affects the attitudes and behavior of those communities. This would occur regardless of whether or not the immigrants or their descendants were Muslim. It is also worth noting that those going overseas to fight or those fighting here are young. A database of Muslims involved in terrorism in the United States reveals their average age to be 30 and the median age to be 27. (Mark

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Sageman reports average ages in Europe to be 26 and 20.)72 A report, based on interviews with young Muslims in Europe and Canada, has highlighted the degree to which “Jihad as cool” is influencing young people to adopt extremist views. “The dangerous, exciting and counter-cultural element is an increasingly important part of al-Qaeda’s appeal.”73 At least one survey has found that younger Muslims (18–29 years old) in the United States go to the mosque more often, more often view themselves as Muslim rather than American, and have slightly more favorable views of bin Laden and suicide bombing than their elders do.74 In this view, al Qaeda is serving the same purpose today for certain young people that leftist organizations did for young radicals a generation ago. This would make bin Laden a kind of Che Guevara figure. Al Qaeda and other radical or extremist Islamic groups have taken anticapitalist and, therefore, what were once called antiestablishment positions. At Hizb ut-Tahrir’s meeting in Chicago in July 2009, for example, a banner proclaimed “Fall of Capitalism, Rise of Islam.”75 In this case, again, the specifics of Islam may not be as important as its recent marginal historical role and thus its ability to offer a critical perspective on established ways of life in the United States and Europe. Further evidence for the view that Islam has become a way of expressing opposition or sanctioning alienation may be found in the fact that converts to Islam make up a large percentage of those arrested for terrorism. Approximately 28 percent of those arrested compared to the 20 percent of the general Muslim population of the United States are converts.76 Many of the conversions associated with extremism appear to take place during the process of deciding to use violence or shortly before. This suggests that the decision to use violence is not so much caused by the tenets of Islam, as that such a decision or interest in violence leads some to Islam as a rationalization of violence. Since it is impossible to know exactly why someone converts, it is perhaps safer to see the number of converts among extremists as evidence that the decision to use violence in the name of Islam is not necessarily the result of deep knowledge of Islam. Ethnic issues, “cool Jihad,” and conversions suggest that the role of Islam in the process of radicalization is not simple. But it does have some role. Not all those involved in extremism are young or recent converts. In cases of individuals returning to a homeland to fight, we might suppose that a principal motivation is ethnic or nationalist because in fact they are returning to the country of origin to fight. In contrast, for those who decide to engage in violence in the United States or somewhere other than a country of origin, we might suppose that Islam is a greater part of their motivation. It is worth noting, therefore, that according to the database mentioned just above, 71 percent of Muslims arrested in the United States on terrorism charges

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were reported to have carried out or be intending to carry out attacks or terrorist support activity in the United States, while 28 percent sought to do so overseas.77 This suggests that some grievance associated with Islam is at least part of the cause of this terrorist activity. Those who operate in the United States see it as a threat to Islam, for example, and defending Islam is the reason they engage in violence.78 As with other religions, however, historically the degree to which Islam has been associated with violence has varied. Since Islam is a constant, Islam as such cannot be the sole explanation for these varied outcomes. Those who explain Islamic terrorism by highlighting the importance of certain modern interpretations of Islam, associated with Syed Abul A’ala Maududi or Sayyid Qutb, are in effect making this point. But this brings us back to what we have noted before, when discussing the importance of legitimating ideas. As with other forms of terrorism, homegrown or not, Muslim extremism is best understood as the coming together of entrepreneurial leadership, mobilizable resources (people with grievances), legitimating ideas, and in the case of Muslim extremists, a specific interpretation of Islam. (Sometimes it appears that the entrepreneurial leadership comes from informants. In 124 cases in which information was available, informants played an important role in 58 [46%] of the terrorist plots.)79 In returning to a formula we discussed earlier to explain the development of terrorists, we should also revert to our previous discussion of public attitudes, this time with regard to Muslims in the United States. Is the strategic competition between the terrorists and the government tipped in favor of the government as much with Muslims as it is with the American population in general? The available evidence suggests that it is. Survey results suggest that Muslims, although generally newcomers, are well integrated into American society. With the exception of very recent immigrants, most report that a large proportion of their closest friends are non-Muslims. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%–32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.80 It is true that when asked if they thought of themselves first as Muslims or Americans, 47 percent of Muslims said they thought of themselves as Muslims first. This might seem an alarmingly high number until we recall that 62 percent of White evangelicals responded that they thought of themselves as Christians first. Only 28 percent of both groups said they thought of themselves as Americans first.81

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The fact that most Muslims appear to be well-integrated into American society may well mean that they do not like or trust the US government or some of its policies. In this they would also be like most Americans. But it does suggest an attachment to the American way of life, to the American regime, that is not compatible with a desire to harm it. This is important because immediate community has a strong effect on individuals’ attitudes toward the acceptability of terrorism.82 It seems, anecdotally at least, that those Muslims in the United States interested in terrorism often leave a mosque and search online or in a small study group for support because they do not find among the larger community of their fellow American Muslims the sanction for violence they seek. Certainly, the attachment among Muslims at large to the American regime is compatible with some number of American Muslims using violence against the United States and its citizens. In this regard, Muslims are no different from other groups in our history, whose beneficial participation in American life occurred even as some other individuals in the group resorted to violence. That such violence occurs should not taint the larger group. Some have argued against this point, insisting that Muslims are different from other groups because Islam is different from other religions. We examine this argument in Chapter 5. For the moment, we note only that the fervent practice of Islam and the interest of Muslims in addressing their problems as immigrants, as well as the problems in the countries they came from, is compatible with their being good Americans, as was the case with Irish Catholics. Indeed, as with other religions, the practice of Islam appears to promote Muslim integration into American life.83 In part, this integration occurs because the American system of government offers opportunities for its citizens to participate in governance at local and state levels in matters that directly affect their lives. Political participation leads to integration into American life. To the extent that such participation is synonymous with good governance and political responsiveness, it also limits the danger of the homegrown threat, since “good governance and political responsiveness to citizens are fundamental deterrents of terrorism.”84 If this argument is true, it is a way of understanding how the American regime builds its legitimacy and has fortified itself for the strategic competition with terrorism both homegrown and foreign.

Conclusion Noting the legitimacy-building capacity of the American regime highlights the weakness of the threat posed by terrorism in the United States. An inherently

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self-limiting and self-defeating strategy, terrorism operates in the United States in an environment that allows it to occur but deprives it of sustaining energy. The legitimacy-building capacity of the American regime also provides any administration with a strategic reserve of support to deal with terrorist threats to the United States. This view of the terrorism threat is open to a serious objection: it is irrelevant. Looking to our previous experience with terrorism, a critic might contend, it fails to take into account sufficiently how terrorism has changed. In particular, it fails to take into account how technology—information and weapons technology—has changed terrorism and the threat it poses. We consider this objection in Chapter 3.

Notes 1 Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza, eds, Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 2 Dinitia Smith, “In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life with the Weathermen,” New York Times, September 11, 2001, Late Edition, p. E1. 3 Louis Beam, “Leaderless Resistance,” The Seditionist 12(February 1992), http://www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm. 4 Stuart A. Wright, Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 163–93. 5 http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/007141.html. 6 Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to al Qaeda (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 61, 77. 7 Bonnie Erickson, “Secret Societies and Social Structure,” Social Forces 60(September 1981): 195. 8 Erickson, “Secret Societies and Social Structure,” p. 195; David Tucker, “Terrorism, Networks, and Strategy: Why the Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong,” Homeland Security Affairs 4(June 2008), www.hsaj.org. 9 Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering Al Qa’ida (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), pp. 15–16, 36, 41. 10 Donatella della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 113–35. 11 James Dingley, “The Bombing of Omagh, 15 August 1998: The Bombers, Their Tactics, Strategy, and Purpose Behind the Incident,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24(November/December 2001): 461–3; Fawaz A. Gerges, “The Decline of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria and Egypt,” Survival 41(Spring 1999): 113–25; Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Declining Support for bin Laden and Suicide Bombing,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, September 10, 2009,

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http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1338/declining-muslim-support-for-bin-ladensuicide-bombing. 12 Martha Crenshaw, “Innovation: Decision Points in the Trajectory of Terrorism, Paper prepared for the Conference on ‘Trajectories of Terrorist Violence in Europe,’” March 9/11, 2001, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 13 Marc Champion, “IRA Is Ordering Its Membership to Drop Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2005, p. A.3; Kerry Noble, Tabernacle of Hate: Why They Bombed Oklahoma City (Prescott, ON: Voyageur Publishing, 1998). 14 Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security 31, 2(Fall 2006): 42–78; Jones and Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End, p. 19; Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 215–17. 15 For example, Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the TwentyFirst Century (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2008), pp. 76, 176–7. 16 Philip H. Gordon, “Madrid Bombings and U.S. Policy,” Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, March 31, 2004, http://www.brookings. edu/testimony/2004/0331europe_gordon.aspx; John A. Tures, “Do Terrorists ‘Win’ Elections?” Homeland Security Affairs 5(September 2009): 1–2. 17 Gordon, “Madrid Bombings and U.S. Policy;” Max Abrahms, “The Author Replies,” International Security 32(Summer 2007): 189–91. 18 Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 19 Alan Cooperman, “Is Terrorism Tied to Christian Sect?” Washington Post, June 2, 2003, p. A3; Kristen Wyatt, “Eric Rudolph, Proud Killer,” Decatur Daily, April 14, 2005, http://legacy.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/050414/ rudolph.shtml 20 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, n.d.), p. 251. 21 Peter Taylor, Beating the Terrorists? Interrogation at Omagh, Gough and Castlereagh (New York: Penguin Books, 1980). 22 Ted Robert Gurr, with Barbara Harff, Monty G. Marshall, and James R. Scarritt, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1993), pp. 98–9. 23 This is the formula of Martha Crenshaw, “Theories of Terrorism: Instrumental and Organizational Approaches,” in Inside Terrorist Organizations, ed. David Rapoport (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 21. 24 Terrorists, Victims and Society: Psychological Perspectives on Terrorism and Its Consequences, Andrew Silke, ed. (Chichester, England: John Wiley and Sons, 2003); Clark McCauley, “Psychological Issues in Understanding Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism,” in The Psychology of Terrorism, vol. III, Theoretical Understandings and Perspectives, ed. Chris E. Stout and Klaus Schwab (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), pp. 3–29; Martha Crenshaw,

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“The Psychology of Political Terrorism,” in Political Psychology: Contemporary Problems and Issues (San Francisco: Josey-Brass, Inc., 1986), pp. 379–413; and Ariel Merari, Driven to Death: Psychological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 246–56. 25 H. A. Lyons and H. J. Harbison, “A Comparison of Political and Non-Political Murderers in Northern Ireland, 1974–1984,” Medicine, Science and the Law 26(1986): 193–8; Ken Heskin, “The Psychology of Terrorism in Northern Ireland,” in Terrorism in Ireland, ed. Yonah Alexander and Alan O’Day (London: Croon Helm, 1984), pp. 88–105. 26 Walter Laqueur, No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Continuum, 2003), p. 23. 27 Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, “Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways toward Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 20(2008): 415–33. 28 Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat (New York: New York Police Department, 2007). 29 McCauley, “Psychological Issues in Understanding Terrorism,” p. 9; Gordon McCormick and Guillermo Owen, “Revolutionary Origins and Conditional Mobilization,” European Journal of Political Economy 12(1966): 377–402; Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” The American Journal of Sociology 92(July 1986): 64–90. 30 McCauley, “Psychological Issues in Understanding Terrorism.” 31 Charles Pavitt, “Social Influence,” http://www.udel.edu/communication/ COMM356/pavitt/chap7.htm, last accessed July 6, 2004; Marissa Reddy Pynchon and Randy Borum, “Assessing Threats of Targeted Group Violence: Contributions from Social Psychology,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 17(1999): 339-55. 32 Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 57–8. 33 David Tucker, The Future of Armed Resistance: Cyberterror? Mass Destruction? Final Report on a Conference Held May 15-17, 2000 at the University Pantheon-Assas (Paris II), The Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare, Naval Postgraduate School, 2000, pp. 33, 106. 34 della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State, pp. 119–24; Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to al Qaeda (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 65–6. 35 Mark Stout, Jessica M. Huckabey, John R. Schindler, with Jim Lacey, The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of Al Qaida and Associated Movements (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), pp. 42–55, 211. 36 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 81–130. 37 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 88.

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38 Martha Crenshaw, “New Versus Old Terrorism: A Critical Appraisal,” in Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge in Europe, ed. Rik Coolsaet (Hampshire, UK: 2008), pp. 26, 32–33. 39 see David Tucker, “What Is New about the New Terrorism and How Dangerous Is It?” Terrorism and Political Violence 13(Autumn 2001): 5–9. David Rapoport , “Perceptions and Misperceptions of Religious Terrorism,” unpublished paper. 40 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 88–9. 41 The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 251; “Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2005/zawahiri-zarqawiletter_9jul2005.htm; Stout et al., The Terrorist Perspectives Project, pp. 114–63. 42 Eli Berman, Radical Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). 43 Berman, Radical Religious and Violent, p. 118. 44 Berman, Radical Religious and Violent, p. 45. 45 Berman, Radical Religious and Violent, p. 55. 46 Nikhil Raymond Puri, “The Pakistani Madrassah and Terrorism: Made and Unmade Conclusions from the Literature,” Perspectives on Terrorism 44(October 2010): 61. 47 Jones and Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End, pp. 36–7. 48 Martha Crenshaw, “How Terrorism Declines,” Terrorism and Political Violence 3(Spring 1991): 79; Joseph K. Young and Laura Dugan, “Why Do Terrorist Groups Endure?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 17, 2010, p. 19. 49 Brian Michael Jenkins, “Looking at al Qaeda from the Inside Out: An Annotated Briefing,” DART Working Paper, Center for Adaptive Strategies and Threats, Hicks and Associates, Arlington Virginia, December, 2003, p. 35; Crenshaw, “Innovation: Decision Points in the Trajectory of Terrorism,” p. 2. 50 G. H. McCormick and G. Owen, “Security and Coordination in a Clandestine Organization,” Mathematical and Computer Modeling 31(2000): 175–92. 51 Gaetano Joe Ilardi, “IRA Operational Intelligence: the Heartbeat of the War,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 21, 2(June 2010): 331–58. 52 Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, “Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17(Fall, 2003): 119–44; Alberto Abadie, “Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working paper 10859, October, 2004, http://www.nber.org/papers/w10859; Quan Li, “Does Democracy Promote or Reduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49(April 2005): 278–97; Keefer and Loayza, eds., Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness. 53 Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America, pp. 57–8. 54 Martha Crenshaw, “Why Violence Is Rejected or Renounced: A Case Study of Oppositional Terrorism,” in A Natural History of Peace ed. Thomas Gregor (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), p. 259.

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55 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 173–4. 56 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 198, 225–8. 57 George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner, 1993), pp. 655, 657. 58 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 184–5. 59 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 198, 201. 60 Daniel Kimmage, “Al-Qaeda Central and the Internet,” New America Foundation, March 10, 2010. 61 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 197. 62 Horowitz, “Declining Support for bin Laden and Suicide Bombing;” http:// pewresearch.org/pubs/1486/survey-muslim-nations-middle-east-politicalleaders-hamas-hezbollah, February 4, 2010. 63 Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream (2007), p. 1, http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslimamericans.pdf; Ihsan Bagby, Paul M. Perl, and Bryan T. Froehle, “The Mosque in America: A National Portrait: A Report from the Mosque Study Project,” Washington, DC, Council on American-Islamic Relations, 2001, p. 16; Zahid H. Bukhari, “Demography, Identity, Space: Defining American Muslims,” p. 10 in “Muslims in the United States: Demography, Beliefs, Institutions,” Proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Division of United States Studies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, www.wilsoncenter.org. 64 Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, pp. 3, 18. Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell, and Michael King, “The Edge of Violence: A Radical Approach to Extremism” (London: Demos, 2010), p. 17. 65 Keefer and Norman Loayza, eds., Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness, p. 5 (emphasis in original). For the socioeconomic argument generally, see for example, Alan B. Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terror (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 66 Consider the data in Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 61–98. 67 Bartlett et al., “The Edge of Violence,” p. 17. 68 Ceri Peach, “Does Britain Have Ghettos?” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 21, 1(1996), 216–35. 69 David Varady, “Muslim Residential Clustering and Political Radicalism,” Housing Studies, 23(January 2008): 45–66. 70 Interview with British Security Official, April 14, 2009. 71 Mark S. Hamm, “Terrorist Recruitment in American Correctional Institutions: An Exploratory Study of Non-Traditional Faith Groups Final Report,” National Institute of Justice, December 2007, p. 110.); “Attackers Database,” Center for Homeland Defense and Security, Naval Postgraduate School, http:// www.chds.us/?chds:attacks/attackers; cf. Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia:

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A Ticking Time Bomb, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, 111th Congress, Second Session, January 21, 2010, p. 1. 72 “Attackers Database;” Mark Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2008), p. 111. 73 Bartlett et al., “The Edge of Violence,” p. 32. 74 Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, p. 6. 75 http://hizb-america.org/activism/local/195 -photos-khilafah-conference2009-usa. For historical and other background, see Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 45–9. 76 “Attackers Database.” 77 “Attackers Database.” 78 Consider Bartlett et al., “The Edge of Violence,” p. 29. 79 Silber and Bhatt, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat;” Bartlett et al., “The Edge of Violence,” pp. 28, 31, 33; “Attackers Database.” 80 Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, p. 2; cf. Christian Smith, Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 9–10. 81 Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, p. 2; Pew Global Attitudes Project, May 2006. 82 Merari, Driven to Death, pp. 173–97, 261–3. 83 Michael W. Foley and Dean R. Hoge, Religion and the New Immigrants: How Faith Communities Form Our Newest Citizens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Jon A. Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 84 Keefer and Norman Loayza, eds., Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness, p. 5 (emphasis in original); “Muslims and City Politics: When Town Halls Turn to Mecca,” The Economist 389(December 6, 2008), 76–9.

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Technology During the 1990s, an argument developed that terrorism had changed in some fundamental ways.1 Analysts contended that a connection existed between the increasing number of religiously inspired terrorists they observed and the increasing lethality and destructiveness of terrorism. A second reason for thinking a “new” terrorism had appeared was the effect of technology on political violence. Technological development was putting more and more power into the hands of ever smaller and less well resourced groups. Thus it was increasingly likely, some analysts argued, that terrorists would be more able to use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons as their religious motivation made them more willing to. Aum Shinrikyo’s use of sarin in an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 was thought to be the first in what would be a series of such attacks. Third, some analysts argued that the information and communication revolutions were encouraging terrorist organizations, like other organizations, to adopt a less hierarchical, more networked, and dispersed structure. The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 was a harbinger of these changes and the 9/11 attacks their full manifestation. If these arguments about religion and the effects of technology are true, then our previous experience with terrorism is irrelevant. The old terrorism or the old understanding of terrorism, rests on the assumption that terrorists pay attention to political considerations, whether in their operating environment or merely internal to their organizations, and change their actions and their organizational structure accordingly. Opponents of terrorism can thus affect or exploit the behavior of terrorists by changing the environment they operate in (increasing security measures, for example) or affecting the internal political dynamics of the terrorist organization (offering amnesties or negotiations, for example). The argument that there is a new terrorism in effect denies this. Religious inspiration trumps any merely political considerations; no earthly opponent of terrorism can counter the commands of God. Moreover,

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if terrorism results from the spontaneous activity of dispersed self-organizing groups, then much of what we have done to detect and counter the terrorism carried out by centrally controlled organizations will be irrelevant. Implicit and sometimes explicit in the argument for the new terrorism was the claim that the new terrorism, more violent, dispersed, and empowered by the internet and other technology, was a greater threat than the “old” terrorism. The argument that there was a new terrorism was part of a larger argument that there was not only a new terrorism but what we might call a “new” conflict. One of the key ideas behind the new conflict was that a technologyenabled transfer of power was occurring from states to non-state groups. Since the emergence of the nation-state, conflict and war had taken place between states, with non-state groups either pawns in these larger conflicts or mere irritants, peripheral to the central security concerns of states. The new conflict meant that for the first time nation-states faced non-state opponents who could challenge and even defeat them. The supposed greater threat posed by the new terrorism was important evidence for this claim. Using the internet, for example, terrorists could organize political and financial support around the world from Diaspora or other sympathetic groups. This gave terrorists a significant boost in their strategic struggle with states, in which for them one key task is increasing their resources, and suggested that the new technology might even transform the terms of that struggle. This non-state challenge posed a grave problem for states, according to theorists of the new conflict, because states had developed their institutions and habits in response to competition with other states. They were well-adapted to that competition but not to the threat posed by the newly empowered nonstate actors. Bureaucratic, hierarchical states were, according to this view, ill-suited to compete against their new networked antagonists.2 To assess these broad claims about revolutionary change in conflict, we need to make a net assessment of the effects of information and communication technology, as well as weapons technology, on both states and non-state actors. We discuss this in detail in Chapter 6, after we have examined separately terrorism, technology, sabotage, and subversion. In this chapter, we consider the specific claims about technology and the new terrorism, since decisive evidence for the new view of conflict supposedly comes from the way terrorists now operate. Are the arguments and evidence for a new terrorism persuasive? In Chapter 2, we discussed the claim that terrorism is now more lethal because it is more religious than before and discovered reasons to doubt this claim. We also argued, a point we return to in this chapter, that even if the motives of terrorists had changed, this would not have suspended the strategic competition between terrorists and the state, in which limiting and controlling violence plays a key role. If this is true, that is, if terrorists

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are more lethal than before, they will be not more likely but less likely to succeed. Moreover, we noted that the power of the “new” media is not as great as some of its students claim. It has not allowed al Qaeda to prosper in the marketplace of public opinion, for instance, where its “brand” has been tarnished. In this chapter, we consider additional claims about technology and terrorism. Have technological developments in information and weapons technology fundamentally altered terrorism and the terms of the strategic struggle between a government and terrorists?

Information technology Developments in information technology seem to encourage claims of revolutionary change. Marc Sageman claims that the invention of printing was responsible for just about everything afterward, except the break-up of the Beatles. The advent of the telegraph led people to claim that war would end and newspapers would go out of business. The development of the internet has similarly led to claims that world peace or the end of nationalism is at hand and that human life itself will be fundamentally changed.3 The development of communication and information technologies does produce change, of course, indeed revolutionary change, but the evidence is that these changes are always clearer in retrospect than in prospect. Much of what is said about the change that is occurring turns out to be wrong and much of what does occur is not foreseen. Despite this record, it is easy to see why one might think that the internet would revolutionize terrorism and even the terms of the strategic competition between states and non-state actors, for the internet affects every aspect of what terrorists do. It allows them to spread their message in words and images around the world, reaching many more people directly than they would be able to without the new technology. The internet allows terrorists to communicate securely and cheaply with those who are enticed by this message. This not only increases their recruiting possibilities and operational range but allows them to remain hidden, a key requirement if they are to succeed. The internet helps maintain hiddenness or security in other ways. By allowing remote target surveillance, for example, the internet increases the security of terrorists, as it provides them information. Luring potential recruits from websites to secure chat rooms, terrorists can reel in recruits securely from a vast pool of potential new members. The internet also allows terrorists to offer on-line training to those they have recruited. Given the increasing prevalence of automated control systems in critical infrastructure

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and the increasing connection of these systems to the internet, the development of information and communication technology has increased both the number of targets available to terrorists and the means of attacking them. Communication technologies such as the internet and cell phones make command and control easier. The terrorists who attacked several targets in Mumbai in 2008 talked with their controllers in Pakistan by cell phone, as they carried out the attack. The controllers, watching live news videos of the attack and the Indian response, were able to alert the terrorists to the movement of police and military forces and direct them in how to respond. As terrorists turned planes into guided missiles on 9/11, they turned cell phones and television into an effective surveillance and command and control system in the Mumbai attack. By lowering costs, while increasing operational range and security, modern communication and information technologies increase the likelihood that terrorists and insurgents can overcome their resource disadvantage against states, while maintaining and perhaps increasing their intelligence advantage. This suggests a revolutionary transfer of power from states to non-state actors, tipping the strategic balance in favor of the latter. To assess this claim about revolutionary changes in terrorism and conflict, we may well start by examining the assertions of Marc Sageman. In his book Leaderless Jihad, Sageman claims, as the title indicates, that Jihad in the modern world is changing from a centrally organized and structured activity into a more dispersed, decentralized movement in which small groups selforganize to carry out attacks. Proponents of the new terrorism had also made this claim. Sageman’s contribution was to specify how this was occurring. The internet has changed “the nature of terrorists’ interactions. . . . Starting around 2004, communication and inspiration shifted from face-to-face interactions . . . to interaction on the internet.”4 As we argued in Chapter 2, personal relationships, preexisting social connections, have been critical in building violent clandestine organizations. The threat such organizations operate under forces them to recruit carefully and this means relying on existing trusted relationships. This has always been a face-to-face business. Sageman is arguing that the internet has changed the way that terrorists recruit and build their organizations. Sageman’s interpretation of the effect of the internet on terrorism depends on two claims. First, the websites presenting Jihadist propaganda and operational advice are not the engine driving extremist Islam. He denies that images found on websites have “intrinsic power to influence people into taking arms against the West.” Such images, Sageman claims, “merely reinforce already made-up minds.” Sageman offers no evidence to support his denial of the importance of the images. What he does instead is offer his second claim, the sort of claim that developing information technologies seem always to

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inspire. Sageman asserts that the interactivity of the internet (particularly forums and chat rooms) is changing human relationships in a revolutionary way and, hence, he implicitly assumes, must be changing the way that those who become extremists interact online. In support of this claim, Sageman cites one article and six terrorism cases that he says show the revolutionary impact of the internet.5 We begin the detailed examination of Sageman’s assertions, as he does, by considering the effect of the internet on human relations in general. He states that “people’s relationships are being completely transformed through computer-mediated communications.” Sageman offers no support for this claim, except to make additional unsupported claims, for example, about the effects on people of the anonymity that the web provides. He proceeds, however, to draw conclusions about terrorism from these unsupported claims, arguing that the trust and intensity of emotion that is necessary for the sacrifices that terrorism requires can be generated online. At this point he states that “online feelings are stronger in almost every measurement than offline feelings. This is a robust finding that has been duplicated many times.” For this broad claim, Sageman cites one article, a review of research on the effects of the internet on social life.6 The article, in fact, does not state that “online feelings are stronger in every measurement than offline feelings” or that this is a robust finding. It states rather that in two experiments “those who met first on the Internet liked each other more than those who met first face-to-face.” (It also reports that depending on assumptions about the social context, interactions on the internet can be negative, displaying lack of trust, for example.) Overall, the article offers no support for the claim that the internet is transforming social life. For example, the article reports that research supports “the view that membership and participation in Internet groups can have powerful effects on one’s self and identity” but it also reports that “group processes and effects unfold over the Internet in much the same way as they do in traditional venues.” Instead of supporting Sageman’s claims, the article suggests that he is wrong in stressing the transformational character of the internet. It reports that people tend to take online relationships offline into the non-internet world, for example. This suggests that whatever the internet’s advantages, individuals still prefer face-to-face social life to online social life. Indeed, the article reports that “international bankers and college students alike considered off-line communication more beneficial to establishing close social (as opposed to work) relationships.”7 Other research on the social effects of the internet published since the one article that Sageman refers to does not support his claim that the internet is transforming people’s relationships. First, the internet does not appear to displace social activity. People who use the internet are not less likely to

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have other forms of social contact. Internet use “appears to expand activity engagement rather than replace previous personnel channel contacts [including face-to-face contact] or media use.”8 This research suggests that if Islamic extremists are replacing face-to-face contact with internet-mediated contact, as Sageman claims, then they are doing something that others who use the internet are not doing. Perhaps, we might speculate, terrorists use the internet differently from others because of their increased concern about security. Yet, other research explains the continuing importance of face-to-face encounters and thus the limits of the internet even for terrorists. A review of research on the social consequences of internet use among adolescents, a key group in Sageman’s analysis, finds that such use is correlated with improvements in “social connectedness and well-being” but only when the internet is used “to maintain existing friendships.” When adolescents use the internet “to form new contacts and talk with strangers, the positive effects do not hold.”9 Whatever the reason for this, it does not support Sageman’s claims about the transforming effects of the internet. Moreover, it casts doubt on his unsupported claim that strangers can form bonds of trust online as effectively as they can face-to-face. Other analysis counters Sageman’s claim that feelings are more intense online or that trust is somehow easy to establish through electronic media. It suggests, on the contrary, especially with regard to the young that a good deal of posing and hiding of emotions occurs online.10 We should note, however, as the review quoted here does, that “internet research is still young and does not yet allow us to draw decisive conclusions.”11 If research on internet use does not support Sageman, neither does the other evidence he uses, the six cases he refers to in his book. Table 3.1 summarizes what Sageman tell us about his six cases. After presenting this

Table 3.1 Cases referred to by Sageman Case

Crevice

Interaction

Support

F2F

Internet

X

X

Madrid bombing Hofstad

X X

X

Cairo bombing

X

Operation Osage

X

X

German bombing

X

X

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evidence in narrative form, Sageman states: “this clearly shows the change from offline to online interaction in the evolution of the threat.”12 In fact, it does not. In two of the six cases that Sageman mentions, he reports only that the terrorists got support from the internet (an inspirational document in the case of the Madrid bombing and bomb-making instructions in the case of the Cairo bombing). “Support” is not “interaction,” and it is interaction among terrorists that Sageman says the internet has “dramatically transformed.” These examples, therefore, do not support Sageman’s claims. Interaction did occur on the internet in the other four cases, but it also occurred face-to-face. How do we know which kind of interaction was more important? If terrorists are meeting as they have always done and then communicating online or meeting online and then meeting in person, which would be consistent with research on internet use, this does not suggest a dramatic change in terrorists’ interactions. It is important to note, then, that only in one case (the German bombing) does Sageman tell us that the terrorists first met online. The reason that Sageman does not mention terrorists meeting first online in the other cases is that it did not happen. In all the other cases he cites, it appears that the terrorists met first face-to-face. In fact, as we noted in Chapter 2, evidence suggests that those who become terrorists have tended to be friends, acquaintances, or relatives, who then become radicalized and carry out an attack.13 Sageman himself made this point, repeatedly, in his first book, emphasizing the importance of trust and, hence, preexisting social contacts in the risky business of recruiting people for terrorism.14 In the course of this process, they may contact others online but Sageman presents no evidence that these online contacts are more important than the face-to-face contacts. In fact, the evidence suggests that they were not. In all but one of the cases he cites, the groups formed face-to-face and then to one degree or another used the internet. But there is no evidence that the internet was necessary for group formation, subsequent radicalization, or carrying out an attack. The internet may make it easier to find accomplices in geographically dispersed places, coordinate with them, and get plans for a bomb but terrorists did all these things before the internet existed. The internet may allow terrorists to improve their efficiency but the cases Sageman mentions do not show a transformation in how terrorists interact.15 Moreover, in three of the six cases that Sageman mentions, the face-to-face contact first occurred in a mosque or an Islamic religious group, exactly the sort of thing that Sageman argues was not important after 2004.16 Only one of the cases Sageman mentions (the German bombing) supports his claim that the internet has changed interactions among terrorists. What about cases that have occurred since Sageman’s book appeared in 2008? There were a number of cases during 2009–10.17 Al-Shabab,

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an Islamic extremist group in Somalia, recruited among first- or secondgeneration Somali immigrants in the United States. It used videos on the internet but also face-to-face contact. Some of those recruited and subsequently arrested have reported attending secret meetings, meeting people on basketball courts or at mosques, or in chat rooms online. Al-Shabab also used what one report described as networks of friends to help its recruiting efforts.18 Bryant Neal Vinas, an American citizen, converted to Islam in 2004, according to one report, because of al Qaeda videos that he viewed online. He subsequently traveled to Pakistan, where a friend helped him get in touch with al Qaeda. During his time in Pakistan, Vinas met others who hoped to carry out extremist attacks. Some had been recruited in Belgium in person by an al Qaeda recruiter, who also used the internet to recruit others.19 Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan immigrant, who pled guilty in 2010 to attempting to set off a bomb in the New York City subway, is reported to have attended a mosque with his family as he was growing up and possibly to have joined with others who left the mosque when the Imam preached against al Qaeda. He went to Pakistan for training. Another report claims he was in touch by phone with al Qaeda members in Pakistan. 20 Four men from Newburgh, New York, convicted of plotting to bomb a synagogue in New York City had prison, a mosque, and an FBI informant in common but no reported use of the internet. 21 Zachary Chesser watched online videos, participated in chat rooms, started posting himself and communicating with other extremists and was eventually arrested for threatening people he felt had insulted the Prophet and attempting to travel to Somalia to join al Shabaab. 22 Hosam Maher Husein Smadi met someone working for the FBI online and subsequently plotted with him and others working for the FBI to carry out a terrorist attack. After meeting online, the informants and Smadi did meet face-to-face while planning the attack. The pattern of the Smadi case has recurred several times. 23 While incomplete, none of the information we have on these plots suggests anything like what Sageman claims. Internet images sometimes appear to assist, if not initiate, the movement to extremism. Chat rooms play a role and may be the place where terrorists first meet, but face-to-face contact predominates, especially for those involved in plotting to carry out violence. Mosques and other physical gathering places figure as prominently as the internet. In this limited sample, the internet appears to be a useful but by no means a transforming means of mobilizing recruits for extremism. This is actually a point that Sageman himself comes close to making at the end of his discussion of terrorism and the internet in Leaderless Jihad. In doing so, Sageman returns to the more accurate characterization of the internet and terrorist recruiting offered in his first book: the internet assists but does not

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transform recruiting. Face-to-face contact remains critical especially for the step from radicalization to actual plotting. 24 In showing the complex interaction of social relations, the internet and recruiting, all of the cases just considered display a marked resemblance to the summary description one analyst of the Madrid bombings (2004) has offered of the participants in that attack: It was in Mosques, worship sites, countryside gatherings and private residences where most of the members of the Madrid bombing network adopted extremist views. A few adopted a violent conception of Islam while in prison. The internet was clearly relevant as a radicalization tool, especially among those who were radicalized after 2003, but it was more importantly a complement to face-to-face interactions. 25 Again, none of this suggests that Sageman’s latest claims about the internet and terrorism are true. Further evidence suggesting that Sageman’s claims are wrong comes from research done on the recruitment of foreign fighters from the Middle East and North Africa. Analysis of data captured in Iraq shows that 96 percent of a group of 177 foreign fighters met their recruitment coordinator “through a social (84%), family (6%) or religious (6%) connection.” Only 3.4 percent of the 177 foreign fighters mentioned the internet. Furthermore, when countries of origin for the foreign fighters were compared to the number of internet users in those countries, “more internet users correlated with lower numbers of fighters.” Finally, one analysis shows that there is no correlation between countries that access extremist websites and countries that produce foreign fighters.26 If the internet was transforming how terrorists mobilize and recruit, we would expect to see a correlation between accessing extremist websites and numbers of foreign fighters. What holds true for the Middle East and North Africa might not hold true for other places with greater general rates of access to the internet and less of a supporting social and cultural network for extremists to rely on. In these places, one might argue, the internet may be the only place that would-be radicals could find the contacts and encouragement they need to join the extremist movement. Colleen LaRose, “Jihad Jane,” in suburban Philadelphia may have had no access to radical Islam except online. It was apparently through the internet that she became committed to violence.27 Her mobilization and self-recruitment is an example of the role of the internet and the sort of thing that Sageman and others are talking about. But it is important to remember that Jihad Jane was not recruited by an established terrorist organization and that her plotting and conspiring came to nothing and appear

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to have been rather amateurish. If not indicative of all internet self-recruitment, the Jihad Jane case is also not the only recruitment pattern or even a dominant one. Of the Middle East and North Africa one analyst has said, “the internet plays a minor radicalization role. . . . Conversations, sermons, print and radio communication, family and social networks present foreign fighters with local justification for joining the jihad.”28 The internet may play more of a role in North America and Europe but even there local face-to-face contacts remain important and perhaps most important for radicalization. The case of the five young men from northern Virginia who traveled to Pakistan and were arrested and convicted there on terrorism charges suggests as much.29 They were friends before becoming radicalized through the internet. The ongoing importance of face-to-face contact accords with what research shows about internet use30 and is especially important if we are considering actual plotting as opposed to more general radicalization. An individual may become radicalized online and may even reach the point of carrying out a violent attack. But if an individual wishes to join with others in carrying out the attack, either to increase its scope or overcome his own technical limitations, the evidence suggests that personal face-to-face contact is necessary. The attack is the most risky part of terrorism, apparently requiring a degree of trust and expertise that face-to-face contact best supplies. The salient role of FBI informants who met through the internet in recent terrorist cases highlights the dangers of relying on the internet rather than preexisting trusted relationships. As we noted in Chapter 2, FBI informants have been involved in 46 percent of recent cases. As noted, the pattern in these cases is contact online and then personal meetings to carry out a plot. These cases show the danger to an aspiring terrorist if he moves from words to deeds without the protection of a prior trusted relationship. One might respond that what these cases really show is the gullibility of their often young targets and the need for the FBI to move a plot to action so that its arrests are prosecutable. This is true but indeed highlights and does not alter the fact that both sides in a recruitment, the potential terrorist and the terrorist organization, are engaged in risky behavior and are less likely to be betrayed, the more trusted personal relationships mediate or facilitate the recruitment. The evidence suggests that while contact or relationships may develop over the internet, the most risky business of plotting appears to require face-to-face contact supported by trusted intermediaries. Online propaganda helped radicalize Bryant Neal Vinas but friends, trusted agents, apparently acted as intermediaries facilitating his entry into serious terrorist activity. Plotting in the absence of such arrangements is quite dangerous, a point Sageman once understood.31 One must conclude, therefore, that Sageman offers no evidence to support his claim that the internet is transforming how terrorists interact or their

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traditional methods of recruitment. Nor is there evidence elsewhere to support this claim. Perhaps over time such evidence will emerge. We must also remember, however, that the development of the internet does not offer opportunities only to non-state actors. One reason that the internet is not more thoroughly changing the way that terrorists operate may be that state security services are active on the internet, as the presence of FBI informants suggests, making terrorists wary of the internet as a recruiting tool. It is clear from press accounts, various official documents such as criminal complaints, and the use of FBI informants on the internet in so many cases that the FBI is doing what we might call counter-recruiting online. Hence, terrorists have increasingly retreated to password-secured chat rooms, a point emphasized rightly by Sageman, to carry out the more serious business of moving a potential recruitment forward to the point where a personal meeting might be arranged in a secure setting. The degree to which authorities are able to penetrate chat rooms and operate there is not clear but it is likely that it is occurring, at least to some degree. If the National Security Agency acknowledges that it operates on the assumption that unauthorized people have access to even the most secure US government systems,32 we should assume that the US government has access to terrorist-controlled systems. To the extent that it does, then the internet is not providing terrorists with all the increases in security that are sometimes attributed to operations facilitated with online technology. This would especially be the case because terrorists cannot know for sure to what degree they are being monitored online. Furthermore, private organizations and individuals (the Jawa Report, internet haganah, for example) are monitoring extremist websites and internet activity. Even the spirit of “if you see something, say something” has carried over to the internet. In a case in late 2010, an individual came to the attention of authorities because he posted messages on his Facebook page that some found alarming.33 In a now familiar pattern, FBI informants established contact with the individual through the internet, met him in person, plotted with him, and ultimately arrested him. All of this counter-mobilization and recruitment activity, often ignored in arguments for the terrorist-empowering ability of the internet, limits the usefulness of this technology for terrorists. The internet has limited usefulness for another reason. It is not a particularly good way to train people. In his account of the internet in Leaderless Jihad, Sageman acknowledges this. He points out, for example, that in the six cases he describes, bombs built only with instructions from websites either did not explode or had limited effects. Such failures have shown up in other cases when terrorists have relied on information from the internet. Sageman mentions one, the case of a “lone wolf” radicalized online, whose two homemade bombs failed to detonate.34 The quality of online information is often

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not good but the problem is not just the material posted on the web but also the medium itself. The web is a good way to make information available to a large number of people but the new technology does not change how people process this information or use it to learn once they get it. No matter how technically advanced the delivery system, once it gets information to the recipient, the latter still has to read it or view it and then try to learn from it. The internet does not change this. This is a problem when one is trying to learn practical things, like building a bomb or detecting surveillance. No organization that is serious about developing technically capable people relies only on reading manuals or watching videos. It runs hands-on sessions, in which trainees work with trainers. One reason for this is that what the trainees need to learn is not just an explosives formula but how to handle the explosives and build the device, what it feels like to do this, explosives in hand, when it is done right. In other words, like all practical activities, terrorism requires not just explicit knowledge from manuals but also the implicit knowledge of an experienced practitioner that allows him to judge when something is done right.35 The more complex the task, the more difficult it is to master without this implicit knowledge. The internet does not convey this implicit knowledge. Even if the information on al Qaeda affiliated websites were better, the internet would still be a limited means for training in the tasks that terrorists must learn. If we consider recruitment and training, two key tasks for any terrorist organization, we see little evidence that the internet has produced radical change or any fundamental shift of power from states to non-state actors. We reach the same conclusion if we consider fund-raising online. Given their resource disadvantage compared to their state enemies, any technology that improves their fund-raising should be important to terrorists. Online fundraising by terrorists does occur, with websites run by terrorists requesting donations from supporters, for example. 36 But such computer-mediated fundraising has not replaced offline drug-trafficking, robbery, extortion, and other criminal activity as major sources of terrorist funds. The internet may facilitate terrorist criminal activity but again this does not amount to a transformation in terrorist activity or a revolutionary transfer of power to non-state actors. Terrorists, like others, can move money online and take advantage of new developments, such as mobile money (financial transactions over a mobile phone), but so far there is no evidence that such developments have altered the basic business of terrorism or given non-state actors appreciable power that they did not have before. One might argue, however, that even if the internet has not transformed terrorism in the specific cases of recruitment, training, and fundraising and does not provide necessarily decisive advantages in security, it is slowly but

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surely transferring power to non-state actors. The cumulative effect of incremental change will be revolutionary. In assessing such claims, we should remember several things. First, the assumption in the “transfer of power” argument appears to be that power is static and that if non-state actors gain power they must be getting it from states, which hold all the power. Power, however, may not be finite. Perhaps the internet is generating new power. If so, just as non-state actors can gather up some of this power, so can states. The FBI’s pursuit of terrorists online would be an example and only a small part of the surveillance power states are deriving from information and communications technologies, such as networked sensor fields. Again, if nonstate organizations like terrorists can make their operations more efficient using information technology, so can states. Moreover, if transfers of power are occurring, perhaps they are not occurring from states to non-state actors but from non-state organizations to dispersed non-state actors. Sageman notes that if would-be Jihadists do not like what they see on an organization’s website, they can go to another one or start their own.37 If so, does this not mean that non-state organizations will have increased difficulty remaining cohesive and capable of collective action? States will not suffer this fate, at least not to the same degree, because they have open, legal means of organizing themselves and accepted, customary, routine ways of collecting and exercising power. If power is accruing to non-state organizations, and yet is also accruing to non-state individuals relative to non-state organizations, will not terrorist organizations be worse off than states as a result of these changes in power? Will empowered individuals be better at advancing nonstate agendas than non-state organizations? Will decentralized, networked, loosely linked groups of people prove a better vehicle for carrying extremists to victory than typically unsuccessful more centralized terrorist organizations? Contrary to the views of the proponents of the new terrorism and the new conflict, the net effect of the internet may be to leave non-state actors less powerful than their state opponents.

Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons technology If information and communications technology do not transform terrorism and conflict, what about weapons technology? Discussions of terrorism and weapons technology often use the phrase “weapons of mass destruction,” frequently taken to be synonymous with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The terms are not synonymous, of course, since

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weapons other than CBRN can cause more destruction than CBRN weapons, even massive destruction. The attack on the Murrah Federal Building without CBRN killed more people than Aum Shinrikyo’s chemical attack on the Tokyo subway. The 9/11 attacks killed and injured more than Aum’s chemical attack and caused more physical destruction. The anthrax attacks in the United States in 2001 killed only a handful of people. Furthermore, technological developments in explosives, lasers, and guidance systems might make nonCBRN weapons increasingly destructive, even more destructive and lethal than some chemical, biological, or radiological weapons. The technological barriers to the successful development and employment of advanced nonCBRN weapons might typically be lower than for most CBRN weapons, allowing more frequent use of the former. This would make them cumulatively more destructive and lethal than CBRN weapons. Indeed, the technological ease of employing improvised explosive devices of all sorts has already made them much more cumulatively destructive than CBRN weapons used by terrorists to date. Mass destruction, then, is not characteristic of CBRN weapons alone. Why single out these weapons? There are four reasons to do so. First, the focus on CBRN weapons in discussions of terrorism and weapons technology reflects the psychological impact of these weapons, given the aura of destructive evil that surrounds them. Whether through an instinctive fear of contamination by invisible agents (fumes, spores, and radiation), memories of images from World War I and other battlefields, or for other reasons, these four kinds of weapons are joined together by the special fear they cause. Terrorist use of these weapons adds menace and insecurity beyond that which would be caused by conventional weapons. Second, some CBRN weapons, particularly any nuclear weapon, would cause damage beyond anything terrorists have so far been able to manage. Third, whether a cause or an effect of the special status of these weapons, states have controlled them and sought to limit their use, as they have not with other weapons. If terrorists possessed them, it would signal the kind of shift in power to non-state actors that the new conflict theorists have been touting. Fourth, the focus on CBRN weapons reflects a consensus among experts that as technology develops, it will be progressively easier for terrorists to use these weapons, increasing correspondingly the likelihood of their use and the likelihood that states and their citizens will experience the special fear and damage that CBRN can cause. CBRN weapons, then, have special characteristics other than causing mass casualties but it is the combination of these characteristics with mass casualties that is the most pressing problem. Ricin, a biological agent, is terribly lethal but, because of its properties, is not a substance that will cause mass casualties. (A number of countries, including the United States, have

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tried but failed to weaponize it.) This does not mean that ricin is not a threat but only that it is a lesser threat than the CBRN weapons that can cause mass casualties. It is these weapons that pose most starkly the issues raised by new terrorism. Henceforth, when discussing CBRN weapons, we imply those that can cause mass casualties. CBRN weapons raise clearly the relevance of what we know about old terrorism and our response to it. These weapons, one might argue, show that the analysis of old terrorism, or the old analysis of terrorism, presented in Chapter 2, focused on the wrong threat. Generally speaking, terrorism poses two threats. The first is a political threat, forced political change. The second is a lethal threat, lots of dead people. We argued in Chapter 2 that the political threat (mobilizing political support with violence) imposes a limit on the lethal threat. Terrorist groups are not free to choose what level of lethal violence they wish to employ. Or, rather, they are free to make that choice but if they are wrong, if they use a level of violence that their supporters reject or that compels an adversary to finally make an effective response (the case with 9/11), they will ultimately fail to mobilize support to achieve their political objectives.38 This is true even if we imagine a group or movement (not al Qaeda) that has as its primary objective only fighting or killing large numbers of people. If it wishes to go on doing that, too much violence will become an impediment. At some point, its targets will be provoked into developing effective responses, even if that means becoming as ruthless in response as the terrorists are in attack. The level of violence that emerges in a terrorist campaign depends on a number of factors (culture, religion, politics, available technology, etc.). Whatever the limit, in the long run, violating it will lead to political defeat for terrorists. In the traditional understanding of terrorism, the political threat meant a limit to the lethal threat. According to the traditional view of terrorism, it should be good news all around that the political objectives of terrorism impose limits on its violence, even on terrorism perpetrated by the religiously inspired who hope, as most do, to achieve something in this world. Yet, depending on its circumstances, a government might find little consolation in this limit on violence. If the political threat from terrorism is real, as it is in many countries where political legitimacy is not well-established, then a government would reasonably prefer to face an opponent that was more lethal, if it were politically or strategically inept in its use of violence. Such an opponent paradoxically poses less of a threat to an illegitimate regime. It might kill many people but its lethality would mean that it was likely to violate the limit to terrorism and fail politically in the long run. But if the political threat is not real, if a government enjoys solid legitimacy, then that government and its people would reasonably prefer to face a strategically adept opponent who was less lethal. In this case, one

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would bet that the terrorists’ strategic skill would accomplish little politically against the legitimacy of the government, while their limited lethality would actually diminish the only threat that terrorism in this situation posed—many dead people. The United States is in this latter category. The legitimacy of the American political system is such that political change forced through violence is extremely unlikely. However, one might argue, the long run in which terrorists will discover this is truly one in which, if not all, at least large numbers of Americans may be dead through the strategically mistaken violence of terrorists, especially those in possession of CBRN. Since forced political change is so unlikely in the United States, one might contend that we can hardly take comfort, as the argument so far has implied we should, in the thought that those who attempt it will fail. Failure which comes to a terrorist group after it has killed perhaps many thousands will seem a pyrrhic victory to us at best. The real threat to the United States in this view is not political change forced by terrorists, but the very lethal strategic “mistakes” that terrorists might make. Right-wing terrorism in the United States, for example, is unlikely to achieve anything politically but a CBRN attack by right-wing extremists might leave many dead. Such lethality would contribute decisively to the political defeat of the extremists, as the destruction of the Murrah Federal building led to the decline of the militia movement. Yet, to reiterate, since they were unlikely to win in any case, this will be no comfort. The argument we have just laid out might be summarized as saying that whereas the old analysis of terrorism focused on terrorism’s political threat, the new analysis of terrorism focuses on terrorism’s lethal or technological threat and is right to do so, since for a regime like the United States the threat of terrorism is not political but technological. In this view, CBRN weapons have finally accomplished what the anarchists hoped dynamite would. They have allowed technology to replace politics. The power that groups had previously sought through political mobilization can now be acquired through explosives. Possession of CBRN weapons is worth a million followers. If they possess CBRN weapons, terrorists will no longer have to take their adversary and public opinion into account, moderating their views to gain support. In the future we may well encounter tiny groups with outlandish ideas that, instead of being irrelevant, will have immense power because and only because they possess CBRN weapons.39 This power will annul what we have called the strategic logic of clandestine violence: the necessity for groups with political objectives to moderate their violence in order to achieve those objectives. By annulling the strategic logic of clandestine violence, the availability of CBRN weapons will shift the competition in favor of terrorists. CBRN weapons can shift the balance between states and non-state actors whereas information

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technology does not because governments can use information technology against non-state actors, as we have noted, while they cannot use CBRN against them. The constraint here is not moral only. Mass destruction is not compatible with the discriminate targeting that states must use against nonstate actors, especially domestically, if they are to prevail. Besides, if we are talking about domestic terrorists, the use of CBRN weapons in countering terrorism would be almost suicidal. The technology-based objection to the old analysis of terrorism is well taken but not definitive for several reasons. First, if small groups have the power of CBRN weapons or threaten to get it, this threat will call forth a response, as with PIRA’s development of remote controlled bombs or Hamas’ use of suicide attacks. For example, if small groups threaten the existence of free societies, these societies are likely to willingly become less free in order to preserve themselves, whether that means more rigorous policing of CBRN raw materials, curtailing some civil liberties, or, what amounts to the same thing, developing the domestic equivalent of the Bush doctrine of preemption. Alternatively, or after experimenting with curtailed freedom, free societies may counter the advantages that weapons technology give to nonstate actors by using the new information and communication technologies to decentralize surveillance and control,40 a point to which we return in the conclusion. In any event, the action–reaction cycle typical of the strategic competition between states and non-state actors and the limits on the use of violence will not simply disappear, even if non-state actors possess CBRN weapons. Escalation dominance, so to speak, will remain with nation-states, especially if they decide to exchange some personal liberty for increased security. It is also necessary to keep in mind when discussing the relative importance of lethality and political success that whereas no indigenous terrorist group may pose a serious political threat to the United States, foreign groups do. Al Qaeda or the movement that it has spawned, for example, is contending for the allegiance of the Muslim world. If it wins that allegiance or if those that share al Qaeda’s principles gain control in any of several strategically important (oil, nuclear weapons) Muslim countries, this might well change the balance of power in the world. Such a change could conceivably do more harm to the United States and Americans in the long run than even the loss of thousands of citizens or the devastation of a major city by a terrorist CBRN attack. The technological threat does not always trump the political threat. Finally, it is only the possible use of CBRN weapons at the higher end of their technical sophistication and weaponization that makes the technological threat in any way comparable to the political threat. CBRN use at this level is not a foregone conclusion for all terrorist groups or for any one group, even

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in the al Qaeda movement. If CBRN puts an end to or changes the terms of the strategic competition between states and non-state actors, it will do so only in the competition with those non-state actors who can effectively employ CBRN. The force of the objection that CBRN weapons change everything depends on how many groups will use CBRN, which of the four they will be able to use, and at what level of lethality and destructiveness. Aum Shinrikyo has already carried out a chemical attack without changing everything. The agent in that case, however, was not of the best quality and was poorly weaponized. Assessing the ability of CBRN to change the balance of power between states and non-state entities is in part, then, a question of how many non-state actors will have which kind of CBRN. To answer this question about non-state actors and CBRN weapons, we may usefully consider the struggle between these actors and the United States as a case study. To designate a group as one likely to use CBRN against the United States, it must pass through four filters. It must be a group that is “willing to attack the United States, . . . willing to kill indiscriminately, . . . willing to use WMD,” and be “able to do so.”41 The United States has many enemies, of course, but not every terrorist group attacks it. Nor is it the case that all of these groups which do attack the United States have done so indiscriminately. Hezbollah attacked American political and military targets (embassies and barracks) in Lebanon rather than tourists on cruise ships in the Mediterranean, for example. Those groups that have attacked us indiscriminately have not all been willing to use CBRN to do it. TWA flight 847 (1985) was taken over by armed men, not contaminated or obliterated with a CBR or N weapon. Finally, those groups that have attacked us indiscriminately and have shown interest in CBRN (al Qaeda) have encountered significant technical obstacles.42 If we sift the world’s terrorist groups through these four filters, we are left probably with only the al Qaeda movement: al Qaeda central and all its various affiliated groups and individuals. Individuals associated with extreme right-wing movements in the United States have been involved with chemical and biological agents,43 but most of these cases involve an individual or two with a peculiar interest in nasty chemicals or pathogens and not in serious plotting to use them. Still, we should not forget the history of right-wing extremist interest in CBRN agents, as we remember that the al Qaeda movement appears to pose the most sustained and serious threat of producing a CBRN attack. But are all members of the al Qaeda movement equally willing and able to use CBRN against the United States? We will consider the question of intentions first and then the question of capability, keeping in mind that these questions are related. If CBRN are technically so difficult that great

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effort, expense, and risk produces a weapon capable of killing only tens of people, that might by itself make some groups unwilling to pursue them.

Willingness to use CBRN weapons The al Qaeda movement is complex and members have different objectives. Some constituent groups have regional or country-specific agendas. Members of such groups have spoken of using CBRN weapons but only against Israel or the United States and not in the countries or regions over which they hope to establish control.44 Given the indiscriminate character of CBRN weapons, using them close to home would likely harm the al Qaeda affiliate’s members and supporters as much as its enemies. But if such groups do not want to use CBRN weapons in areas they hope to control, would they be willing to invest their scarce resources in developing or acquiring these weapons? Talking about using them against the “far enemy” (the United States) may be a way to support the general al Qaeda agenda but it seems unlikely, if these groups were not willing to use CBRN weapons in their central mission, that they would be willing to devote resources to developing or acquiring such weapons. Why make a commitment of resources likely to be large enough to be the equivalent of “betting the firm” in order to acquire a capability irrelevant to the central mission? The risks to the “firm,” of course, are not just financial. Developing or deploying CBRN weapons poses a significant risk to all those in the group involved in these tasks, from the work itself45 and from the lethal response of its possible targets. In addition, given that the weather, for example, affects chemical and biological weapons, terrorists would be making great and risky efforts to get weapons that might well fail. Why all this risk for a weapon that may not be usable? One reason to seek CBRN weapons might be in hopes of striking the far enemy in such a way that it would no longer support the near enemy, the government the al Qaeda affiliate was primarily interested in defeating. An al Qaeda affiliate might reasonably contribute to the larger movement’s development of CBRN to attack the far enemy, if the contribution did not reduce its resources to the point that it was no longer able to contend with the near enemy. But considerations in this case would not be merely about resources. Depending on its circumstances, an al Qaeda affiliate might not be willing to risk the additional attention from the United States that its involvement in a CBRN plot or attack on the United States might entail. If it felt that it was winning or had a chance to win its struggle with the near enemy, for example, it might want to avoid increased attention from the United States. According to the 9/11 commission report, members of the Taliban opposed the 9/11 attacks because their main focus was on defeating the northern alliance to

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solidify their control of Afghanistan. They feared that “an attack against the United States might be counterproductive. It might draw the Americans into the war against them, just when final victory” seemed within their grasp.46 Such fears assume, of course, that the United States would be able to determine an affiliate’s involvement in attacks and that the United States would differentiate among al Qaeda affiliates based on their activities. If the United States seeks to destroy all al Qaeda affiliates regardless of the kinds of activities they undertake, then an affiliate might conclude that it had nothing to lose and must destroy the United States before the United States destroys it. This suggests that the United States should vary its response to the activities of affiliated groups. Another factor in the considerations of al Qaeda affiliates would be religious principles. Even among the most committed members of the al Qaeda network, differences exist about what Islam sanctions with regard to CBRN. Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, has spoken of CBRN as a deterrent rather than as an instrument to produce maximum destruction, based on his understanding that “the Prophet Muhammad sought to minimalize the fighting.”47 But what kinds of attacks on al Qaeda affiliates would CBRN weapons deter? Would they deter the intelligence service of the near enemy from trying to infiltrate the affiliate or killing or capturing its leadership? Just as nation-states found that the deterrent effect of CBRN did not stop non-state actors from carrying out covert attacks, so non-state actors would find out that these weapons would not stop the covert attacks of states against them. Indeed, since possessing such weapons would make these groups more threatening, possessing them might increase such covert attacks and not just by the government that the affiliate most directly threatened. If CBRN weapons are justified only as a deterrent but fail to deter and instead arguably encourage more attacks, does it make sense to acquire such weapons whatever the religious sanction for them might be? More generally, we might wonder if non-state actors, if they stopped to think about it, would be able to think through a successful strategy for the use of CBRN weapons. Some of them would be bound to ask, as some nation-state theorists did, if such weapons have any political utility at all. For nation-states, nuclear weapons were cheaper than conventional forces, which made them attractive, although their employment was problematic. For terrorists, CBRN weapons do not represent a cost saving. On the contrary, CBRN weapons that are more damaging than conventional explosives are likely to be so costly an investment as to threaten the continued survival of the terrorist organization. No doubt some will wonder whether terrorists or those in the al Qaeda movement engage in the sort of strategic calculations or musings just outlined. Some may not but some do or engage in something like it, as the

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various publications of extremists indicate.48 We are not restricted to the statements of al Qaeda’s regional affiliates, however. We may look at what they have done to illustrate the issues involved in sorting through whether Islamic extremists and which ones under which conditions would be willing to use CBRN weapons. There have been a few reports of al Qaeda affiliates experimenting with CBRN.49 The best documented cases of use are from Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq used chlorine gas (in canisters next to explosives) in some of its improvised explosive attacks. The gas enhancement, however, did little to increase the lethality of the attacks. In fact, the gas does not seem to have caused any of the deaths from the attacks, although it did in some cases reportedly cause some injuries. (In another case, leaking canisters hurled from a truck killed 6 and injured 130.) In these cases, the chemical agent had limited effects, all of which were confined to the immediate area of the incident.50 None of this, nor the reportedly larger CBRN attack organized by al Qaeda and ultimately thwarted in Iraq (2004), contradicts the notion that al Qaeda groups for whom local or regional agendas are uppermost would not use CBRN in their local area of operations and would not invest in developing or acquiring such weapons. The gas and other chemical agents involved would not have had a lingering or widely dispersed effect (in fact, they might have disappeared in the explosion) and were probably found in the wreckage of Iraq’s industrial infrastructure. Even if purchased, they were unlikely to have cost much. Attaching them to a vehicle-borne explosive device would have required little of the group’s resources. Although these chemically “enhanced” attacks may count as a use of a chemical weapon by terrorists, their crude delivery and limited effectiveness is not what people think of when CBRN weapons and terrorism are discussed. They are, however, typical of what the record currently shows. In addition to crude delivery and limited effectiveness, the use of a chemical agent by al Qaeda in Iraq fits another pattern associated with terrorism and CBRN that bears on the willingness of terrorists to use these weapons. Examining cases of terrorist use of CBRN led one analyst to conclude that the leadership or leader of a group is critical in determining whether or not the group uses CBRN. The historical studies he and his associates conducted showed that leaders who were charismatic and marked by paranoia and selfimportance were associated with the use of CBRN, particularly if the groups they led were small and paid little attention to an outside constituency.51 (An apocalyptic ideology was also associated with CBRN use, although less frequently than these other traits.) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the original leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, seems to fit the profile of a leader more likely to use CBRN. But not all leaders are like Zarqawi, making it less likely that even all groups associated with al Qaeda will seek CBRN weapons.

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We should note that the example of Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq compels us to recognize again the difficulty of assessing what is reasonable for some individual or group to do. The difficulty does not arises from the irrationality or craziness of terrorists or religious fanatics. The difficulty is rather understanding the principles and preferences that guide the thinking and action of our adversaries. A group led by a charismatic figure, driven by an apocalyptic vision, paranoia, and self-importance into disregarding any constituency and political considerations, might well “bet the firm” on a weapon, even though in doing so he would appear to be acting irrationally from the viewpoint of someone with a different set of principles and preferences. The views of a strong leader may prevail because it is difficult to predict the outcome of risky innovations, making it hard for other more cautious members of the group to refute the claims of the risk-prone leader. We should remember, however, that a terrorist ignoring a constituency is not the same as the constituency ignoring the terrorist. In fact, the logic of the strategic competition between terrorists and governments suggests the opposite: if terrorists use an unacceptable level of violence, they are sure not to be ignored. Zarqawi’s constituency, Sunni Muslims in Iraq, tired of his brutality (of which the chlorine gas formed a small part) and turned on him.

Ability to use CBRN weapons The analysis to this point suggests that only a small number of the world’s terrorists, and possibly not even all members of the al Qaeda movement, would pass through the third filter and be willing to use CBRN weapons. But to assess whether CBRN weapons change the strategic balance between states and non-state actors, we must consider not just willingness but also the ability to use these weapons. Would those terrorists willing to use CBRN weapons be able to? Would they be able to do so at a level of destructiveness that would make the cost, effort, and risk associated with these weapons worthwhile? If the best that non-state actors are likely to do is use impure or inferior versions of CBRN weapons likely to kill no more than conventional weapons, then CBRN weapons are likely to be less attractive to terrorists. This would especially be the case if more frequent use of such weapons removed their special aura. To ask if terrorists are able to use CBRN weapons is to ask in the first place if they possess them. They could have them either by developing the weapons, including getting hold of the CBRN material to be weaponized, or acquiring finished weapons. They could acquire finished weapons by either buying them (including bribing someone to hand them over) or stealing them.

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Buying is a question of supply and demand. As we will see, granting the demand on the part of the al Qaeda movement, it then becomes a question of how they can connect their demand to a supply. When we discuss supply, we will also address the issue of a non-state actor being given a weapon by a state. The difficulties of development or acquisition and the effectiveness of the weapons developed or acquired varies with each kind of weapon and also with the segment of the al Qaeda movement we are discussing. We will begin by considering the weapons and the problems posed for terrorists if they try to develop their own. Generally speaking, chemical weapons are the easiest CBRN weapons to develop; however, they still pose challenges to non-state groups and are also likely to be among the least damaging. Toxic industrial chemicals are abundant in any industrial economy but turning these chemicals or any chemicals into weapons presents problems given the usual technical and other skills of terrorist organizations. Aum Shinrikyo, an organization whose resources and numbers of skilled personnel exceed any other terrorist group, managed to produce several chemical weapons, typically in small quantities, in rather impure forms, and without effective delivery systems. If a chemical weapon is a very challenging goal, terrorists might turn to improvised chemical weapons, such as blowing up fuel storage tanks, a plot we noted in Chapter 1 concocted by two right-wing extremists in the late 1990s, which might count as a chemical or chemically enhanced attack. Another possibility might be to bomb a chemical plant in a populated area. In all of these cases, with the probable exception of blowing up fuel storage tanks, where the main damage would result from the force of the explosion, any use of a chemical agent or weapon would be subject to the weather and other environmental conditions that make it difficult to ensure that the weapon or agent will work as intended or be as lethal as hoped. A bomb big enough to cause the release of large amounts of toxic chemicals would probably be more effectively used on its own in an area crowded with people. In sum, while chemical weapons may present fewer technical hurdles than biological or nuclear weapons, they are also likely to be less lethal and reliable than the latter.52 Biological weapons have three important characteristics. Along with nuclear weapons, they are the CBRN weapons most capable of causing catastrophic casualties. Since the organisms used in these weapons are living things, once terrorists possess them, they can “grow their own” and use their renewable resource to carry out multiple attacks. Finally, biological agents are hard to detect.53 The effects of infection are not immediate and before they manifest individuals may infect many others, leading to the potentially very high casualty figures associated with biological agents. These three characteristics should make biological weapons attractive to any terrorist group

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interested in killing large numbers of people. But for such terrorists, biological weapons also present some disadvantages. First are the technical difficulties involved with biological weapons. “Acquiring, developing, and successfully carrying out a mass casualty terrorist attack with a biological weapon or toxin weapon requires vastly more technical sophistication and organization than an attack using conventional methods.”54 Indicative of these difficulties is, again, the experience of Aum Shinrikyo. The organization tried for some time to develop effective biological weapons but failed, gave up, and turned to chemical weapons. In addition to the technical difficulties, any terrorist group considering using biological weapons would have to acknowledge that once released, the pathogens might very well end up killing large numbers of its own supporters. Given infection lag times, the amount of travel between various parts of the globe, and different levels of medical and public health capabilities in different parts of the world, pathogens released in the United States might well end up killing many more people in the Middle East than in North America. Acknowledging these technical and operational difficulties, terrorists might turn, as they have in the past, to toxins like ricin that are easier to produce and use and are not contagious. In turning to such weapons, however, terrorists would be turning away from possibly killing large numbers of people to killing some and causing disruption of everyday life for others. The example here is the anthrax attacks in 2001 that killed only a few people but disrupted businesses and the postal service. Radiological weapons would also cause disruption rather than mass casualties. A radiological weapon, typically conceived as a “dirty bomb,” an explosive device that spreads radioactive material when detonated, would not kill anywhere near as many people as an infectious biological or nuclear weapon but might cause widespread disruption by contaminating a large area. Radioactive material would be harder to get than castor beans, the material from which ricin is made, even though there are numerous kinds of radioactive material used in industrial societies. This material is often present only in small quantities, however, and harvesting it is time consuming and difficult. In addition, not all radioactive material is the same, so to maximize the effect of their device, terrorists would need to pick material that emitted more radiation and remained radioactive for a longer period of time. This is the kind of material, of course, that is supposed to be more carefully guarded. Once acquired, it would be relatively easy to fashion the material into an effective weapon, if used as a dirty bomb. Lethality would increase with more sophisticated dispersal methods but these methods increase the barriers to successfully developing the weapon. As one analyst has noted, there are relatively few documented cases of terrorists, even Islamist extremists, seeking radiological weapons. (Chechen separatists put a container of Cesium-137

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in a Moscow park but did not try to disperse the material; the government eventually dropped the charge that José Padilla, arrested in 2002, intended to set off a “dirty bomb.”) Perhaps this reflects a judgment that the effort to overcome the technical barriers to such weapons would not be repaid with sufficient lethality. It may also reflect the increased security of radiological materials.55 The technical barriers to developing a nuclear weapon are even higher than for a radiological device but the much greater lethality of such a weapon may explain the interest among extremists in overcoming these barriers. How high the technical barriers are has been a matter of dispute. Based on the assumption that a non-state group had the necessary nuclear material, an assessment in 1977 claimed that to put a nuclear device together the group would need only fractions of a million dollars (perhaps .75 or 1.25 million in 2009 dollars), modest machine shop equipment, no personnel with great technical or theoretical knowledge, and access only to open-source instructions.56 More recent assessments present the barriers as significantly higher. In 2006, a scenario for a non-state group building a bomb assumed a cost of US$10 million, most of which was to buy the following: the nuclear material; a team of 19 terrorists, including a physicist, doctoral students, and skilled machinists, as well as people knowledgeable in ballistics; and some sophisticated machine tools, similar to things found in physics labs but available for purchase on the internet. The work would need to take place in a remote area, since it includes at least a couple of test firings of an artillery piece. The artillery piece itself, the authors of the assessment claim, would be available as military surplus, although it takes a license to purchase one.57 Although underestimating the difficulties of the endeavor from the viewpoint of the non-state actors, as we shall see, the more recent assessment conforms to the current consensus that “making and delivering even a crude nuclear bomb would be the most technically challenging and complex operation any terrorist group has ever carried out.”58 How likely are terrorists to overcome these challenges and develop a bomb? No one step in the process is impossible but there are many steps and the probabilities or improbabilities of succeeding at each one accumulate. The overall likelihood of success depends on how many and which discrete steps one identifies and the probability of succeeding at each step that one grants to the terrorists. If one identifies 20 discrete steps and assumes a 50 percent chance of success at each of these, then the likelihood that terrorists will develop a nuclear device is less than 1 in 1,048,576. If one assumes that the terrorists’ chance of success at each step is 33 percent, then the terrorists’ chances of success are 1 in 3,486,784,401.59 Assigning higher probabilities of success to a different set of steps, which include buying or stealing a bomb as well as building one,

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results in the conclusion that there is an approximately 3 percent chance of nuclear terrorism in any year and a 29 percent chance over ten years.60 For comparison purposes, if one applied the first set of probability figures (50% or 30% chance of success at each step) to a decade, then the probabilities they present would be 1 in 104,857 and 1 in 348,678,440, or .00095368 percent and .000000286797 percent, respectively. Which of these two very different assessments is the most plausible? One advantage of the assessment assigning lower probabilities of success is that it takes into account the security concerns of the terrorists. At almost each step, the group would have to expose itself to people it did not know and therefore could not trust. All of these people would have to remain quiet about the suspicious activity they witnessed or had been party to. Fear of legal consequences might keep some quiet, if they had cooperated in illegal activity, but if there were rewards or legal protection for those informing on people engaged in suspicious activity (buying a used artillery piece with or without a dodgy license, perhaps) the terrorists could not be confident that even willing accomplices outside their group would remain quiet for the year or more it would take for them to develop the weapon. The most dangerous part of the effort from the viewpoint of the terrorists might well be getting the critical nuclear material. As the authors of the recent scenario admit, the “market” for nuclear material is a dangerous place, consisting for the most part of “criminals and con artists on one side and police and informants on the other.” Could the terrorists calculate the risks of operating in such a “market”? Would they be willing to run those risks? How important is the nuclear device to them? Then there is the issue of testing the artillery piece. The authors of the recent scenario suggest buying a ranch in Wyoming or Texas, perhaps on the assumption that gun lovers in those states would not mind or perhaps even notice someone testing a really big gun on his own property. But if the locals did not notice this, would they not notice that the local ranch had received improvements (“$50,000 in temporary improvements to build the foundry, machine shop, electronics lab, and other equipment”)61 without any visible ranching activity going on? Will it be possible for the 19 members of the nuclear bomb making team to have no contact with locals for a year or more? What about the real estate agent who sold them the ranch and the various functionaries involved in the transaction? Where did the bomb builders buy all the supplies they purchased for the improvements to the ranch? What was their cover story? How well will it be backed up? As analysts who try to assess the probability of terrorists developing a bomb admit, the effort provides only rough estimates. With this and the technical and security difficulties in mind, we might conclude that it seems likely that the lower probability of terrorists going nuclear is probably more accurate

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than the higher estimate but it is not possible to say for certain. One thing that is clear, however, is that any effort by terrorists to build a nuclear device would be permeated not only with technical difficulty but also imponderable uncertainty, insecurity, and danger. The terrorists might be willing to take all these risks if they thought that the nuclear device was a game winner, but how could they be absolutely sure? Although underestimating the technical difficulties terrorists would face in building a bomb, the assessment published in 1977 did capture the uncertainty and danger of the effort. The small non-national group . . . would probably not be able to develop an accurate prediction of the yield of their device. The device could be a total failure, because of either faulty design or faulty construction. Here again, a great deal depends on the competence of the group; if it is deficient, not only is the chance of producing a total failure increased, but the chance that a member of the group might suffer serious or fatal injury would be quite real.62 Accustomed as we are now to suicide terrorism, we might think that a death or two in the cause would not bother the terrorists. Deaths, however, would be security and technical problems, as would be the explosions that might take lives, setting back the project, depleting the carefully recruited team (perhaps permanently damaging it, if one of the skilled personnel were lost), and drawing attention to the effort. All of this risk and danger would be undertaken without the terrorists having confidence that their sacrifices of time and resources would produce a high-yield weapon or even one that worked. Reflecting on these difficulties and dangers or discovering the foothills of these mountainous problems and seeing the peaks looming ahead, a terrorist group might well decide the “bomb” was not worth the effort, even after it had started the effort to develop one. This may explain why among extremists there is more talk about nuclear weapons than efforts to acquire nuclear material, and more of these acquisition efforts, none successful as far as we know, than actual nuclear work.63 The terrorist organization most advanced in its efforts to develop CBRN weapons (Aum Shinrikyo) made little progress in its nuclear efforts and turned to biological and then chemical weapons.64 This may well represent a pattern for all non-state actors interested in CBRN. A list of al Qaeda’s CBRN activity notes 21 instances of nuclear activity; 46 of chemical activity (8 occurring in Iraq after the US invasion); 18 of biological activity; and 17 of radiological activity. Chemical and biological weapons activity account for about 62 percent of the listed activities. The technically least challenging and also least lethal weapons (chemical and radiological) make up about 61 percent of the activities. These numbers may reflect the underlying

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logic of the brief assessment we have just offered. Nuclear weapons are potentially the most lethal but the most difficult to develop as well, while radiological and chemical weapons are the easiest to develop, although of only limited lethality, perhaps even less lethality than most conventional bombs. Biological weapons have potentially great lethality, are somewhat easier to develop than nuclear weapons, and do not represent the security risks that nuclear weapons do. One cannot brew up a highly lethal biological weapon in the bathtub or with Mom’s kitchen equipment (two ways extremists have prepared ricin) but neither does it require a ranch in Wyoming or all the other technical paraphernalia and infrastructure of the most recent nuclear bomb making scenario. Altogether, the various pros and cons of CBRN weapons suggest that over time, terrorists may come to focus on biological weapons.65 If developing CBRN weapons is so difficult, we might assume that terrorists would prefer to acquire them by buying or stealing. Indeed, Aum took this approach. Before trying to develop a nuclear weapon on its own, it befriended Russian scientists and officials, reportedly giving one person up to one million dollars for his university project. These approaches did not work, even though Aum had lots of money, Russia and its officials and scientists were then in their most penurious post-Soviet condition and Russia’s nuclear facilities were much less secure than they are now.66 One thing that may have restrained the Russians was the thought of providing their nation’s most powerful weapons to non-state actors over whom no one would have had control. Indeed, virtual unanimity exists, even among those most alarmed at the prospect of CBRN terrorism, that, for non-state actors, states are the least likely source of either CBRN materials or a finished weapon. In addition to transferring dreadful power to essentially unaccountable actors, any such transfer would risk dreadful retaliation from the United States. Such retaliation becomes a possibility as CBRN forensics make it more likely that the suppliers will be identified.67 Although it apparently did not happen in the case of Russia and Aum Shinrikyo, it is certainly possible that a rogue individual rather than a rogue state would help spread CBRN weapons or technology. This has already happened between states. A. Q. Khan turned the legal and prohibited supply contacts and networks that he used to build Pakistan’s bomb into a means of spreading nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. He did not, however, assist any non-state actors. Nor, as far as we know, with one exception, have any other Pakistani scientists or technicians helped al Qaeda or other Islamist organizations, despite sympathy for Islamist causes among members of Pakistan’s military, intelligence, and technical cadre. The one exception, which did not go beyond sharing information and giving advice, was a meeting between two Pakistani scientists and bin Laden.68

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It is likely that rogue individuals have not given CBRN technology, plans, or material to non-state actors for the same reason that states have not: fear of the consequences, including the retribution of the world’s states, many of whom would have good reason to make an example of such proliferators. But there is another problem as well. It was rather easy for states and Khan to contact one another. Khan was a public figure; states have many public officials and both public and covert means of communicating. It was apparently harder for Aum to make connections in Russia, although post-Soviet Russia at that point was rather wide-open. Aum had no status in the world of states, although presumably its money gave it some. It would be even harder for a rogue proliferator to contact terrorists, since they do not typically have public addresses. While this lack of a “return address” is presented as an advantage for the terrorists when discussing deterrence (we cannot easily find them and they have nothing we can threaten in order to deter them from carrying out their attacks), it is a disadvantage for the terrorists when considering how they might buy CBRN weapons. In the absence of established means of contact, given the character of the market in CBRN material, the risks for proliferators and terrorists, and for intermediaries as well, would be substantial when trying to make a CBRN transaction. Criminals are possible intermediaries between rogue individuals and terrorists but criminals, including smugglers, are interested in maximizing profit and power at the least possible risk. Do terrorists have enough money to make criminals turn from trafficking drugs (hugely profitable, not very risky) to trafficking CBRN weapons or material?69 If they did, could the terrorists trust that the criminals would not give them up in return for a reward? Indeed, do not the motivations of criminals make them potential mercenary allies of states in dealing with the possibility of CBRN proliferation to non-state actors? If buying CBRN weapons or material is too risky and difficult, might nonstate actors be able to steal what they needed? The terrorists might attack either a facility or perhaps CBRN material in transit. In either case, they might be aided by insiders, people who are working at CBRN facilities but are loyal to or bought off by the terrorists. The likelihood of such thefts is inversely related to the level of security provided for CBRN weapons and material. Security has steadily improved over the past 20 years, which should mean a declining likelihood of theft. In this light, it is interesting to note that one nuclear terrorism alarmist reports that there are no confirmed incidents of terrorists attacking nuclear facilities or transport with the purpose of stealing nuclear materials. Nor have terrorists carried out any “insider thefts” of nuclear material.70 An important reason for this record may well be that terrorists lack the skills to carry out such attacks and thefts. The skills needed to put a car bomb in a city center are different from those needed to assault a guarded facility or vehicle

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and then transport a valuable cargo perhaps hundreds, if not thousands, of miles.71 Finally, if a CBRN weapon were stolen, the terrorists would then have to defeat any security devices that prevented its unauthorized use. The difficulties of developing or acquiring CBRN weapons are significant. They do not appear less so if we confront the various elements of the al Qaeda movement with these difficulties. We will consider in order the small cells, the affiliates, and al Qaeda central. The small cells cropping up in Europe and America have the motivation to use CBRN, at least in some cases, since their intent seems often to be not so much to create a Muslim state in Great Britain or the United States as it is to punish these states for their presumed attacks on Islam. Particularly in the cases where the members of the cell are willing to kill themselves, the effect of the attack on their community or the larger population does not appear to be a deterrent. While these cells may have the motivation to use CBRN weapons, they lack the ability to develop or acquire them. Although living in advanced industrial societies and thus in the midst of various CBRN weapons and materials, from radiological industrial devices to nuclear weapons, and sometimes containing well-educated individuals, these groups lack the resources, specific skills, and security to acquire CBRN weapons or to develop anything more lethal than the explosives that terrorists have typically used. Small groups have less scope for the division of labor and specialization that are necessary for the development of effective technical and clandestine skills. Nor are they likely to be able to steal such weapons, given the distance between the skills and experience of these small groups and the security in place at European and American facilities. So far these small groups have only been able to brew up ricin, in one case reportedly mixed with botulinum toxin, which is not a mass casualty weapon. Not only do these groups lack resources and skills but their dispersed nature means that they are less likely to be able to draw on the knowledge possessed by other elements of the al Qaeda network.72 Nor, as we noted above, will the internet allow these groups to overcome the problems generated by their isolation. These small groups are likely to be most lethal with CBRN weapons if they happen to include a member who works in a facility that might somehow be connected to CBRN materials. Using such an individual, perhaps a small group could engineer the release of toxic industrial chemicals. Still, the group would have to consider the uncertainties of such a scheme (the effects of weather, wind, etc.) compared to the effectiveness of conventional explosives. The local affiliates of al Qaeda may want CBRN weapons, although we have noted reasons they may not want to spend their scarce resources on them. If they decide to, however, they are in a better position to get them than the small cells. First, the regional affiliates tend to have longer time horizons

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than the cells, more resources, and more opportunities to exploit a division of labor. They could recruit people with technical skills and give them the time and security to develop available materials into weapons. Aum Shinrikyo took this track. It failed to produce much that was effective, however, and since its financial resources and technical skills were unusually high for a terrorist organization, this suggests again that a group attempting to develop CBRN weapons will be risking a great deal for an uncertain result. Some al Qaeda affiliates probably have enough operational capability and are in or near countries in which the security of CBRN weapons or agents is sufficiently lax to make stealing what they need a possibility; although again from the viewpoint of the terrorists such operations would be much less certain to succeed than those they normally carry out. Some of the affiliates might also be able to run human intelligence operations of sufficient competence to pose an insider threat at some CBRN weapons facilities or other places where CBRN weapons or materials are kept. Given the difficulties of turning CBRN material into weapons, stealing a weapon probably makes more sense than stealing the material for one. Engineering a chemical industrial accident would be easier for an al Qaeda affiliate than for a cell but the effects of such an attack would still be uncertain. Adverse political consequences for the group might be the most certain outcome. Al Qaeda affiliates and other terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which are more nationally than internationally oriented, might operate outside their local area against the United States or its personnel and facilities. For example, speculation continues, given Hezbollah’s historical and ongoing reliance on Iran, that Hezbollah would attack the United States, if the latter attacked Iran. Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist organization, has contacts with Americans, some of whom have been jailed for supporting the group. Others in America have been jailed for supporting Hezbollah.73 Such organizations might operate and attack in the United States but the advantages they have on their home turf would diminish if they operated (instead of just raising funds) in the United States. These diminished advantages would make developing or using CBRN weapons in an attack in the United States more difficult. Some but not all of these difficulties would be overcome if Iran, for example, simply supplied Hezbollah with a weapon. As we have noted, states have good reasons not to share their most powerful weapons with terrorist groups. Perhaps the only instance in which such a transfer would be likely is in the case that the Iranian regime felt its existence to be threatened and therefore had nothing left to lose if it gave a CBRN weapon to a non-state actor. In that case, the non-state actor would still face the difficulty of getting the weapon in the United States. A biological or chemical weapon would be easier to smuggle in than a nuclear weapon but as noted the chemical

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weapon might not kill enough and the biological weapon might end up devastating Iran and the Middle East. Al Qaeda central, currently under duress more than any other component of the movement, might be able to gather sufficient resources to develop some kind of CBRN weapon but it probably does not now have the operational space or security to do so. What it did when it was safe and resourced prior to 9/11 did not amount to much, making an effective program now seem even more unlikely. Al Qaeda central might continue to inspire other elements of its movement to develop or acquire CBRN materials but as we have seen, the other elements, for various reasons, are not in a position to carry out any inspiration they may derive from al Qaeda central. In sum, then, if we accept that motivation, resources (including some secure work areas), and technical capabilities are necessary to have any chance at successful CBRN development or acquisition, we might say that no element of the al Qaeda movement currently possesses all of what is necessary to develop or acquire CBRN weapons that have a lethality greater and more certain than the explosive weapons already available to them. The small cells of the movement may have the motivation but do not have the resources or technical capabilities. The affiliates lack the resources and capabilities and have a strong reason not to use CBRN weapons in the territories they hope to control. Either the cells or the affiliates might find recruits who are technically competent but this would be unlikely to bring them much closer to success given the other constraints we have discussed. Al Qaeda central has the most reason to have CBRN weapons and potentially perhaps the most financial resources to get them but it lacks technical capabilities and operational space. This assessment of the al Qaeda’s movement ability to develop or acquire CBRN weapons assumes current conditions. How might things change in the future? One sometimes hears the claim that terrorist use of CBRN weapons is not a question of “if” but of “when.”74 This is not necessarily true, even if we assume an infinite amount of time. But as we have seen, even with the passage of small intervals of time, the chance of a terrorist use of CBRN weapons increases. “If there is a yearly probability of 1 in 100,000 that terrorists could launch a [CBRN] attack, the risk would cumulate to 1 in 10,000 over 10 years and to 1 in 5,000 over 20 years.”75 Yet, if the chances of their use are very small to begin with, say 1 in a million or 1 in 3 million, then over a hundred years their chances are 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 30,000, respectively. The problem with such calculations, of course, is that they project the status quo into the future. Certainly for technology, this is a mistake. Biotechnology is advancing rapidly. The cost of sequencing DNA is plummeting. What is sometimes referred to as biohacking is increasing. “The

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basic tools of biohacking [could] be both cheap to buy and easy to construct at home. Many DNA sequences, including those for harmful diseases, are already widely published, and can hardly be retracted.” Practitioners of do-ityourself bioengineering are already working on new organisms in attics, basements, and apartment closets. Chemical technology is advancing as well. “New tools, including robotics, microreactors, and ever more powerful computing capabilities” have increased capabilities for chemical synthesizing and testing. “Commercial entities are creating large libraries of new compounds, some of which may be highly toxic and useful for weapons.” Nanotechnology will accelerate this process. As chemical, biological, and nuclear technology spreads, this will increase the chances of leakage and theft. Technology will develop and disperse in a world where taboos against the use of CBRN weapons appear to be eroding and geopolitical incentives for possessing such weapons is increasing. Finally, we must assume that some non-state actors will remain motivated to possess CBRN weapons in a world where it will be easier to do so. Despite the duress it is under, al Qaeda has reportedly restarted its CBRN programs. In apparent acknowledgement of such developments and trends, one panel of experts concluded that “the probability of a jihadist WMD attack [rises] dramatically [to about 70%] between ten and twenty-five years’ time.”76 All of this makes it sound as if the use of CBRN weapons by non-state actors is indeed only a matter of time. Yet there is no reason to assume that only the power of non-state actors will increase as technology develops. States, in fact, are better resourced and organized than non-state actors to take advantage of advances in technology. (We will take up the issue of organization in Chapter 6.) Therefore, over time, the power of states may increase relative to non-state actors. This does not mean that the chance of non-state actors using CBRN weapons will decline to zero but it may mean that the chances of their doing so do not become any worse than they are now and may indeed decline. As for political issues and the question of taboos against the use of CBRN weapons, their development in the future is harder to predict than technology. The use of a CBRN weapon by a non-state actor might galvanize public opinion, and not just in the country attacked, in such a way as to represent not the ascendancy of violent non-state power but the beginning of its end.

Conclusion In noting the possible adverse consequences of even CBRN weapons technology for non-state actors, we return to the issue with which we began this chapter. While there is no doubt that information, communications, and

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weapons technology increase the power of non-state actors, it is much less clear that these technologies change anything fundamental in the strategic competition between non-state actors and states. It is often said that a CBRN attack is unlikely but potentially so devastating that we must do everything possible to prevent it. This statement, rather than declaring the end of the strategic competition, simply affirms that it continues. For non-state actors, CBRN technologies present numerous difficulties and offer questionable advantages. Technology does not give decisive advantages to non-state actors nor does it give them necessarily greater increases in power than states will derive from new technologies. In noting the possible political repercussions for non-state actors if they use CBRN, we are in effect noting that technology does not allow them to escape politics and the paradoxes and dilemmas that come with being clandestine political organizations. The anarchists were wrong to think that dynamite allowed such an escape and non-state actors today would be wrong to think new technologies provide one. As far as politics is concerned, nation-states have significant advantages over non-state actors. They are the bearers of legitimacy in the international system and domestically. They are the centers of power that must be contested. States have another important advantage. Modern industrialized states are organizations of immense power and resilience, which we perceive if we consider attempts to use sabotage against them.

Notes 1 David Tucker, “What Is New about the New Terrorism and How Dangerous Is It?” Terrorism and Political Violence 13(Autumn 2001): 1–14; Martha Crenshaw, “New Versus Old Terrorism: A Critical Appraisal,” in Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge in Europe, ed. Rik Coolsaet (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008). 2 Ian O. Lesser, Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999); Phillip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). 3 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 115; Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers (New York: Berkley Books, 1998). 4 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 109. 5 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 114. 6 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 114. Sageman cites John A. Bargh and Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, “The Internet and Social Life,” Annual Review of Psychology 55(2004): 573–90.

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7 Bargh and McKenna, “The Internet and Social Life,” pp. 581, 579, 583, 586–7. 8 John P. Robinson and Steven Martin, “IT Activity and Displacement: Behavioral Evidence from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS),” Social Indicators Research 91(2009): 137. 9 Patti M. Valkenberg and Jochen Peter, “Social Consequences of the Internet for Adolescents: A Decade of Research,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 18, 1(2009): 2. 10 Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011), pp. 151–305. 11 Valkenberg and Peter, “Social Consequences of the Internet for Adolescents,” 4. 12 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 110. 13 Mitch Silberman and Arvin Bhatt, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” (New York: New York City Police Department, 2007); Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to al Qaeda (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp.19, 45, 53, 77. 14 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 29, 42, 50, 72, 108, 109, 113, 158, 163. 15 Evan F. Kohlmann, “‘Homegrown’ Terrorists: Theory and Cases in the War on Terror’s Newest Front,” American Academy of Political and Social Science Annals 618(July 2008): 95–109. 16 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, pp. 109, 110. 17 Jena Baker McNeil and James Jay Carafano, “Terrorist Watch: 23 Plots Foiled Since 9/11,” Backgrounder, No. 2294, July 2, 2009; Heritage Foundation and Jena Baker McNeil, “26 Foiled Terror Plots Show Success of Information Sharing,” Backgrounder, No. 2634, September 29, 2009; the Heritage Foundation provides details. 18 Associated Press, “Somali Militants Lure Americans for Recruitment,” August 25, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,542381,00.html. 19 Nic Robertson and Paul Cruickshank, “Recruits Reveal al Qaeda’s Sprawling Web,” CNN, July 31, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/30/ robertson.al.qaeda.full/index.html. 20 Michael Wilson, “From Smiling Coffee Vendor to Terror Suspect,” New York Times, September 26, 2009, A1; CBS News/Associated Press, “Zazi Admits to Terrorism during Probe,” September 18, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2009/09/18/national/main5321252.shtml. 21 Al Baker, “Suspects in Terror Bombing Plot: Drug Arrests and Prison Conversions,” New York Times, May 22, 2009, A.24. 22 Tara Bahrampour, “Internet Helped Muslim Convert from Northern Virginia Embrace Extremism at Warp Speed,” Washington Post, November 2, 2010. 23 Warrant for Arrest, Case Number 3-09-MJ286, U.S. District Court, Northern Texas, September 24, 2009. For another example, see Jesse McKinley and William Yardley, “Suspect in Oregon Bomb Plot Is Called Confused,” New York Times, November 29, 2010, A17.

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24 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 121; Sageman, Understanding Terrorist Networks, p. 163. 25 Fernando Reinares, “Jihadist Radicalization and the 2004 Madrid Bombing Network,” CTC Sentinel 2, 11(November 2009): 19. 26 Clinton Watts, “Foreign Fighters: How Are They Being Recruited? Two Imperfect Recruitment Models,” Small War Journal, http://smallwarsjournal. com/blog/journal/docs-temp/69-watts.pdf, 2008, pp. 2, 3 (emphasis in original). Dorothy Denning brought this research to my attention. 27 Carrie Johnson, “JihadJane, An American Woman, Faces Terrorism Charges,” New York Times, March 10, 2010. 28 Watts, “Foreign Fighters,” p. 3. 29 Waqar Gillani and Sabrina Tevernise, “Pakistan Sentences Five Americans in Terror Case,” New York Times, June 24, 2010, A4. 30 Michael J. Stern and Don A. Dillman, “Community Participation, Social Ties, and Use of the Internet,” City and Community 5, 4(December 2006): 420–1; Quintelier and Sara Vissers, “The Effect of Internet Use on Political Participation: An Analysis of Survey Results for 16-Year Olds in Belgium,” Social Science and Computer Review 26, 4(November 2008): 411–27. 31 Sageman, Understanding Terrorist Networks, pp. 42, 109. 32 Jim Wolf, “U.S. Code-cracking Agency Works as if Compromised,” Reuters, December 16, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/ idUSTRE6BF6BZ20101216. 33 Charlie Savage, “Arrest in Attempted Bombing of Recruitment Office,” New York Times, December 8, 2010. 34 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 122. 35 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, p. 113; Michael Kenney, “Beyond the Internet: Mētis, Techne, and the Limitations of Online Artifacts for Islamist Terrorists,” Terrorism and Political Violence 22(2010): 177–97; Sammy Salama and Edith Bursac, “Jihadist Capabilities and the Diffusion of Knowledge,” in Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, ed. Gary Ackerman and Jeremy Tamsett (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2009), pp. 101–28; Brian Jackson, “Technology Acquisition by Terrorist Groups: Threat Assessment Informed by Lessons from Private Sector Technology Adoption,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24(2001): 183–213; Brian Jackson, “Provisional Irish Republican Army,” in Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 2: Case Studies of Organizational Learning in Five Terrorist Groups, ed. Brian Jackson et al. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005), p. 121. 36 Gabriel Weimann, Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006), pp. 134–41. 37 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, pp. 116–21. 38 Fawaz Gerges, “The Decline of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria and Egypt,” Survival 41(Spring 1999): 113–26; Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker, “Al Qaeda Tells Ally in Iraq to Strive for Global Goals,” The New York Times, October 7, 2005.

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39 Laqueur, No End to War, pp. 9–10. 40 Benjamin Wittes, “Innovation’s Darker Future: Biosecurity, Technologies of Mass Empowerment, and the Constitution” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, December 2010). 41 John Parachini, “Putting WMD into Perspective,” Washington Quarterly 26(Autumn 2003): p. 41. 42 Jackson, Aptitude for Destruction. For al Qaeda’s efforts with CBRN, see Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction. 43 http://www2.fbi.gov/hq/nsb/wmd/wmd_cases.htm. 44 Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, pp. 421–73, especially pp. 442 and 471; Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 180–2. 45 Eli Lake, “Al Qaeda Bungles Arms Experiment,” Washington Times, January 19, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/19/al-qaedabungles-arms-experiment/. 46 Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, n.d.), p. 251. 47 Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 465. 48 James J. F. Forest and Sammy Salama, “Jihadist Tactics and Targeting,” in Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, pp. 88–94; Mark E. Stout et al., The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of al Qaeda and Associated Movements (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), pp. 114–63. 49 Lake, “Al Qaeda Bungles Arms Experiment.” 50 Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, pp. 421–48. 51 Jonathan B. Tucker, “Lessons from the Case Studies,” in Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, ed. Jonathan B. Tucker (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 249–69. 52 Michael D. Intriligator and Abdullah Toukan, “Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Countering Terrorism and WMD, ed. Peter Katona, Michael Intriligator, and John P. Sullivan (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 72–3. 53 Are We Prepared? Four WMD Crises that Could Transform U.S. Security, Washington, DC, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Defense University, June, 2009, pp. 75–6. 54 Cheryl Loeb, “Jihadists and Biological and Toxin Weapons,” in Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 160. 55 Charles Ferguson, “Radiological Weapons and Jihadist Terrorism,” in Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, pp. 185–9. 56 “Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards,” Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, June 1977, http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/7705. pdf, p. 140.

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57 Peter D. Zimmerman and Jeffrey G. Lewis, “The Bomb in the Backyard,” Foreign Policy 157(November/December, 2006): 33–9. 58 Matthew Bunn, “The Risk of Nuclear Terrorism – and the Next Steps to Reduce the Danger,” testimony of Matthew Bunn for the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, April 2, 2008, p. 6. 59 John Mueller, “The Atomic Terrorist?,” in Terrorizing Ourselves, ed. Benjamin H. Friedman, Jim Harper, and Christopher A. Preble (Washington, DC: The Cato Institute, 2010), pp. 150–2. 60 Matthew Bunn, “A Mathematical Model of the Risk of Nuclear Terrorism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 607 (September 2006): 103–20. 61 Zimmerman and Lewis, “The Bomb in the Backyard,” p. 37. 62 “Nuclear Proliferation and Safeguards,” pp. 140–1. 63 Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, “al Qa’ida’s CBRN activities,” and “Selected Jihadist Statements and Discussion on WMD,” pp. 422–73. 64 Sara Daily, John Parachini, and William Rosenau, “Aum Shinrikyo, Al Qaeda, and the Kinshasa Reactor: Implications of Three Case Studies for Combating Nuclear Terrorism” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2005), p. 21. 65 For an alternative view, Richard Danzig et al., Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, July 2011). 66 Daily et al., “Aum Shinrikyo, Al Qaeda, and the Kinshasa Reactor,” pp. 14–18. 67 Bunn, “A Mathematical Model of the Risk of Nuclear Terrorism,” p. 115. 68 Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 434. 69 David P. Auerswald, “Deterring Nonstate WMD Attacks,” Political Science Quarterly 121, 4(2006): 543–68. 70 Bunn, “A Mathematical Model of the Risk of Nuclear Terrorism,” pp. 111, 110. 71 William Langewiesche, The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), pp. 33–54. 72 Jackson, “Technology Acquisition by Terrorist Groups,” p. 200. 73 http://www.adl.org/terrorism/symbols/lashkaretaiba.asp; David E. Kaplan, “Homegrown Terrorists,” U,S, News and World Report, March 2, 2003, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030310/10hez.htm. 74 Forest and Salama, “Jihadist Tactics and Targeting,” in Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 98. 75 Mueller, “The Atomic Terrorist,” p. 159, paraphrasing Cass Sunstein, “The Case for Fear,” New Republic, December 11, 2006, p. 32. 76 “Hacking Goes Squishy,” Economist, Technology Quarterly (September 5, 2009), p. 31; Jeanne Whalen, “In Attics and Closets, ‘Biohackers’ Discover Their Inner Frankenstein, Using Mail-Order DNA and Iguana Heaters,

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Hobbyists Brew New Life Forms; Is It Risky?” Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2009, p. 1; Are We Prepared? Four WMD Crises that Could Transform U.S. Security, pp. 32–3, 34; Loeb, “Jihadists and Biological and Toxin Weapons,” in Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 167; Gary Ackerman, “The Future of Jihadists and WMD: Trends and Emerging Threats,” in Ackerman and Tamsett, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction, p. 372.

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4

Sabotage America’s vulnerabilities are enormous. To begin with, much of the information that our enemies need is openly available. Various publications explain in detail how America’s infrastructure works and thus provide a ready guide for destroying it. Our enemies have been collecting and analyzing this information for years. In addition, they are using systems analysis, so that they can pick precisely the key points to destroy in order to do the most damage. Key bottlenecks in the transportation sector, for example, are likely to be targets. Furthermore, and most worrying, our enemies are not just outside the United States. Elements of the American population, in many cases fellow citizens, are willing to work with our foreign enemies, with whom they share common beliefs, national origin, or an ethnic bond. This insider threat exploits our friendly, open, trusting democratic traditions. The result is that our water supply, energy distribution networks, agriculture, transportation, utilities, and even our telecommunications systems, on which our other infrastructure systems depend, are all vulnerable and likely to be attacked. Forests will be set on fire; anthrax will be used against animals, and other pathogens against vegetables and grains; electric power and telecommunications systems will be attacked with explosives or their control systems compromised. Both military and civilian systems will be attacked indiscriminately, in part because they are often the same systems. In the words of an expert, “in these days of all-out . . . war there is, in the last analysis, no longer any such thing as a non-combatant population. As a matter of fact, civilians are today bearing the brunt of the battle.” So warned Blayney F. Matthews, in his 1941 book The Specter of Sabotage.1 Although his warnings sound remarkably contemporary, Matthews was actually thinking about what the Germans had done in the United States before World War I and what they and the Japanese might do in World War II.

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German sabotage efforts were extensive in World War I and less so during World War II, but are only part of America’s experience with sabotage. Reviewing that experience and considering its lessons allows us to understand the threat that sabotage might pose to our security.

The American experience of sabotage As we argued in the Introduction, sabotage is the destruction of material by covert means in order to destroy or degrade the capability of a country to pursue its policies. The fact that sabotage seeks to destroy capabilities explains why sabotage became more important as warfare became more industrialized. For example, the Civil War is often described as the first industrial war. The French Revolution had brought mass armies to the field and Napoleon had organized them but the industrial revolution gave states the resources to supply, sustain, and transport them, revolutionizing the art of war. As industry became the material basis of war, it also became a target of attack. Before the invention of military aircraft, the only way to attack an enemy’s industry or infrastructure, before one’s army overran it, was to attack it covertly, operating behind the enemy’s army, in the midst of his industry and civilian population. As the Civil War was the first industrial war, it was the first American conflict in which sabotage played a role, although still a small one. Both sides targeted railroad lines, for example, since the railroads had become critical for the mobilization and deployment of forces. Another technology subject to sabotage was the telegraph through the cutting of telegraph lines.2 The telegraph was part of the system that increased the mobility of troops, in large part by coordinating rail traffic. Sabotage was particularly appealing to the South, given its disadvantage in industrial infrastructure. Thinking about ways to target Union shipping led to thinking about ways to target Union infrastructure more generally.3 It remains the case, typically, that the more heavily dependent an opponent is on infrastructure and resources, the more appealing will sabotage be to its enemies as an auxiliary to or replacement for more conventional warfighting. The importance of industry in America encouraged Germany to target it for sabotage in World War I. America was supplying vital war materials (munitions, food, horses) to the British and the French, while the British fleet prevented the Germans from trading with the neutral United States. In response to this predicament, the Germans decided to attack American industry covertly. They employed German Americans, naturalized Germans, anti-British Irish Americans and others to blow up munitions plants and depots, place incendiary devices on ships carrying war materiel to Great Britain and France, and

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infect horses with anthrax and glanders as they were shipped to the allies. At the same time, to keep America out of the war, the Germans encouraged the United States to remain neutral and ran information campaigns, openly and covertly, in the United States to support that goal. In addition to bombings and biological attacks, the German sabotage campaign also included instigating strikes among largely Irish stevedores to prevent the loading of supplies for the allies and one scheme to set up a phony munitions manufacturing company to bid on munitions contracts and then fail to fulfill them properly, thus wasting limited resources.4 The Germans organized the information and sabotage campaigns from their embassy in Washington and commercial offices in New York City and elsewhere. The commercial offices provided cover for German officials and agents to prowl the docks for willing accomplices and to move money around to support their activities. These activities took place throughout the United States. Attacks on munitions ships, depots, or factories occurred in Tacoma, Washington, Lyndhurst, New Jersey, and points in between. Horses were infected in New Jersey, Missouri, and California. About 100–200 attacks occurred as the campaign ran its course from 1915 to 1917, producing by one estimate “well over $1 billion in damage (measured in 2005 dollars),”5 a number of deaths, and scores of injuries. One of the German agents was a second-generation German American, Anton Dilger, whose father had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Civil War. Trained as a doctor in some of the leading educational and medical institutions of the day, he first grew the anthrax and glanders germs used to infect horses and then became a full time German agent, ending his days attempting to foment a Mexican invasion of the United States to slow the flow of American soldiers to Europe. But the sabotage campaign also included “lone wolf” attacks. Inspired by the German cause and the German information campaign, a professor from Cornell built a bomb that he exploded in the senate and then traveled to New York where he carried out an assassination attempt against financier J. P. Morgan, either as revenge for the House of Morgan’s lending to the Allies or in the misguided hope of ending such support. The most famous of the German sabotage attacks was the fire-bombing of the Black Tom munitions depot in New Jersey, not far from the Statue of Liberty. The network that carried out this attack consisted of German officials operating under cover, German seamen trapped in New York by the internment of their ships when the war began, German Americans and a few others recruited by the various members of the network. German agents bribed guards at the depot but need not have bothered since security was so lax. Two of the saboteurs rowed a small boat to the facility to carry out their part of the plan. The incendiary devices for the attack came from a man who had been

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living in the United States since 1893, working as an agent of the German General Staff, whose mission was to keep the Staff apprised of developments in the US chemical industry. The explosion destroyed the depot, collapsed some structures nearby, blew out windows all over Manhattan and New York harbor, and hurled chunks of shrapnel into the Statue of Liberty. It also killed five people and injured many more. The Germans succeeded in carrying out these operations covertly. Only a long international arbitration process, followed by extensive legal proceedings in the United States, concluding as World War II loomed, definitively established German responsibility and assessed damages.6 With the World War I sabotage campaign in mind, Matthews had some reason then to fear that the Axis powers would launch a similar campaign as war became imminent in the late 1930s. Matthews was not alone. Sabotage! The Secret War Against America, which appeared in 1942, covered much of the ground that Matthews had, reporting that German sabotage during World War I had destroyed more than US$150 million in war resources, recounted the anthrax and glanders attacks, and then listed several pages of suspicious fires and explosions at industrial plants in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as an unusual number of forest fires in North Carolina, implying that it was all the work of saboteurs. Sabotage! also reported that under the direction of German agents, the German Bund, an organization of German Americans most of whom were sympathetic to the Nazi regime, was working with the Ku Klux Klan to foment racial incidents and riots in order to discredit the United States and to decrease production at defense plants.7 A campaign of sabotage was not just likely but already underway according to this account. In fact, however, no such campaign occurred. In What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs, a book that appeared in 1943, the authors reported that “according to the F.B.I. not a single case [of industrial mischief] can with certainty be traced back to the German, Italian, or Japanese war machines.”8 The authors went on to cite FBI figures that between January 1940 and February 1943 only 558 cases out of the 7,400 investigated (7.5%) were, in reality, sabotage and that Axis sympathizers acting on their own had carried these out. For example, in an interesting foreshadowing of current selfradicalization, an American citizen born of German parents had sabotaged a number of bombers in a plant near Baltimore. German propaganda apparently inspired him but “a wide investigation” failed to establish any link between him and any element of the German government. Other cases “boiled down to personal grudges against the management or fellow workmen, drunken impulses, and general no-accountness.” Such cases also occurred in peacetime, the authors noted, and in any case the damage they had done was

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trivial. But could not sabotage go undetected, obliterating its own traces?9 The Germans reportedly had incendiary pencils that burned at such a heat that they evaporated in the course of starting fires. Military aircraft crashing during training suggested sabotage, did they not? They might, the authors noted, but reported that the Army and Navy had published data showing that the rate at which their aircraft were falling from the skies did not differ significantly from the historical rate at which civilian aircraft met the same fate. Sabotage had occurred in other places, such as the Philippines “but in the continental United States nothing happened.”10 Sabotage might still occur, the authors cautioned. There were reasons to worry. For example, saboteurs could easily enter the United States at many places (“Mexico is a perpetual anxiety”), the authors reminded their readers, but reviewing all the evidence, they concluded that, unlike before World War I, “sabotage on our soil remains something to guard against but nothing more.”11 All in all, what the authors reported confirmed the view of a Chicago police captain who had reviewed Matthews’ book when it first came out. Matthews’ imagination, the captain believed, had run away with him.12 If campaigns of sabotage did not occur in the United States during World War II, it was not because the Germans did not try. The Germans had espionage networks in the United States prior to World War II, although these were quickly discovered, often on tips from those, including ethnic Germans, whom the Germans had approached for recruitment. Presumably because of the failures of these networks, the Germans tried to infiltrate agents into the United States specifically for sabotage. The first effort brought two separate teams ashore. Early on the morning of June 13, 1942, a German submarine surfaced off the coast of Long Island, New York. Four men disembarked and headed for the beach carrying several boxes of explosives and bomb-making equipment. Selected by the German intelligence service because they had spent time in the United States and spoke English, the men had received specialized training in bomb making and been given specific targets, such as munitions plants, to attack in hopes that they could disrupt America’s war industry. A similar group came ashore from another German submarine in the early hours of June 17 near Jacksonville, Florida. Two of the group that landed in New York had accepted the mission with the intention of betraying it. One of them left behind on the beach where the group landed a trail of personal items, in hopes that it would lead authorities to the group’s arms cache. The other contacted the FBI the day after he landed. The information he volunteered and the tradecraft mistakes the other saboteurs made (e.g., they contacted family and friends) led to the arrest of all eight by June 27, before they had carried out a single attack. When the saboteurs had come ashore, they had worn bits of German uniforms, hoping that if caught the

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law-abiding Americans would treat them as prisoners of war and not spies. Once they had landed and launched their ill-fated mission, however, the saboteurs wore civilian clothes and attempted to operate clandestinely. When captured, they were indeed treated as spies. Convicted by a special military tribunal, the constitutionality of which their defense lawyers brought before the Supreme Court, six were executed. The two that betrayed the mission were given long prison sentences. The second sabotage operation ended similarly. One of two agents put ashore in Maine in 1944 turned himself in and betrayed his colleague before either had carried out an attack. The authors of What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs suggested several explanations for the lack of Nazi or Japanese sabotage. First, prior to the involvement of the United States in World War II, it was in the interest of the German government not to push the United States into the fight, which a campaign of sabotage might have done. Second, the authors thought that the US government was better prepared to defend against sabotage than it had been at the time of World War I. Third, as a result of this preparation, once the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, the FBI was able to pick up those it had identified as potential enemy agents before they could do harm. Fourth, ethnic ties turned out not to be as strong as some had feared. The vast majority of Americans of German and Japanese ancestry proved loyal. Fifth, the fact that the United States had executed the first group of saboteurs who came ashore discouraged the Germans from sending others.13 The last of these explanations makes little sense. It is doubtful that the execution of five of their agents would have discouraged the Nazis from sending more. In the midst of the vast slaughter of World War II, of what possible consequence was it to the Nazis to lose a mere handful of people? The other explanations are more persuasive. Before and during World War I, the United States had no centralized counterintelligence capability to help protect the country against sabotage and other kinds of clandestine attack. Agents of several different government agencies operated independently of one another in Mexico, for example, to ferret out German threats to the United States. The lack of centralization explains in part why the rising numbers of sabotage attacks in 1915–17 did not lead the US government to recognize that a campaign of sabotage was underway and respond more effectively than it did. No one had the job of connecting the dots, as we might now say. In the years following the war, the FBI assumed responsibility for counterintelligence. By the late 1930s, through foresight, luck, and hard work, the Bureau was well-informed on the activities of German agents in the United States. It had also investigated the Japanese community and accurately reported that, by and large, it posed no threat. When the war broke out, it acted against those Japanese it deemed suspect, as it did against German

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Americans it suspected of disloyalty.14 If American counterintelligence had improved, it was also the case that German intelligence operations in the United States proved inept both before and during World War II. They suffered from “careless recruiting, inadequate planning, and faulty execution,”15 which explains why sabotage efforts failed during World War II. They did not take place before World War II, as the authors note, because it was not in the interests of the Nazis to provoke the United States into a war with Germany. During World War II, sabotage as a covert weapon of war appealed not just to the Germans. The United States and its allies put into German-occupied Europe many more agents than the Germans attempted to put into the United States. Not all of these agents or their teams undertook sabotage but those who sent them considered sabotage an important mission. The saboteurs attacked transportation, petroleum stocks, and factories engaged in war production. A mission considered particularly important at the time was the effort to destroy the heavy water plant in Norway that produced a critical element for the Nazi nuclear weapons program. After failing to destroy the plant with air raids, the allies with the assistance of the Norwegian resistance launched several sabotage efforts, finally destroying the plant and the heavy water it had produced. In another case, saboteurs supported by the allies destroyed a railroad bridge in the Balkans over which much of the supplies for Rommel’s Afrika Corps traveled. Its destruction had a significant effect on the Corps’ ability to fight. Sabotage also impeded reinforcements heading to Normandy as the allies struggled to gain a foothold in Europe. These were notable successes but overall, for reasons we will discuss, the allies’ sabotage campaign had limited impact. The sabotage that had the greatest effect was like the attacks on the heavy water plant or the railroad bridge, attacks that targeted specific critical components in Nazi production or supported specific military operations, such as the Normandy invasion. In this case, attacks on transportation delayed the arrival of German reinforcements by days and in some cases weeks.16 What appealed to the Germans and the Allies during World War II appealed to the Soviets after it. Soviet espionage received a great deal of public attention during the Cold War. After that confrontation ended, however, material from Soviet archives and the testimony of former members of Soviet intelligence organizations revealed as well that the Soviets had extensive plans for sabotage in the United States. These plans were developed over a number of years, and included careful study of infrastructure vulnerabilities. They also apparently included the burial of caches of weapons and explosives in the United States for later use by saboteurs. Some of the sabotage plans included operations launched from Mexico and Canada. Other saboteurs were apparently to come ashore as the Nazis saboteurs had. Targets included military

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bases, electric power generating plants, dams that supplied water for hydroelectric generation, oil pipelines, harbors, and naval facilities. In addition to their own personnel, the Russians recruited as saboteurs Russian nationals living in North America and others well-disposed to the Soviets. One set of sabotage plans reportedly included the use of Nicaraguan Sandinista guerrillas operating from northern Mexico. The Russians intended to activate the sabotage plans in case of war or a crisis with the United States.17 Soviet sabotage did receive some attention even before the cold war was officially over. It did so once, for example, in the context of a discussion of the threat terrorists posed to America’s infrastructure. In testimony before a senate committee in 1989, an expert witness who had conducted a year-long study of America’s infrastructure vulnerabilities reported that “intelligence analysts generally agree that there is no evidence of the targeting of U.S. infrastructures by terrorist groups.” He added, however, that “the same conclusion does not apply to ‘special operations’ groups.” Such Soviet forces posed a threat now, the expert witness argued, as would the special forces of “some other significant power in the decades to come.” During his questioning of this witness, a Senator returned to the issue of Soviet special forces, citing a recently published book by a Soviet defector that reported extensive plans for the use of Soviet special forces inside the United States. The expert witness concurred that special forces posed a sabotage threat. He argued that they did and terrorists did not, however, because special forces “would have far more capabilities in terms of manpower, resources, intelligence, and so forth, and would be considerably more effective than the average terrorist.” Other witnesses agreed with the committee’s expert, to the surprise of at least one senator, that terrorists did not pose a serious threat to America’s infrastructure or, at least, that the threat they posed had not gotten worse in recent years.18 Buttressing the claim that terrorists were not a grave threat to America’s infrastructure was evidence presented to the hearing by another expert. His research (covering the years 1980–88) showed very few deliberate attacks in the United States against infrastructure, none that could be definitively tied to terrorists, and none around the world that appeared to aim at systemic or nation-wide consequences. Many of the attacks were unexplained, while others were the result of labor unrest and were a form of industrial protest. Disgruntled employees were responsible for others, vandals for still others. Some, carried out by hunters, for example, appeared to be a form of protest at the destruction or invasion of the countryside by the infrastructure of modern industrial society, although this was not completely clear. One difference between the United States and Europe, the expert noted, was that on the continent protesters or terrorists were attacking the nuclear power industry.

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In general, terrorism in defense of the environment was an issue in Europe in the 1980s, as it was not yet in the United States. In other parts of the world, in Columbia, Chile, Peru, El Salvador, Mozambique, and Afghanistan, attacks on infrastructure were occurring in the course of insurgent campaigns. The United States faced no insurgent threat, of course, but the historical record also showed no infrastructure threat from terrorism, foreign or domestic. In presenting this evidence, the expert witness who had aggregated the data on attacks reported that he could see no reason why the future would differ from the past.19 The congressional hearing in 1989 is noteworthy not only for its assessment of the threat posed to America’s infrastructure by terrorists and special operations forces but also for the way it discussed infrastructure itself. Underlying the testimony of experts and the questions of Senators was the view that America’s infrastructure was an interrelated network of networks. Electric power distribution was a network, a collection of nodes, such as power generating stations, linked by power lines to other nodes, such as transformer substations, which were in turn linked by power lines to end users in homes and businesses. But the electric power network was itself part of a broader infrastructure network. For example, Electric power producers depend on natural gas and petroleum products for generator start-up and primary fuel. Natural gas and petroleum movers need electric power to operate pipelines. Telecommunications provide remote monitoring and operating capabilities to pumping stations and switching facilities. Communications are also needed for dispatching repair crews, locating needed replacement parts, and establishing alternate supply routes. Telecommunications suppliers, however, must have electric power to provide telecommunications service, and need petroleum products to run back-up generators when electric power sources are lost. 20 All elements of America’s infrastructure had evolved together and had developed on the assumption that those other elements would be functioning. Thus America’s infrastructure was a complex arrangement of interdependent parts. This was not a perspective on infrastructure unique to this senate hearing. Others earlier had made the same argument. In 1986, the Public Report of the Vice President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism had noted that “transportation, energy, communications, finance, industry, medicine, defense, diplomacy and government itself rely on intricate interrelated networks.” In 1984, one of the first reports to make use of the network model for understanding America’s infrastructure emphasized that all the components of this infrastructure “are highly interrelated.”21 The congressional hearing

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shows that by 1989, the view of infrastructure as a network of networks was widely held. The hearings also show that by the late 1980s there was full recognition that computers and computer control systems were changing America’s infrastructure. Witnesses discussed the increasing use of computers in infrastructure control and the way they were embedded in and making possible an increasingly integrated network of infrastructure networks. At the same time, the hearing showed that understanding of computer and, by extension, infrastructure vulnerability was still somewhat limited. Reflecting on the fact that the ARPANET (the forerunner of the internet) had recently been infected with a “worm” (a malicious computer program that spreads itself from computer to computer), one expert noted that “we do not yet know how to build computer programs that are completely invulnerable to penetration by outsiders, the hacker idea.” He apparently thought that designing such invulnerability into programs would one day come to pass. Another opined that hackers would be a problem only if they could “get into the operating software of the computer and operate it, and a hacker cannot generally do that.” Other new technologies also raised questions. One expert warned that growing reliance on fiber optic cables would create vulnerabilities. Soon, he predicted, fiber optic cable would replace all other transmission means, concentrating our telecommunications capacity in fewer high volume lines that all tended to be co-located. This would reduce redundancy and, thus, resilience. Another expert opined, to the contrary, that the deregulation of the telecommunications industry and the development of new technologies, such as cell phones, was increasing the complexity and redundancy of telecommunications and making the system more resilient.22 In discussing the increasing role of computers in America’s infrastructure and national life, the congressional hearing in 1989 was a part of an ongoing and growing conversation motivated by the increasing use of new information and communications technology. By the late 1970s, it was possible to see the effect that computers and telecommunications might have in combination. As these possibilities emerged, the US government began to respond. This response initially culminated in National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 145, on telecommunications and automated information security, which the Reagan administration issued in 1984. The NSDD focused on cyber crime and espionage and saw both nations and terrorists as threats. It also gave the federal government, in particular the National Security Agency (NSA), a good deal of authority for dealing with computer related threats, which was controversial. Some, including many in the emerging computer industry, argued strongly that a government spy agency should not be directly involved with computers in the private sector. In response to the controversy, Congress

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passed legislation in 1987 that limited NSA’s authority, barring its involvement in nongovernmental systems. This limitation was part of the policy of the first Bush administration, promulgated in its National Security Directive 42, “National Policy for the Security of National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems” (1990). As the US government came to accept the need to limit its control of computer systems to its own, the increasing pervasiveness of computers and computer controls in America’s infrastructure led to a growing awareness that computer vulnerabilities were part of America’s infrastructure vulnerability. As one early study in 1991 noted, “new vulnerabilities are emerging as computers become more common as components of medical and transportation equipment or more interconnected as components of domestic and international financial systems.”23 Even though the US government had given up any claim to protecting computers in the private sector, others were pointing out that a computer-based infrastructure would create “intersections” between economic and national security interests, raising questions about strategies to protect both. Answering these questions took some time because of the broad array of issues they raised and interests they touched. The Clinton administration formulated its answers in two documents, Presidential Decision Directive 63, “Protecting America’s Critical Infrastructures” (1998) and “Defending America’s Cyberspace: National Plan for Information Systems Protection, Version 1.0, An Invitation to a Dialogue” (2000), both of which drew on work by the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection.24 By 2000, several serious intrusions into US government and especially Department of Defense computer systems had occurred. None seemed associated with terrorists. Governments and individual hackers, the latter perhaps directed by the former, were the most likely authors of these attacks.25 The attacks on 9/11 raised the profile of terrorists again but as time passed the historical pattern appeared to remain in place. As noted in Chapter 3, terrorists were using the new information and communication technologies but were doing so not to attack but to recruit and raise money. This was in keeping with the view that the biggest problem terrorists face is acquiring resources and that the comparative advantage of the new technology for terrorists is not in facilitating attacks but in easing their resource problem. Two significant cyber attacks in the new century, on Estonia and Georgia, were thought to originate not from non-state actors but from a state, Russia, in response to actions by Estonia and Georgia that the Russians found unacceptable. This attribution was far from certain, however; non-state actors have a history of denial of service attacks, the kind of attacks used against both countries. Concern had also steadily increased about China’s cyber-warfare capabilities, with reports that the Chinese had planted devices in various computerized information

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control systems, especially in the electric generation and transmission system. These so-called logic bombs in effect replaced the old-fashioned munitions that the Soviets had reportedly buried around the United States during the Cold War. Although the means were different, the end was the same apparently, to prevent the United States responding as it planned during some future crisis with the Chinese. 26 Other recent unexplained problems with infrastructure have helped keep alive the issue of sabotage.27 This brief survey shows that for about 20 years before the 9/11 attacks the U S government and various private sector organizations and experts had been thinking with growing intensity about America’s infrastructure and its vulnerability to attacks by terrorists and foreign governments. During those two decades, the growing pervasiveness of computer use and the growing awareness of computer vulnerability made infrastructure vulnerability an increasingly salient issue. The survey also shows, however, that we may consider the more recent threat to what we now call critical infrastructure to be part of the threat to America’s infrastructure that has existed throughout the twentieth century. For the past 150 years, every enemy that America has faced has at one time or another decided that it was important to target our infrastructure. The number of books on the German sabotage campaigns of World Wars I and II published since 9/11 is popular recognition of the enduring connection between infrastructure threats. But are these threats really comparable? Can we learn anything useful by considering German sabotage conducted or planned almost 100 years ago? Or have computers so changed what infrastructure is and how it works that we have entered a new era without useful precedents? And what about terrorists? In the senate hearing we discussed, one expert downplayed the threat from terrorists because in his opinion they lacked the resources and knowledge necessary to attack America’s infrastructure. Is this true? If it once was true, have computers changed that calculation? To answer these questions, it is useful to consider first what we can learn about infrastructure and sabotage without reference to the changes wrought by computers and the information revolution. Having done that, we will be able to see more clearly what if any changes computers have caused.

Lessons from the American experience of sabotage Terrorism and sabotage differ in a critical respect. Target selection is more critical in sabotage than in terrorism. Once the decision for terrorism is made

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the critical factor becomes a political judgment about how much and what levels and kinds of violence will get the terrorists to their objective. Within broad limits, it almost does not matter which targets terrorists hit. They can affect public opinion even with attacks on merely symbolic targets. Since judgment about terrorist targeting is essentially political judgment, there is no reason to believe that a terrorist leader, at least initially, is in any worse position with regard to such judgments than a legitimate political leader. Once the decision for sabotage is made, however, a daunting analytical problem arises for the saboteur. How does a saboteur know which targets to attack? If the objective is to affect the ability of an adversary to mobilize for or continue the fight, merely symbolic targets will not do. To affect the Afrika Corps’ supplies, it was necessary to take down the bridge over which the supplies traveled, not just any bridge. The saboteur must do real rather than merely symbolic damage. Doing real damage requires more than political judgment because the effect of an attack on public opinion is not the only issue. Technical analytical judgment is necessary. Unlike the terrorist, the saboteur must be able to analyze infrastructure to pick out effective targets. This is a difficult task; the more complex the infrastructure, the more difficult it becomes. We can get an idea of these difficulties a saboteur faces if we consider the efforts of the Army Air Corps to think through how to use developing capability to conduct aerial bombing. Since the advent of industrial war, strategists had thought of destroying industry to help win a war. With the advent of the airplane, they were no longer restricted to sabotage as a means to do so. Indeed, so impressive was the new air technology that it seemed to open the possibility of attacking industry in a decisive war winning way. Accordingly, US air power theorists in the 1930s started trying to think through how to destroy an enemy’s industrial economy. In doing so, the air theorists faced the same critical question as saboteurs, which industrial targets should be attacked? One of the American airpower theorists had worked with American railroads and believed that industrial economies were like railroads in that destroying key links could disrupt the entire system. This view received support when it was discovered that a key part for American aircraft was made in one factory and that if this factory were destroyed or disrupted, America’s aircraft production would be as well. As work on strategic bombing progressed it focused not just on such specific critical items as an airplane part but on finding systemic critical links in an entire industrial economy. For example, planners focused on transportation on the assumption that all economic activity depended on it; if it could be disrupted the whole economy might collapse. Similar reasoning led airpower theorists to focus on electric power generation and transmission. Eventually, the theorists developed what came to be

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called the industrial web theory: industry was a web of relationships, an idea repeated decades later, as we have just seen, in the notion of the interrelated character of America’s infrastructure. If strategic bombing could destroy or disrupt the key relationships, then it could disrupt industrial power, hence the whole economy, and, since modern war was industrial, even win the war. Planners tried to work out these ideas in detail by studying the economy of New York City. Ultimately, they listed 154 targets the destruction of which would essentially destroy German military capability.28 In practice, the theory did not work. Airpower was not sufficient to destroy the German or Japanese ability to wage war. In the words of one analyst, “the bombing was more destructive than decisive.” But it was terribly destructive. Hundreds of thousands died; hundreds of square miles of urban landscape were reduced to rubble. In Hamburg, which endured “perhaps the most devastating single city attack of the war,” civilian casualties were only 13 percent fewer than the number suffered by soldiers from Hamburg fighting on all fronts. In addition, Hamburg lost “24 hospitals, 58 churches, 277 schools, 76 civic buildings, 83 banks, 2,632 stores, tens of thousands of dwellings, as well as 183 large and 4,113 small factories, 580 other industrial plants, 180,00 tons of shipping in the port, and 12 bridges.” Something like this level of destruction occurred in cities across Germany and Japan. Twenty percent of German housing was destroyed; 305,000 Germans were killed and 780,000 wounded; over 7 million were left homeless. In addition to producing largescale destruction, the bombing did contribute to the Allied victory, in some respects significantly. While attacks on ball-bearing plants, identified as a key link in the industrial web, and aircraft manufacturing facilities failed to destroy war production, toward the end of the war the bombing destroyed Germany’s steel industry, impaired its electric power industry, and disorganized industry generally in the areas attacked. Most important perhaps, the bombing destroyed chunks of the German transportation system, badly affecting the economy and the war effort. According to the official bombing assessment, “the attack on transportation was the decisive blow that completely disorganized the German economy. It reduced war production in all categories and made it difficult to move what was produced to the front. The attack also limited the tactical mobility of the German army.” At the end of the war, large numbers of German tanks were lost or overrun because they could not move. Bombing also damaged the ability of the Germans to supply their forces with fuel, limiting pilot training.29 But the bombing achieved these effects only in conjunction with the relentless, grinding ground offensives of Allied armies and other measures, such as blockades, taken against the Axis powers. As the official bombing survey points out, “there were so many forces making for the collapse of production [toward the end of the war] . . . that it is not

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possible separately to assess the effect of [airpower] on war production.”30 In the end, then, despite the hopes of the airpower theorists, bombing remained like sabotage, a contributor to victory rather than victory-producing in itself. For anyone seeking to understand the logic and possibilities of sabotage, and thus the difficulties that saboteurs face, it is useful to reflect on the reasons why airpower did not work in the way its theorists thought it would. First, the theorists overestimated the effectiveness of their technology and underestimated the effectiveness of air defenses, at least German defenses. Bombers could not achieve the accuracy needed to destroy targets even during daylight attacks and when they attacked during the day, the Germans shot them down in large numbers. Bombing had to occur at night, therefore, and necessarily became “area bombing.” In this case, large quantities of bombs, often incendiaries, were dropped on an area rather than a specific target. The purpose was not to take out specific industrial targets but to kill civilians, especially workers, in the hope of disrupting industrial production and also of undermining the will to carry on the war. Daylight bombing was possible over Japan because Japanese air defenses were not as formidable as their German allies’. But precision was still not possible; area bombing was again the result. It was this area bombing in Germany and Japan that proved more destructive than decisive. Armaments production increased in Germany, for example, as the bombing continued. Japanese war production declined but this was largely the result of the blockade. As one analyst of the bombing of Japan put it, “it was left to the bombers to finish the ‘economic disintegration caused by the blockade.’” As the war progressed, various technological advances, spurred in part by the failure of airpower to deliver on its promises, increased bombing accuracy and effectiveness, contributing to the effects noted above. But these improvements still did not make bombing a war winner.31 In addition to miscalculations about technology, the theorists also made mistakes in analyzing modern economies. The theorists and air campaign planners lacked information. They did not know enough about the details of the highly complex German and Japanese economies to pick targets effectively. In one case when they did have important information, their assumptions undermined their analysis. British analysts could not believe that Germany would go to war with the limited fuel supplies their estimates correctly concluded the Germans had, “an incredulity shared by both the Soviets and the Americans, who agreed in overestimating Germany’s oil stocks by at least 100 per cent.” In addition to lacking details for proper analysis, airpower theorists misunderstood the nature of modern economies. Although the parts of modern economies are interconnected and in that sense may form a web, these economies also have spare capacity and redundancies. Unless these aspects of the economy are understood in detail, what appears to be

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a key node whose destruction will cripple an economy may turn out to be one that has duplicates or rough duplicates or equivalents that can be fashioned from spare resources. Under the relentless destruction of bombing raids, Germany exhibited the resilience of a modern economy. The Germans (more than the Japanese) “proved adept at relocating and redistributing manufacturing sites, at stocking up supplies so that production flows would not be interrupted, at working extra shifts, at corralling slave and foreign workers, and at substituting one raw material for another.”32 The Germans also redesigned their machines and processes to use what they had. German organizational, engineering, and industrial design skills limited the effects of strategic bombing. The connection between vulnerability, redundancy, and resilience in a complex modern economy is decisive for understanding not only the limits of strategic bombing but also the threat posed by sabotage, so we should pause here and consider this relationship in more detail. Recall the congressional hearing in 1989 described above. Experts testified that terrorists were not a threat to our infrastructure, while a senator expressed surprise at this opinion. These two different judgments about the threat to our infrastructure occurred because the character of modern infrastructure makes it both vulnerable and invulnerable or resilient. The paradox of modern infrastructure is that it is often vulnerable in its parts but not as a whole. To better understand this, consider first the vulnerability of infrastructure. The fact that modern industrial infrastructure consists of almost innumerable nodes and links dispersed across a country means that the infrastructure presents an almost limitless number of targets. Furthermore, because these targets are interrelated, striking one might damage others, as airpower theorists realized. A 1984 report on America’s infrastructure vulnerability, more than 50 years after the airpower theorists elaborated their industrial web theory, described it thus: “nearly every element of every node or link is a potential trouble spot that can in turn degrade the performance of other elements.”33 In addition, although some nodes may have some protection (whether air defenses against bombers or a fence and guards against saboteurs), others have none and the links, sometimes stretching over or through isolated areas, seldom have any. All of this makes infrastructure highly vulnerable. This is the perspective that the senator took and the reason he expressed surprise to learn that America’s infrastructure was not vulnerable to terrorists. While it is true that modern infrastructure is vulnerable, this is not the only way to understand that infrastructure. As a report published several years before the congressional hearing put it, another way to understand a link in a network is to see it as “a redundant path.” A headquarters that communicates with its field offices is an example of a network. It is a set of nodes, the

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headquarters and field offices, and links, the lines or means of communication between the headquarters and the field offices. If the field offices can communicate with each other, then “redundant network paths also exist.”34 If the link between the headquarters and one of its field offices is cut, and the field offices have links between themselves as well as with headquarters, then the headquarters can communicate with the cutoff field office through one of the other field offices with which it is still connected. The redundancy in the network makes it flexible and resilient. A network with redundancy can survive the destruction of nodes and links. It may or may not function as effi ciently as before but it will still function. What makes a network vulnerable (a multiplicity of nodes and links) also limits its vulnerability or makes it resilient. This is the perspective that several of the expert witnesses took in the 1989 congressional hearing and why they stated that America’s infrastructure was not vulnerable to terrorists. Neither the perspective that emphasizes the vulnerability of networks nor the one that emphasizes their resilience is necessarily wrong. Based on their experience with America’s infrastructure networks, some of the expert witnesses at the congressional hearing in 1989 made the judgment, in effect, that the resilience of the overall network more than compensated for the vulnerability of its parts. They recognized, however, that different components of the infrastructure web had different degrees of vulnerability. The natural gas pipeline network was more vulnerable than the electric power network because there were fewer nodes and links in the former.35 Overall, however, what impressed them was the resilience of the entire system. They noted that over the years accidents, natural disasters, and deliberate acts by disgruntled employees and others had destroyed nodes and links in the infrastructure network but that the network had proven resilient. For example, when a senator wondered why an expert was confident that the electric power grid could survive attack by terrorists, the expert replied: “I think the severity of possible damage from a hurricane far exceeds what any group of terrorists could ever accomplish, and we have demonstrated that we can handle hurricanes.”36 At least one expert acknowledged that terrorists might do more harm than any accident or natural disaster, if they hit an infrastructure with limited redundancy at several sites at the same time. But to have a truly significant impact, such attacks would need to hit critical nodes, that is, nodes for which there was no or only limited redundancy. To hit such nodes deliberately, as opposed to randomly, however, would require a level of knowledge of the infrastructure network, as well as an ability to analyze this knowledge, that no terrorist group possessed. Backed by the resources of a nation-state, special operations forces might have the intelligence and target analysis capability that terrorists lacked, which was why they posed a greater threat than terrorists,

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according to the experts. Even the expert who felt that terrorists might pose a threat to America’s infrastructure appeared to conclude on balance that the network had enough redundancy to be dependable despite its vulnerabilities.37 Given what we have seen about the effects of aerial bombing in World War II, it is difficult to believe that even a nation-state and its best-trained forces could accomplish through sabotage what aerial bombing did not. The critical point, to reiterate, is that even a critical vulnerability in one sector of an infrastructure network may be covered by a similar redundant capability or resource in another part of the overall infrastructure network. The resilience of infrastructure networks is especially clear if we remember that beyond the analytical issues we have considered so far lurk the more ambiguous interactions of economics and strategy. For example, one might argue that if the allies had hit fuel supplies at the beginning of the war as they did toward the end, strategic bombing might have accomplished what its theorists said it would. Certainly, fuel supplies were a weak point in the German war effort. The Germans themselves identified fuel oil as a potential “bottleneck.” When the allies attacked Germany’s synthetic fuel plants, the “Germans viewed the attacks as catastrophic.”38 The effect of targeting fuel is uncertain, however, since the degree of German fuel vulnerability depended on German fuel supply and consumption and neither was a fixed quantity. Changes in German strategy, where and how they fought, for example, would have affected both supply and consumption, making it more or less difficult for airpower to break this critical link in the German industrial web. Trying to think through the variations possible in the interplay of strategy and economics makes the analytical task of a potential saboteur or strategic bomber even more complex. The difficulties do not end here, however. Not only did airpower theorists prior to World War II not understand well enough the physical infrastructure of modern industrial economies, they also did not understand the social infrastructure of the economies they were attacking. Consequently, they overestimated the social effects of bombing. In Germany and Japan, the bombing decreased morale but did not produce political repercussions; although morale dropped, people continued to function. The official bombing survey reported that German morale, belief in ultimate victory or even satisfactory compromise, and confidence in their leaders declined but Germans “continued to work efficiently as long as the physical means of production remained.” Absenteeism increased but this did not necessarily decrease production. The bombing did not produce panic, looting, or increased rates of crime. Suicides declined in countries that were bombed. Inertia and lack of alternative courses of action appear to have taken people back to their daily routines once the bombing stopped.39

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Bombing did not produce the economy-killing results theorists hoped for because spare capacity, redundancies, human skills, and social cohesion defeated the intelligence and analytical capabilities of war planners. The Germans and Japanese were able to recover and carry on despite the terrible destruction. After the bombing of Hamburg over several days in late July and early August 1943, arguably the worst of the war, “rail yards and rail services were operating within hours. Electricity supply exceeded demand within nine days. Industrial production rose swiftly almost to pre-raid levels. Dehoused inhabitants were evacuated or relocated in the city within a short time.”40 What the Germans could not overcome in the longer term, however, was the combined effects of the ground and air war waged against them and their own economic and strategic mismanagement.41 The same problems that beset strategic bombing during World War II also beset the sabotage campaign that the Allies organized against the Germans. One of the campaign’s defenders has argued that sabotage did more to contribute to victory than did the bombing, at least in some specific instances.42 For one thing, sabotage was much more precise than bombing. One wellplaced charge could do much more than bomb loads dropped as part of an area bombing attack. By one estimate, the total weight of explosives used in the British sabotage campaign in France was less than the payload of a single light bomber. Consequently, sabotage was more cost effective and more effi cient than bombing. But even this advocate of sabotage acknowledges that it failed as bombing did, if we take success to mean that sabotage significantly hurt the ability of the Germans to carry on fighting. Like airpower theorists and planners, those directing the sabotage campaign hunted “incessantly for weak links, though never finding any weak enough to cripple Germany.”43 In other words, having greater precision is not an advantage unless one is hitting decisive targets more precisely. As discussed earlier, finding decisive targets in a modern economy is a problem because redundancy robs targets of criticality. Sabotage like airpower worked best as an operational or tactical weapon, as part of a larger campaign, delaying reinforcements in Normandy, for example, or restricting Rommel’s resupply in North Africa.44 These are not necessarily small contributions to victory but they are not in themselves decisive. Nor do they come from seeking key targets or bottlenecks in the abstract, so to speak. The contributions of sabotage and airpower to victory became possible at the operational and tactical levels because of opportunities generated by the strategic interaction of opponents. Where and how Rommel fought created the opportunity for sabotage in the Balkans to work against him in Africa. One problem with applying both airpower and sabotage as weapons is the lack of intelligence on the targeted economy. One might argue that the

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theory that an economy could be disabled by taking out a key component is not wrong. The problem is that those doing the targeting do not know enough about the targeted economy to pick out the key component. Lack of knowledge or intelligence is certainly a problem but it is not the entire problem or even the most important one. Air Force Lieutenant Mancur Olson explained the real problem in an article in 1962. Olson, who went on to have a distinguished career as an economist and social scientist, first reviewed the thinking of airpower theorists prior to World War II. Considering the results of the bombing, he then asked “why were the attacks on these carefully selected and key targets . . . generally without a decisive effect on the war?”45 Olson answered that the theorists had failed to distinguish between a tactical supply problem and a strategic supply problem. Although they were articulating a strategic bombing theory, the theorists proceeded as if they were dealing with a tactical supply problem akin to depriving a vehicle of fuel or a weapon of a vital part. Without the fuel or the part the vehicle or weapon becomes useless. At the front or in a battle, there are unlikely to be alternatives to the missing fuel or spare part, and little or no time to find any, even if they existed. But the airpower theorists were not talking about attacking troops and their equipment at the front, so they were not dealing with a tactical supply problem. They were attacking an entire economy and thus had to deal with strategic supply. Their strategic approach failed because strategic supply differs from tactical supply. If an entire economy is under attack, those managing it have both time to find and material from which to fabricate substitutes for whatever is targeted and destroyed. Almost everything has “luxurious” uses, for example, and under pressure these can be curtailed, freeing resources for other uses. As we have noted, the Germans found many ways to substitute for the destruction of what appeared to be vital components of their economy. Olson argued that it was possible to paralyze an entire economy. “Substitution can make up for remarkable shortages, but it will finally find its limit.” In order to exhaust the possibility of substitution, Olson contended that it was best to destroy “a large part of a few industries than a small part of many industries.” More specifically, those doing the targeting had to find a large unique industry, destroy it, and then destroy any capability to replace the output of that industry.46 At this point, knowledge or intelligence and analysis become relevant, for only with adequate information and careful analysis could such targeting be done. While Olson identified a way to make strategic bombing theory effective by addressing the strategic supply problem, it is not clear that his prescription would work in practice. Even if it were possible to gather sufficient information about an economy, would it ever be possible to succeed at analyzing it in

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such a way that someone could build the kind of targeting plan that Olson’s prescription calls for? Perhaps it would be possible to predict all the ways that substitutions could be made at a given moment, although this would seem to be a nearly impossible task. But would it be possible to predict what scientific or technological advances (synthetic fuels, for example) might upset such predictions? Is it certain that the bombing campaign and any other measures undertaken, such as sabotage, would end the war before these advances took effect? Would not the time an opponent had to adjust depend on the results of battles whose occurrence, let alone outcomes, could not be predicted? Could not the outcomes of such battles increase or at least alter the ability of the targeted country to make substitutions? Faced with such questions, it seems likely that the tendency of an attacker, if possible, would be to err on the side of dropping more bombs on more targets rather than fewer. If this is so, then the tendency would be toward bludgeoning the opponent’s economy into submission, a version of attrition warfare. While this might work, it is a far cry from destroying the economy by destroying 154 critical targets, the low-cost, war-winning approach early air-power theorists and their later followers claimed to have found. Considering Olson’s analysis reinforces how difficult it would be for sabotage to have any effect on an entire economy. If there were really 154 targets, or something comparable, in an economy, the destruction of which would bring it down or at least its war production, then saboteurs, with their great precision, might actually be useful. But since it is highly unlikely that hitting critical targets can produce critical economy-wide effects, sabotage is not useful in such an attempt. In Olson’s terms, we may say that sabotage cannot be strategic. Sabotage is useful only at the operational or tactical levels, as an adjunct to other kinds of attacks. Olson’s analysis remains relevant. The 9/11 attacks and the ongoing terrorist threat have generated a lot of work on infrastructure vulnerability. This work shows the complexity of infrastructure analysis. For example, one study has revealed that in a simple telecommunications network of 11 nodes and 14 links “there are 2,048 potential node disruption scenarios . . . each of which can impact network performance (e.g. connectivity and flow) in different ways.”47 Disrupting different nodes will produce a greater or lesser effect on network connectivity, information flow, operating costs, and other aspects of network and infrastructure function. Modeling and mathematical analysis allows us to see which of these “node disruption scenarios” are critical (i.e. produce the greatest effect) for which kind of network. Such analyses do not reveal, however, to what degree similar infrastructure or the economy as a whole might substitute for the effects of these network disruptions. As Olson put it, these analyses do not take into account the possibilities of substitution

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that exist in a modern economy. Nor do they take into account the “luxurious” uses to which telecommunications, for example, are put. Clearly, not all cell phone calls or text messages are necessary. Any reduction from “luxury” to merely necessary use would be a loss but would it be a useful loss from the viewpoint of an attacking state or non-state actor? Finally, these network or infrastructure vulnerability analyses also do not tell us or—more to the point—would-be saboteurs which kind of network disruption (information flow, connectivity, increased operational cost) is most useful to generate. Such analysis, it seems, would require taking into account a variety of strategic and political considerations not calculable in the way that transmission line capacity is. Reviewing the American experience of sabotage and efforts to destroy economies in World War II leads to the conclusion that sabotage is not useful as a way to attack an economy or even a sector of an economy. The redundancy and “luxury” of modern economies make them resilient. This resilience in turn seems to require that anyone interested in attacking a modern economy must engage in attrition warfare. This is what occurred in World War II. Sabotage contributed minimally to the ultimate destruction of both the German and Japanese economies. Relative to the power of a modern economy, the power of saboteurs, even if backed by a nation-state, and even accepting the precision of sabotage attacks compared to other kinds of attacks, does not amount to much. In addition to lacking power, sabotage is also undermined by limitations of intelligence and analysis. The complexity and wealth of a modern economy, especially in the equally complex conditions of modern conflict, may simply defy the kind of analysis that airpower or saboteurs need to destroy an economy. For example, who can predict how much “luxury” the citizens of a modern economy may be willing or compelled to give up so that resources may be directed to more necessary endeavors? This is not simply a question of technical or economic analysis. It is a political issue and hence not amenable to rigorous analysis. Recently, in recognition of some of these difficulties, air-power theorists have resorted to complexity theory.48 This does not resolve the problem of attacking a modern economy, however. It merely dignifies with the latest scientific language problems that have been evident since at least World War II. Even though sabotage cannot cripple an economy, it might still be useful to a nation-state. Although sabotage will never have the power to overcome the strategic supply capability of a modern economy, it could be used as part of an attack, not to destroy a modern economy but to give the attackers a temporary advantage. Based on the experience of World War II, a nationstate might use sabotage to target a specific critical point, again, not to attack an economy as a whole but to support a specific military operation. This kind

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of attack would be the equivalent of sabotaging the bridge in the Balkans the destruction of which significantly crimped Rommel’s supply lines. Similarly, if the United States is engaged in a conflict with another nation-state in the future, we should expect that state to sabotage targets critical to the operations ongoing in that conflict rather than the American economy as a whole. These conflict-specific targets might include key transportation links such as rail lines or harbors critical to the deployment of US forces. Both the United States and its enemies can identify such targets in advance based on existing infrastructure both in the United States and abroad. If we imagine a conflict with China in the future, for example, then facilities in Hawaii and other places in the Pacific and on the west coast of the United States become more likely targets for sabotage. Other targets may appear unpredictably, however, only as the specific character of the conflict unfolds. Besides targets directly involved in mobilization, others might include the infrastructure that supports mobilization, particularly transportation, such as elements of the electric and telecommunications grids. But such targets, further removed from the targets made critical by ongoing military operations, are likely to be less effective given the strategic supply capacity of a modern economy. Furthermore, no matter what the targets of sabotage, sabotage is likely to be more effective during a crisis than during a longer conflict. The longer the time span of a conflict, the more the ability of a modern economy to shift resources, reallocate “luxury” surpluses, and invent new capacities, which will defeat any attempt at sabotage. While sabotage may be useful to nation-states, it is unlikely to be useful to non-state actors such as terrorists. Terrorists do not have and are unlikely to have either the power or the analytic capability necessary to sabotage an economy. In principle, non-state actors might be able to sabotage many or at least some of the same targets as states but they, unlike states, will not be able to generate the other pressures on an opponent’s economy that give sabotage its limited effectiveness. Non-state actors will not be able to impose blockades and embargoes or conduct conventional military operations, activities that create opportunities in which sabotage can contribute to tactical success and even victory. Terrorists do create crises, however, and sabotage might assist in heightening or “multiplying” the effects of the crisis. For example, if terrorists carried out an attack and then also sabotaged the 911 response system and other emergency communication infrastructures, that would make it more difficult to respond to the attack. (In 2003, the Slammer worm affected some 911 systems.49) In principle, something like this might occur but the experience of the 9/11 attacks indicates that there is enough redundancy in public and private sector telecommunications, especially if we consider the resources in a larger

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geographic region, that such sabotage efforts are not likely to reduce communications enough to produce a significant addition to the effect of the terrorist attack itself. Producing an attack on telecommunications that multiplied the effects of a terrorist attack would in all likelihood actually require the terrorists to devote their time and resources to sabotaging the communications, rather than carrying out the attack that the sabotage was meant to enhance. It is possible to destroy telecommunications, at least in a limited geographic area, to such a degree that response and recovery are adversely affected and for a time rendered almost impossible. This happened with hurricane Katrina. But Katrina was the equivalent of a WMD attack.50 If terrorists were able to operate at that level, the additional effect of communications sabotage would not be a grave concern. Rather than demonstrating the usefulness of sabotage for non-state actors, the attacks on 9/11 suggest the limits of what sabotage can do for them. The largest and most spectacular terrorist attacks ever carried out had only a limited effect on the US economy. Segments of the economy (air travel, tourism) were hurt and struggled to recover. The regional economy around New York City suffered more than elsewhere. But these are only small elements in the overall US economy, which, as Olson’s analysis highlights, had other resources to draw on. The economy actually grew 1.6 percent in the quarter following 9/11, as the economy was accelerating out of a mild recession, and continued to grow until December 2007. Not only did the economy grow, it reportedly became more efficient. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the attacks on 9/11 prompted businesses to consider what they needed to protect and the cost of protection drove them to eliminate what was not essential. Broad studies of the effects of terrorist attacks show that 9/11 was not an anomaly. Terrorist attacks produce limited economic consequences: the more complex and developed the economy, the more limited the consequences.51 It is true that the 9/11 attacks cost us vastly more than it cost the terrorists. Yet such is the disproportion in the resources available to a modern industrial economy compared to those available to terrorists that that disproportion in cost is not in itself critical. Of course, over the longer term, an attack like 9/11 can generate financial costs for the targeted country that can be unsustainable and quite damaging but these costs are not inevitable and depend on the strategies and decisions of the targeted country. For this reason, they cannot be attributed to the attacks themselves and cannot be used to make the argument that it is sensible for terrorists to think of sabotaging an industrial economy. It is helpful to terrorists to have a foolish enemy but it is not sensible for them to count on it. The analysis presented here, if they considered it, should reduce enthusiasm among our enemies for attacking the American economy as a way of

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attacking the United States. Perhaps they have not considered it, for militant Muslims seem particularly attracted to the idea that our economy and its international connections display vulnerability. Perhaps they share the view that Americans are simply economic creatures, in effect too attached to their luxuries to live without them. There are historical connections and contemporary similarities between militant Islam and the tyrannical “-isms” of the twentieth century that have at base, as we shall see in Chapter 5, contempt for bourgeois societies like America’s. Whatever the reason, evidence suggests that some militant Muslims take the view that they can indeed defeat the United States by attacking its economy.52 We may expect, then, that attacks on America’s economy, what we have defined as sabotage, will occur. If they do, they are likely to work against those who carry them out. The remark in the World War II bombing survey quoted earlier, that there were too many variables involved to say definitively what caused the collapse of the German economy or how much the bombing contributed to that collapse, states the problem faced by any contemporary adversary who attacks the American economy. Which of America’s many vulnerable targets should an enemy attack in order to bring down America’s economy? Terrorists need to answer this question because they are not rich enough to carry out a war of attrition. They need to think carefully about how they use the little they have. If they do not, they are unlikely to accomplish anything. Still, they may misguidedly decide, in effect, to flail wildly at their opponent in the hope of landing a knockout punch. In doing so, however, they will exhaust not us but themselves into defeat. Not even a lucky punch will rescue them, since modern economies do not have the equivalent of a glass jaw. This proves, at least with regard to attacking infrastructure, that while it may be better to be lucky than good, it is best of all to be rich. No non-state actor will prevail in a sabotage campaign against even a moderately well-provided modern state. Terrorists talk about attacking infrastructure; however, if we consider what they actually do, we see that such attacks are rare. We noted previously the study reported to Congress in 1989 that found no evidence of terrorist attacks against infrastructure. In 2007, a comprehensive survey with a very broad definition of critical infrastructure, found that between 1933 and 2004, only 188 major attacks and 765 minor attacks on critical infrastructure occurred. (A “major” attack was one “intended to have a large-scale [i.e. regional or national, not local] social, political, and/or economic impact).” Fifty percent of the minor attacks were on embassies and consulates, which some would certainly not identify as critical infrastructure. Even if we accept the broad definition of critical infrastructure used in this survey, terrorist attacks against such infrastructure represent only a tiny fraction of the total number of terrorist attacks that have occurred. (The Global Terrorism Database lists over

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98,000 terrorist attacks from 1970 to 2010.)53 Restricting the comparison to larger-scale attacks makes terrorist infrastructure attacks even rarer, especially if we remember that the survey counts as infrastructure attacks only those that it acknowledges were principally intended to kill people and not destroy infrastructure. We should also note that the survey found the number of infrastructure attacks has been declining for the past several decades (it does not include cyber infrastructure attacks).54 The same picture of terrorist disregard for infrastructure as a target emerges from a study focused on energy infrastructure. The study calculates that attacks on such infrastructure account for less than 2 percent of terrorist attacks since 1998. Only 6 percent of al Qaeda’s attacks have been on energy infrastructure. About two-thirds of energy infrastructure attacks have occurred in three countries (Colombia, Iraq, and Pakistan), suggesting that infrastructure attacks occur in large-scale insurgency or civil war rather than in terrorism campaigns. The authors of the report speculate that terrorists have not targeted energy infrastructure because they have limited incentives or motivations to do so. Killing people is a better way to intimidate than attacking infrastructure. In most cases, energy infrastructure has limited symbolic value, certainly compared with the Pentagon, for example. While individual pieces of energy infrastructure are vulnerable, to strike a serious blow against the energy system as a whole would take multiple attacks and careful targeting, high costs for limited benefits, as we have noted earlier. The careful targeting is beyond the intelligence gathering and analytical capability of most, if not all, terrorist groups. Finally, the authors speculate that supporters of terrorist groups may frown on infrastructure attacks because such attacks will impose costs on these supporters. Are contributors to al Qaeda whose wealth depends on energy infrastructure likely to approve of attacks on that infrastructure?55 This study of al Qaeda’s targeting of energy infrastructure is useful because it avoids a common problem in the discussion of both terrorism and sabotage. Such discussions tend to focus on the vulnerabilities of those attacked, without paying attention to the costs incurred by those trying to exploit these vulnerabilities. Indeed, in a discussion of the threat of cyber war, one expert seemed to imply that any discussion of the costs paid by attackers was irresponsible because it might distract us from worrying about the huge vulnerabilities in our infrastructure.56 But we can form no accurate sense of exactly how vulnerable we are unless we pay attention to these costs. If our opponents lack either the motivation or the capability to exploit a vulnerability, then as a practical matter it is not a vulnerability. The costs of acting affect the motivation to act. The more it costs to do something, the less likely someone is to do it, especially if it is uncertain that he or she will attain any benefit

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from the effort. Terrorists and other non-state actors would incur significant costs in trying to analyze and destroy infrastructure for a very uncertain outcome. Not only would such actors have to spend a large part of their limited resources in such efforts, they would pay high opportunity costs. All the time and effort spent on trying to attack infrastructure to no certain advantage could not be spent attacking targets easier to hit and whose destruction readily translates into advantage for the terrorists. Much better, then, to carry out simpler operations that are likely to succeed. Terrorists have long achieved results by attacks whose immediate effect may be judged by the pictures of the dead and wounded in the media. Why, then, conduct attacks against infrastructure that are so costly to conduct and so likely to fail? Judging from the available data, terrorists understand the costs and benefits of attacking infrastructure and act accordingly. One may ask, however, whether the information and communications revolutions have changed these calculations about sabotage and other infrastructure attacks. Some of our current enemies seem to think so, which may explain why they continue to discuss the possibility of succeeding at attacking the American economy. Postings on militant Muslim websites reportedly argue that with modern communications “jihadi sympathizers across the globe can focus on a single project,”57 easily combining their efforts to do the kind of research and analysis that sabotaging an economy would require, as well as working together to attack critical targets from a remote location. Echoing Matthews in 1941, militant websites also note the amount of valuable information on American infrastructure available in open sources, mostly online. In noting these advantages, would-be saboteurs are referring to the cost-cutting effects of information technology noted in Chapter 3. Do the lower costs made possible by information technology change any of the arguments we have made so far about sabotage?

Information technology and sabotage To get a sense of the cost-cutting effects information technology offers to saboteurs, we may contrast the old sabotage with the new. As noted earlier, Russia sought the aid of sabotage in a conflict with the United States. To that end, it buried explosives in isolated areas that its agents were to dig up and use to blow up hydroelectric facilities. To carry out these operations, the Russians had to recruit and train agents to assist them. They or their agents then had to bring the explosives into the United States (probably by diplomatic pouch but perhaps over the Canadian border, the least guarded route) or use their clandestine networks to purchase explosives and fabricate

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bombs in the United States; transport the explosives to the hide spots; cache them there; travel back to the caches and uncover them when the crisis or conflict occurred, hoping that in the intervening time no person or animal had discovered them and their protective coverings had not leaked; transport them to the target; set them up and then escape, doing all of this while avoiding detection, even when the United States and the Soviet Union might be at the point of war or at war and security would be heightened. All this effort and risk, we should note, to attack one target. But many more targets requiring similar effort would have to be hit to have any hope of affecting America’s electricity production and even then the ultimate effect on America’s capacity to wage war or even manage a crisis would be uncertain. The costs, in money and security risks, and uncertainties of such an operation are very high. Compare these costs with those associated with a cyber attack on infrastructure reported in 2010. A state apparently designed a worm, “Stuxnet,” that targeted the Iranian nuclear program. Stuxnet, “is believed to be the first known malware that targets the controls at industrial facilities such as power plants.”58 The worm also targeted control systems that run oil pipelines and electric power grids. The worm used four “zero day exploits,” previously unknown security vulnerabilities, in the Windows operating system to get inside the software that runs industrial controls. These controls operate in plants that are not connected to the internet but the worm apparently lodged on thumb drives that were connected to the internet and then used in the plants. The worm collected information but also had the ability to change the operations of machines using the software it had penetrated. For example, it could reportedly make centrifuges, important devices in producing nuclear weapons material, spin faster than they should, fast enough to break. The worm could also read the software it penetrated and vary its response according to what it found. Reports claimed the worm destroyed 1,000 centrifuges; however its effects on the Iranian nuclear program were limited.59 The worm was developed, dispatched, and put in place secretly, far from the intended target, without exposing any of those involved to discovery or their sponsor to possible retaliation. (This assumes that the worm was brought into the facilities it affected accidentally and not by an agent recruited for that task.) Similarly, much of the intelligence collection needed to develop and target the worm could have been done remotely and automatically using other software espionage tools. Unlike the bombs that the Russians intended to plant, the Stuxnet worm could be modified once in place to make it more effective,60 again remotely without any risk to those responsible. In fact, the worm was designed to check regularly with servers in Malaysia and Denmark for instructions or upgrades. These communications too were more secure and reliable than those with human agents engaged in sabotage. Also unlike

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a Russian sabotage bomb, the worm could infect more than one facility and more than one industry. In all these ways, the worm lowered the cost of the sabotage operation and increased its reliability compared to the old-fashioned sabotage planned by the Soviets. The Stuxnet worm did entail significant financial and other costs. One security expert summarized them as follows. Stuxnet was expensive to create. Estimates are that it took 8 to 10 people six months to write. There’s also the lab setup—surely any organization that goes to all this trouble would test the thing before releasing it—and the intelligence gathering to know exactly how to target it. Additionally, zero-day exploits are valuable. They’re hard to find, and they can only be used once. Whoever wrote Stuxnet was willing to spend a lot of money to ensure that whatever job it was intended to do would be done.61 But any kind of sabotage effort entails costs and even if the financial cost of preparing the worm was greater than the cost of the Russian effort to sabotage a hydroelectric plant in the United States, which is clearly not the case, the lower security costs or risks and broader applicability of the Stuxnet worm indicate a net “cost” advantage or superior return on investment for the worm. This conclusion seems particularly sound if we consider that if it were to have any chance of stopping or hindering the Iranian nuclear program, a traditional sabotage effort would have been of such a scale that the Iranians would almost certainly have discovered and stopped it. Attacking the Iranian nuclear program was not a question of taking out one heavy water plant. The worm had a better chance of succeeding in its attack, as it in fact did to some extent. Stuxnet was a sensible investment for any state that felt threatened by the Iranian nuclear program. At first glance, Stuxnet would appear to be a good investment for a terrorist organization as well. For example, it attacks control systems associated with energy infrastructure and, because the entire economy requires energy, appears therefore to be the magic bullet to damage an entire economy. We should note, however, that while the costs of developing and deploying the Stuxnet worm make sense for a state, they would not for a terrorist organization. For the sake of argument, assume what is almost certainly not the case now: that a terrorist organization (whether centralized and long established or decentralized and new) had the technical capability to develop Stuxnet. First, as noted in Chapter 3, it is unlikely that any terrorist organization has the disposable wealth required to develop the worm. If it did, the wealth spent on Stuxnet would represent a sizeable portion of all its resources. Spending the money on Stuxnet would call into question the ability of the organization to

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carry out other operations. But if the terrorist “good” to be bought with such an investment is a weapon to bring down America’s economy, why not make the investment? The reason not to make the investment is the uncertainty that it would work. Stuxnet was found, we must remember. In fact, it is detectable by standard virus scanning security software. In addition, it did not strike a knockout blow or apparently anything close to that. It delayed the Iranian nuclear program, which might be to the advantage of a nation state but not to a terrorist organization attacking the critical infrastructure of a state opponent. Any terrorist organization that tried to develop and deploy Stuxnet, therefore, would be betting the firm, so to speak, on a highly uncertain and risky endeavor. For example, Stuxnet used previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in an operating system. How could the terrorists know that someone else would not be discovered exploiting those vulnerabilities thus leading to them being fixed right before they were ready to launch their attack? Why make such a risky bet, when operational possibilities abound that are all but certain to produce a useful result? Furthermore, carrying out these traditional operations will produce this result without calling into question the ability of the organization to survive, something else the terrorists want. Similar reasoning applies if we think of a terrorist organization trying to buy something like Stuxnet. Purchasing the worm might be cheaper than developing it. Yet, even if the terrorists trusted the seller, they would still be using precious resources on a very speculative operation. If buying the worm, they would still face the possibility that the vulnerability it exploited would become known and fixed, destroying their attack. Again, why invest in something, even if it is the smaller investment needed to use what someone else has developed, if it may not work?

Conclusion Calculations about a device like Stuxnet are likely to differ between a state and a terrorist organization. If a state considers the Iranian nuclear program its primary threat, and it has no other way of dealing with that threat, then it would reasonably conclude that it makes sense to spend the resources to develop and use Stuxnet even though it might depend for its success on a series of accidents, such as various Iranian scientists and technicians forgetting security procedures and using a thumb drive on both the internet and the separate secure system inside the nuclear facility. It might take some time for this series of accidents to occur but states have a long time horizon and, again, against a primary threat that cannot be attacked otherwise, the decision to develop and deploy something like Stuxnet makes sense. More

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generally, the past history of sabotage suggests that it would be useful for a state to have some sabotage capabilities in place, whether computer based or more traditional, that it could use to exploit opportunities that arise as conflict unfolds. The United States should expect to experience this sabotage in the future as it has in the past. Terrorists differ from state actors. Terrorists may see themselves as part of a centuries-long struggle but their time horizon as an organization will be shorter than a state’s. They need to carry out successful operations regularly in order to raise funds and recruit personnel. As we noted in Chapter 1, John Brown’s fundraising improved after he conducted a raid into Missouri. Even the visionary terrorist bin Laden felt the urgency to carry out operations to raise money and build support.62 Terrorists need to produce results. They are seldom, if ever, in the position of having no alternative but to conduct an operation that is highly uncertain to produce these results. Information technology reduces costs for terrorist organizations, as it does for others, but does not seem to alter fundamental calculations about non-state attacks. A worm like Stuxnet opens the possibility of striking a serious blow against infrastructure because it targets control systems and could be used to make multiple attacks. If operating and control systems were homogeneous, allowing one worm to work against all systems, then information technology might remove the need for the careful targeting that is beyond the intelligence gathering and analytical capability of terrorist groups. But that homogeneity does not currently exist and multiple attacks or a broad attack on infrastructure would be alerting enough to lead to fixes that would limit the effectiveness of the attack. Again, the conclusion we reach is that a broad infrastructure attack would not work and that terrorists do not have the other capabilities (military forces to impose blockades, economic resources to impose sanctions, political clout to isolate an adversary) that might make more specific sabotage attacks useful. In addition to the technical issues we have just discussed, we must also recall two other inhibitions on terrorists who might be thinking about infrastructure attacks: the symbolic value of their attacks and concern about their supporters’ reactions. Attacking infrastructure lacks the punch of attacking such symbols as the Pentagon or Wall Street; it may also adversely affect people who support the terrorists. What if the worm attacked the less well protected systems of the terrorists’ supporters? This is the same issue that terrorists face in launching a biological attack. These reasons and the difficulty and uncertainty of infrastructure attacks probably explain why terrorists have attacked infrastructure so infrequently. Analysts have noted this for almost 30 years. As always, we must acknowledge that some terrorists might not accept the reasoning presented here. Some members of the al

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Qaeda movement continue to talk of economic sabotage. Perhaps the apparent vulnerabilities of America’s infrastructure are just too enticing to ignore. Certainly, in one sense, our infrastructure remains as vulnerable as Blayney Matthews claimed it was in 1941. Moreover, if anything, our time more than his is a time “of all-out . . . war” in which “there is, in the last analysis, no longer any such thing as a non-combatant population.” Sabotage remains, then, a possibility. But the size, resources, and redundancy of America’s economy and infrastructure make them more resilient and thus in another sense less vulnerable than anything Matthews imagined. This means that sabotage is a limited threat. In a crisis or short conflict, especially with another nation-state, it might pose a problem but over any appreciable period, and always as far as terrorists are concerned, redundancy and resilience will trump sabotage. Terrorists trying to sabotage the American economy are more likely to destroy themselves, by wasting resources, than their intended target. When we speak of infrastructure, we most commonly refer to the physical systems and facilities upon which our national life depends. America’s national life has an ideational infrastructure as well, however. This infrastructure consists of political ideas and practices that are more essential to our well-being than the physical systems we have just discussed. This ideational infrastructure has been the target of attack just as our physical infrastructure has. In Chapter 5 we consider threats to this most critical infrastructure

Notes 1 Blayney F. Matthews, The Specter of Sabotage (Los Angeles, CA: Lymanhouse Publishers, 1941), p. 49 and passim. 2 Milton Bagby, “The Great Railroad Raid,” American History 35, 3(August 2000): 36–45. 3 William A. Tidwell, April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1995), pp. 77–106. 4 Chad Millman, The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and Epic Hunt for Justice (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006); Robert Koenig, The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Mission to Wage The Great War in America (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006); Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914–1917 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1989). 5 Koenig, The Fourth Horseman, p. 179. 6 Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom, pp. 257–312; Reinhard R. Doerries, Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations, 1908–1917, trans. Christa D. Shannon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 143, 146

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7 Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, Sabotage! The Secret War against America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942), pp. 11, 20–1, 49–51, 111–19. 8 Will Irwin and Thomas M. Johnson, What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1943), p. 168. 9 Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage! The Secret War against America, p. 6. 10 Irwin and Johnson, What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs , pp. 168–71. 11 Irwin and Johnson, What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs, p. 177. 12 John I. Howe, “Review of Specter of Sabotage,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 33, 1(May–June 1942): 105–6; Lee Pressman, D. William Leider, and Harold I. Cammer, “Sabotage and National Defense,” Harvard Law Review 54, 4(February 1941): 633. 13 Irwin and Johnson, What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs, pp. 171–7. 14 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The FBI: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 112; Athan G. Theoharis, The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), pp. 50–5 15 Hans L. Trefousse, “Failure of German Intelligence in the United States, 1935–1945,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42, 1(June 1955): 87. 16 M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944 (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 381– 6. 17 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 363–4; “Russian Threat Perceptions and Plans for Sabotage against the United States,” Hearing before the Military Research and Development Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 106th Congress, First Session, October 26, 1999 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000), pp. 8, 58; “Russian Threats to United States Security in the Post-Cold War Era,” Hearing before the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, 106th Congress, Second Session, January 24, 2000, Serial No. 106–158 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000), pp. 3–4, 40. 18 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” Hearings before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, 101st Congress, First Session (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), pp. 13, 97; 45–6, 76. 19 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” pp. 57–8, 245–8, 250, 251 and the data tables, pp. 252–7. 20 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” p. 95. 21 The Public Report of the Vice President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), p. 6; America’s

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Hidden Vulnerabilities: Crisis Management in a Society of Networks, ed. Richard H. Wilcox and Patrick J. Garrity (Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1984), p. 6. 22 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” pp. 100, 22, 48, 26, 27, 33, 44–6, 192. 23 Computers at Risk: Safe Computing in the Information Age (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1991), p. 2. 24 Star Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, The Network Nation (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978); Computers at Risk, p. 8; Myriam Dunn Cavelty, “Like a Phoenix from the Ashes: The Reinvention of Critical Infrastructure Protection as Distributed Security,” in Securing’ the Homeland’: Critical Infrastructure, Risk and (In)Security, ed. Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Kristian Soby Kristenson (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 40–62; President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, “Critical Foundations: Protecting America’s Infrastructures,” October 1997. 25 Cavelty, “Like a Phoenix from the Ashes,” pp. 57–8. 26 Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It (New York: ECCO, 2010), pp. 11–21, 47–62; Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, 2010 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2010), p. 7; Dorothy E. Denning, “Cyber Conflict as an Emergent Social Phenomenon,” in Corporate Hacking and Technology-Driven Crime: Social Dynamics and Implications, ed. Thomas J. Holt and Bernadette H. Schell (Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2011), pp. 170–86. 27 Heather Timmons, “Fears Grow with Harm to Undersea Cables,” New York Times, February 5, 2008, p. C5; “Will Internet Sabotage Hit Home?” PC Magazine 27, 7(May 2008). 28 Robert T. Finney, History of the Air Corps Tactical School, 1920–1940 (1955; no place: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998), pp. 65-6; David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 161, 162, 170–1. 29 Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), p. 35, cf. pp. 240–1; Kenneth Hewitt, “Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73, 2(June 1983): 272; United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945), pp. 1, 3, 4, 9, 12, 15; Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Penguin Group, 2006), pp. 650–1. 30 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report, pp. 4, 17. 31 Jurgen Brauer and Hubert Van Tuyll, Castles, Battles and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 208, 214; Werrell, Blankets of Fire, pp. 34, 234–5. 32 Werrell, Blankets of Fire, pp. 33–4, 157; Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, p. 412; United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report, pp. 2, 14, 17; Brauer and Van Tuyll, Castles, Battles and Bombs, pp. 208, 230.

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33 America’s Hidden Vulnerabilities, p. 12. 34 America’s Hidden Vulnerabilities, p. 11. 35 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” p. 95. 36 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” p. 76. 37 “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism,” pp. 9, 98, 107–8; cf. p. 25. Also, America’s Hidden Vulnerabilities, pp. 10, 12. 38 Werrell, Blankets of Fire, p. 35; Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 423, 650–1. 39 Fred Charles Iklé, The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction (Norman, NC: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), pp. 15, 27–33, 102, 157, 162n7, 186, 229; United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report, pp. 4, 16. 40 Hewitt, “Place Annihilation,” p. 272. 41 Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 625–55. 42 Foot, SOE in France, p. 386; M. R. D. Foot, Resistance: European Resistance to Nazism, 1940–1945 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1977), pp. 313–14. 43 Foot, SOE in France, p. 382. 44 Foot, SOE in France, p. 381; Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 407. 45 Mancur Olson, “The Economics of Target Selection for the Combined Bomber Offensive,” Royal United Service Institution Journal 107(November 1962): 310. 46 Olson, “The Economics of Target Selection for the Combined Bomber Offensive,” pp. 313, 314. 47 Timothy C. Matisziw, Alan T. Murray, and Tony H. Grubisec, “Exploring the Vulnerability of Network Infrastructure to Disruption,” The Annals of Regional Science 43(2009): 314; Gerald Brown, Matthew Carlyle, Javier Salmerón, and Kevin Wood, “Defending Critical Infrastructure,” Interfaces 36, 6(November/December 2006): 530–44; Tony H. Grubisec and Alan T. Murray, “Vital Nodes, Interconnected Infrastructures, and the Geographies of Network Survivability,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96, 1(2006): 64–83. 48 Steven M. Rinaldi, Major, USAF, Beyond the Industrial Web: Economic Synergies and Targeting Methodologies (Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 1995). 49 I am indebted to Dorothy Denning for pointing this out. 50 Robert Miller, “Hurricane Katrina: Communications & Infrastructure Impacts,” in Threats at Our Threshold: Homeland Defense and Homeland Security in the New Century, ed. Burt B. Tussing, A Compilation of the Proceedings of the First Annual Homeland Defense and Homeland Security Conference, U.S. Army War College (Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, 2006), pp. 191–204. 51 Vincent Richman, Michael R. Santos, and John T. Barkoulas, “Short and Long Term Effects of the 9-11 Event,” International Journal of Theoretical and Applied

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Finance 8(2005): 947–58; Jon E. Hilsenrath and Liam Pleven, “Business as Usual: Economic Fears after 9/11 Proved Mostly Unfounded; Firms Didn’t Pile on Guards and Inventories, nor Did Delays Clog U.S. Ports; But Oil Has a ‘Terror Premium,’” Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2006, p. A1; Mohamad M. Al-Ississ, “The Cross-Border Financial Impact of Violence,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School, Harvard University, 2009; Todd Sandler and Walter Enders, “Economic Consequences of Terrorism in Developed and Developing Countries: An Overview,” in Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness, ed. Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 17–37. 52 Stephen Ulph, “Internet Mujahideen Research on U.S. Economic Targets,” Terrorism Focus 3, 2(January 18, 2006); Mark E. Stout, Jessica M. Huckabey, John R. Schindler, with Jim Lacey, The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of Al Qaida and Associated Movements (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), pp. 97–8; 143–4; Gary Ackerman et al., Assessing Terrorist Motives for Attacking Critical Infrastructure (Monterey, CA: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, 2007), pp. 79–82. 53 http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/about/. 54 Ackerman et al., Assessing Terrorist Motives for Attacking Critical Infrastructure, pp. 13, xiii, 58, 94, 99. 55 Peter Toft, Arash Duero, and Arunas Bieliauskas, “Terrorist Targeting and Energy Security,” Energy Policy 38(2010): 4412, 4416, 4417, 4419. 56 Marc Rotenberg, Bruce Schneier, Mike McConnel, and Jonathan Zittrain, “The Cyber War Threat Has Been Grossly Exaggerated,” June 8, 2010, Transcript, p. 13, http://intelligencesquaredus.org/wp-content/uploads/ Cyber-War-060810.pdf. 57 Ulph, “Internet Mujahideen Research on U.S. Economic Targets.” 58 Elinor Mills, “Stuxnet: Fact vs. Theory,” October 5, 2010, http://news.cnet. com/8301-27080_3-20018530-245.html 59 David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Christina Walrond, “Stuxnet Malware and Natanz: Update of ISIS December 22, 2010 Report,” Institute for Science and International Security, February 15, 2011, http://www.isis-online.org/ isis-reports/detail/stuxnet-malware-and-natanz-update-of-isis-december-222010-reportsupa-href1/. 60 Bruce Schneier, “Schneier on Security. A Blog Covering Security and Security Technology,” October 7, 2010, Stuxnet, http://www.schneier.com/blog/ archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html. 61 Schneier, “Schneier on Security.” 62 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, n.d.), p. 251.

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5

Subversion After disappearing for about 50 years, the issue of subversion has reappeared in discussions of America’s security.1 The concern this time is not with totalitarian political ideologies (Nazism and Communism) but with religious doctrines. Islamic organizations exist whose purpose we are told is not only to spread Islam as a faith but also to subvert liberal democracy by imposing Islamic law, thus abolishing the separation of church and state. Similarly, concern has arisen about Christian groups that declare the United States a Christian nation and appear to mean that Christianity ought, in some sense, to be the established religion of the United States.2 Although operating openly, these Christian and Islamic groups are also thought to be secretly infiltrating American institutions. They are not violent but knowingly or not aid those who are. In 2010, for example, members of a Christian militia group, known as the Hutaree, part of a larger Christian Patriot movement, were arrested and charged with sedition for plotting to instigate a violent uprising by killing police. According to the indictment, the Christian militia members “did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree with each other . . . to levy war against the United States, to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States, and to prevent, hinder, and delay by force execution of any United States law.”3 Despite such Christian efforts, the greatest concern over subversion centers on certain Islamic organizations. Islam is less familiar to Americans than Christianity but these groups cause concern not only because they are foreign but also because they receive support from wealthy Muslims around the world, as well as, reportedly, some Islamic governments.4 Organizations dedicated to seeing America become or, as they see it, become again a Christian nation having no such advantages appear less threatening. The current consensus holds that subversion was taken too seriously decades ago but is not taken seriously enough now.5 To assess these

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judgments and to form some sense of the threat of subversion to our security, we need to consider subversion then and now in light of the larger American experience with subversion. Indeed, the current lack of concern with subversion results in large part from the belief that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against communist subversion discredited the notion of subversion. We begin by considering what subversion is.

What is subversion? Most generally, subversion means attempting to undermine or change a political regime. Opposing a government is not necessarily subversion. A government is a particular manifestation of authority and power in a regime. A regime is the set of written and unwritten principles that determine who holds power and authority. A particular presidential administration in the United States is a government. It is established by the procedures of a democratic regime, including an election. Elections in turn derive from the principle of the regime that power and authority be determined by majority rule. The government of Joseph Stalin was also a particular manifestation of authority and power, established by the procedures of a totalitarian regime. In the case of totalitarian regimes it may be difficult to say precisely what those procedures are but factional disputes in the ruling party are important, aided by a cult of personality and maybe even some respect for the hereditary principle. Factional disputes in the ruling party in turn reflect the underlying principle of the regime, rule by a vanguard party, that is, a party by definition on the leading edge or right side of history. This principle in turn requires that the party determines who among its members hold power and authority. Opposition to a presidential administration in the United States is not subversion. It is democratic politics. Participating in factional disputes in a totalitarian regime to determine the next ruler, while it might get one killed, would not be subversion either. It is totalitarian politics. Attempting to establish a totalitarian regime in the United States, on the other hand, would be subversion, as was attempting to establish a democratic regime in the Soviet Union. Defining subversion as an effort to change a regime raises immediate questions. Do not the people of the United States have a right to choose the kind of regime they live under? Does not the US constitution allow amendment? Even at the height of the mid-twentieth century’s concern with subversion, President Truman asserted that the American people had the right to choose any form of government they preferred, as long as they did it constitutionally.6 If this is true, how is it even possible to speak of subverting a democracy? To answer these questions and understand subversion we

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must refer to the basic principle of American democracy contained in the Declaration of Independence, which we discussed in Chapter 1 is a document that Americans of all political views have appealed to again and again in our history. According to the Declaration of Independence, political reasoning begins with the self-evident truth of human equality.7 Humans are equal because neither the laws of nature nor the decrees of nature’s God, to use the Declaration’s language, establish the right of any human to rule over another human. The fact that humans are equal in this sense means that rule over others is just only if those who are ruled consent to being ruled. If the people may give their consent, however, they may also withdraw it when they feel that the government no longer serves the legitimate purpose of government (securing the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”). The people, then, have a right to rebel and “institute new Government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” The Declaration seems to confirm Truman’s opinion that the people can choose any principles and organization of government that they think will make them happy and safe. Yet, this would be a paradoxical conclusion to reach. The most fundamental principle of the Declaration is equality and it is said to be self-evidently true. Could the people choose inequality as a government principle? They might have the power to do so but it could not be right to do so, since they would be choosing a principle that would be, according to the Declaration, self-evidently false or wrong. To see this problem more clearly, consider a practical application. According to the argument of the Declaration, could the people choose through their ballots a government in which they would no longer have the right to vote? If so, this would amount to saying that the people have the right to give up their rights or they may vote not to be able to vote. The paradox in this last statement points to a contradiction or at least an inconsistency in the claim that Americans have a right to establish any form of government they care to. Consenting to a government is a right only because humans are equal in having no rulers or superiors sanctioned by nature or revelation. Consenting to establish superiors who would henceforth rule without the consent of the governed negates the equality of those giving their consent and hence negates their right to consent. Americans do not have a right to vote for dictatorship, in other words, for this would amount to repudiating equality and consent, which is what legitimates or sanctions voting or makes it a right in the first place. If one could legitimately vote not to have the right to vote, then there would be no need to cast that vote. In other words, it could be said that no vote can change the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. If voting has any

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legitimacy, then, it cannot be used legitimately as a means to put an end to voting or to establish a dictatorship. The first conclusion that is arrived at by considering subversion in light of the Declaration is that subversion is a possibility in a regime based on the consent of the governed. Any effort to change a regime based on consent into one that is not based on consent is subversion. At the same time, any effort to change a regime not based on consent into one that is based on consent is not subversion but a legitimate exercise of the right to rebel. The distinction we are drawing here is the principled connection between opposition to both subversion and terrorism. One man’s subversive, like another man’s terrorist, is not another man’s freedom fighter. If one works to undermine a regime based on consent, one is a subversive or a terrorist. Conversely, if one works to undermine a regime not based on consent one is not a subversive or a terrorist but a freedom fighter. The argument of the Declaration also helps us understand why we associate force, concealment, and foreignness with subversion. Consent, if it is truly consent, is of course not forced. Therefore, as the Declaration establishes that consent is the only legitimate basis for government, it also establishes that force can have no place in determining who should rule. The requirement for consent also explains why we often associate subversion with foreign influence. Foreigners, by definition, have not joined the political community created by consent. Thus, there is reason to assume that in interfering in our politics foreigners are serving only their own interests and not the interests of the political community established by consent to which they do not belong. Finally, the requirement for consent explains why legitimate political action should be open and not concealed or covert. Like any other decision, to be rational, consenting to be ruled or casting a vote must be informed or as informed as is humanly possible. At a minimum, deliberate concealment of facts and intentions should not be allowed. Secrecy in democratic politics distorts or twists those politics and is therefore a kind of violence to the process of consent and as such is rightly suspect. In ruling that it was not unconstitutional to require the Communist Party to register with the federal government, the Supreme Court ruled that “secrecy of associations and organizations, even among groups concerned exclusively with political processes, may under some circumstances constitute a danger which legislatures do not lack constitutional power to curb.”8 The need for openness in a regime based on consent was a principal reason that Thomas Jefferson wished to separate church and state. Religious leaders often claim secret knowledge, knowledge not open to all but which came to them as a special revelation.9 Such knowledge, if part of political life, would limit if not annul the power of consent. A regime based on equality and consent requires that politically

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relevant knowledge be equally available to all. This principle is the common basis for American objections to secret societies, whether the Masons in the nineteenth century or the communists in the twentieth century. We may conclude, then, that according to the Declaration subversion is an effort to overthrow a regime based on consent. Even if peaceful, wholly domestic and overt, an effort to subvert a regime based on consent is subversion because consent is the only basis for legitimate government. The principle that even peaceful and overt domestic support for a nondemocratic regime is subversion need not, however, be acted upon immediately or at any time. Because freedom of speech and the press and the right to assemble and petition the government are essential to the exercise of consent, it is prudent to limit the government’s interference with these rights, lest a government suppress speech that is merely opposed to it rather than the regime. It is better to risk the occasional act of even violent sedition than to risk suppressing free speech. Hence, the judge who freed the Hutaree militia members on bond wrote in her ruling, the United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators. But the defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech is a right that deserves First Amendment protection. In keeping with the prudent desire to grant as much freedom to political speech as possible, First Amendment protection is now interpreted in such a way that no advocacy of sedition is understood to violate the First Amendment unless it express advocacy of immediate action likely to violate law.10 In granting this freedom even to speech that advocates an end to a regime based on consent, it would be prudent, however, to be suspicious of speech associated with concealed political activity, foreign influence, or violence. In fact, in the American experience, suspicion has fallen on the concealed and the foreign, especially when associated with violence. We will see this and gain the necessary perspective to judge the current concern with religious subversion by considering this experience.

The American experience of subversion Like terrorism, subversion or at least concern about it is coeval with the American regime. Almost as soon as the US government began to operate, the Federalists began to worry that Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans were subverting the government of the United States by trying to turn the

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American republic into a godless egalitarian democracy on the model of revolutionary France. According to the Federalists, the Republicans were “an unprecedented combination to establish new principles of social action on the subversion of religion, morality, law and government.” For their part, the Republicans denounced the Federalists as hidden monarchists. Proof to the Federalists of Republican subversion was that Republicans were organizing Democratic–Republican societies. Federalists believed that these organizations were unnecessary for normal politics because the public voice was expressed in elections. Self-created societies, therefore, had no legitimacy and were merely the tools of designing men. The Republicans were also meeting after dark and not allowing everyone to know about what went on in these nocturnal meetings, sure signs that they were conspiring against the public good. While truly fearful of the Republicans and their ideas, the Federalists saw even greater danger from them because of their association with something foreign, the growing power of France.11 In response to the foreign-powered subversion they saw operating in the United States, the Federalists, notoriously, passed alien and sedition laws (1798). Among other things, the laws made it harder for aliens to become citizens, allowed the president to order the deportation of aliens deemed dangerous and citizens of other countries resident in the United States, whose home countries were at war with the United States. These laws were intended to remove French influence from the country. Most significantly, the Sedition Act made it illegal to “combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States,” or write, print, utter, or publish statements against the government of the United States or its officials or that encouraged opposition to the law.12 This law was intended to limit Republican influence in the country. The Alien and Sedition Acts were not a political success. Jefferson won the election of 1800. The Federalists accepted the result, in some cases grudgingly and almost despairingly. Having won, Jefferson could afford to be conciliatory, as he was in his Inaugural Address. “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. . . . We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”13 His administration lived up to this claim, at least to the extent that it did not engage in vengeful purges of Federalists. The peaceful transfer of political power by election established the idea that opposition could be loyal and those removed from office safe in their persons and property. In time, as the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon passed, the country entered the Era of Good Feelings, so named by a contemporary who noted that partisanship seemed to have disappeared. We know, of course, that partisanship did not disappear permanently. Jefferson’s Inaugural explains why. Noting the sharp contest through which

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the nation had passed, Jefferson proclaimed that since the voice of the nation had spoken, “according to the rules of the Constitution,” all would now follow the law and work for the common good. All too, he said, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.14 This was a clear message to the Federalists, now a minority, that they would not be molested by Jefferson’s administration, as they were not. But, despite the wish for unity, this passage in Jefferson’s Inaugural also explains why it will not occur and why despite being unmolested, an opposition will form against the government and partisanship remain. The majority is to rule, as the equality of men requires, but it is not to be mere majority rule. To be rightful, Jefferson said, majority rule must be reasonable. But what is reasonable? Fundamentally, “reasonable” means respect for equal rights through laws applied equally to all citizens as the political expression of natural human equality. Beyond this, with regard to the measures that a government undertakes, the sense of the term “reasonable” is like the doctrine of the reasonable man in law. In assessing the behavior of a defendant, for example, we ask how a reasonable person would have acted in the situation the defendant found himself in. “Reasonable” in this sense implies judgment of appropriate action in ambiguous circumstances. But such judgments easily become controversial and may touch on issues of fundamental importance, not to mention issues of immediate self-interest. This is particularly the case as such judgments or actions accumulate. If a government favors a monarchy in its foreign policy, does that mean that it has abandoned republican government? Perhaps not, but what if it then establishes a debt funding system modeled on the monarchy’s that arguably favors one segment of the citizenry over another? Fear that a change in the regime was afoot might appear reasonable to some under these circumstances, especially when the government imposed an excise tax, the operation of which, they recalled, even a distinguished British jurist and loyal subject of the king considered “hardly compatible with the temper of a free nation.”15 When would a reasonable man conclude that a series of such measures indicated a threat to democratic government? To use the language from Jefferson’s First Inaugural, when do differences of opinion about policies reveal a fundamental difference of principle? When do policy decisions become “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” as the Declaration of Independence put it, designed to subvert liberty? Had not many Americans

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concluded that British measures to repair finances following the French and Indian War (e.g. the Stamp Act), wholly reasonable from the viewpoint of the British government, evinced a plan to subvert the liberties of the colonists? Many Republicans, whose views we have been echoing here, thought it reasonable to conclude that the Federalists were exercising the power of their electoral majority in an unreasonable and subversive way, culminating in the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws. In his Inaugural, Jefferson appealed to the principle of reason as the basis for the exercise of political power and as a way to unite all citizens as if in one heart and mind. Nothing else in human experience can serve that purpose; the passions are too changeable. But reason, reasonable differences over judgments of ambiguous circumstances, is also the basis for all considered division among citizens, for all serious partisanship, and for all claims that enemies are subverting the regime of equality. Majority rule must be reasonable rule and what is reasonable is a judgment, and thus inherently uncertain and debatable. Partisanship and eventually charges of subversion are a part of majority rule. American life in the first decades of the nineteenth century realized the potential for partisanship and fears of subversion hinted at in Jefferson’s Inaugural. Freemasons were infiltrating the government, Catholics undermining public education and civic life, while the Mormons conspired for economic and political advantage, or so some concerned Americans contended.16 Although they might claim to be only philanthropic or religious movements, why did these sappers of the American Republic hide their activities in the secrecy of the lodge, temple, or confessional? Nor were their small numbers any cause for cheer. Their numbers were growing and in any case, they were thought to be fanatically devoted to their cause, under the sway of ruthless and immoral leaders, and as individuals and movements thus possessed of powers beyond what their small numbers might suggest. The threat they posed went beyond politics. It was alleged that Masons, Catholics and Mormons engaged in deviant behavior, including polygamy and incest; that convents were little better than brothels for the convenience of priests; that Masons engaged in bizarre practices during their secret rites. Above all, Masonry, Mormonism, and Catholicism represented separate systems of loyalty and attachment that alienated their adherents from America and represented a threat to the Republic. Historians have associated various economic interests with the attacks on Masons, Mormons, and Catholics. But none of these appears to be a satisfactory explanation for the agitation about subversion in antebellum America.17 The agitation became part of the emerging party system but this was more effect than cause. The more plausible cause was the circumstances of antebellum America. Americans enjoyed unprecedented freedom. A rapidly

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expanding and increasingly market-based economy disturbed social relationships, making one’s status something precarious and contingent, rather than assumed and enjoyed. The arrival of immigrants and the appearance of new religions created concern among Americans for both their own fate and the future of the republic. Freed from the old-world tyrannies of aristocratic and priestly rule, Americans would achieve wonders, they thought. But could America’s freedom also allow some to undermine this freedom or plant in its democratic soil religious and political doctrines incompatible with democracy and republicanism? In the midst of America’s unprecedented diversity and pluralism, what would ensure unity and common purpose? “In an otherwise rootless and shifting environment,”18 it was not surprising that some chose to anchor their lives in particular religions or associations. For some Americans, membership in the Masons, conversion to Mormonism, or the practice of Catholicism conferred a sense of personal identity and direction. Other Americans established an identity and common purpose in part by identifying and attacking what they thought was not American, including Masons, Mormons, and Catholics. But how was one to decide what was American and what was not? Differences of opinion—over dietary laws, when to baptize, or how much to raise tariffs—were not decisive, since every difference of opinion was not a difference of principle. How then to judge the threat of subversion? This is the problem that Jefferson’s Inaugural points to. Ultimately, Masonry, Mormonism, and Catholicism fell under suspicion because they were thought to be, we might say, not just religions but ways of life that dominated the lives of their adherents, demanded total allegiance, and kept many of their activities secluded if not secret. (Similar claims are made about Islam today, an issue we return to later in this chapter.) In the antebellum years, these characteristics—apparent split and consuming loyalties and secretiveness—became the markers of subversion. In effect, they served as cognitive shortcuts to identify subversion. In a large, diverse republic, whose citizens could not know all their fellow citizens, such shortcuts were necessary. This antebellum concern with subversion was once deemed by an eminent historian an example of the paranoid style in American politics. But in recognition perhaps of the folk wisdom that being paranoid does not mean no one is following you, the historian acknowledged some basis for the “paranoia.”19 Some Masons were implicated in the murder of a man who was preparing to publish the organization’s secrets, and in the ensuing cover-up, lending credence to claims that Masonry was a law unto itself.20 Mormons did practice polygamy. Some Catholic clerics did argue that Catholics should not integrate into Protestant America. These facts did not justify the lurid fantasies of subversion circulating in antebellum America or by themselves justify charges of

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disloyalty but they were at least matters of concern. Beyond the violations of law in the murder case, the practice of Masonry, Mormonism, and Catholicism raised questions of republican principle and practice over which Americans divided, challenging the unity they sought and Jefferson had encouraged. Partisanship over antebellum fears of subversion was sharp but never called into question the existence of the American regime. In American history, only one dispute has done that, the dispute over slavery. From the constitutional convention, it was clear that addressing the issue of slavery jeopardized the union. But those opposed to slavery came to believe that not addressing the “peculiar institution” also jeopardized it. Ignoring slavery threatened not just the actual union of states as it existed but, more important, its character as a free government. 21 The conflict over slavery that began to develop about a decade after Jefferson left office became a conflict of principle because slavery contradicted Jefferson’s sacred principle. The slaves were a minority whose rights were not respected by the majority. Emblematic of the question of principle was the eventual rejection of the Declaration of Independence and the idea of a politics based on equality by slavery’s advocates. 22 If the slave regime had been allowed to stand, it would have subverted the principles of the American regime as originally established. Slavery was part of the United States in its origins but not in its founding principle. In the speech Abraham Lincoln delivered after his selection as the Illinois Republican candidate for the Senate in 1858, the House Divided Speech, he articulated not just principled opposition to slavery but the judgment that the slave power was engaged in a subversive conspiracy. Its purpose was to change the existing regime of liberty (in which slavery was an exception) into one of slavery (in which liberty was an accident). Lincoln reviewed what had occurred—votes in Congress, public statements, a Supreme Court decision—and argued that they were “evidences of design, and concert of action” among certain individuals, including a president and a Supreme Court justice, to make inevitable the existence of slavery not just in the territories but in free states as well. The conspiracy would sweep away any constitutional or legal barrier to the spread of slavery throughout the union. Lincoln acknowledged that no one could know that the conspiracy existed. He asked, however, what someone should conclude if they saw timbers for a house perfectly fitted to each other, although hewn at different times. Must they not conclude that the timbers were cut as the result of a plan?23 Would that not be the only reasonable judgment to reach? It was reasonable, then, in Lincoln’s judgment, to declare that a secret conspiracy threatened the union. In the “House Divided Speech,” Lincoln stated that he foresaw the nation reaching a crisis, as the conspirators and their allies pressed forward with

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their plan and agitation over slavery increased. In response, Lincoln put himself forth as a candidate in 1858 and again, for president, in 1860. His remedy for the subversion he saw was constitutional, the election of those opposed to slavery. As he made clear in his First Inaugural Address, his conduct as president would also be guided by his constitutional authority. He would not interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. Explaining in detail what Jefferson had stated as principle, Lincoln made clear that the slave-holding minority had constitutional rights that the majority was bound to respect. In retrospect, whatever we may think of honoring the rights of a minority that did not honor the rights of its own minority, we must conclude that Lincoln’s constitutional course of action was prudent. Both the subversive conspiracy he divined in 1858 and the open rebellion he faced in 1860 had significant support. In this uncertain situation and in the face of the South’s tendency for high-handed and violent action, Lincoln’s stated devotion to the rule of law provided the effective contrast most suited to gain public support. Given Lincoln’s restraint and commitment to constitutional means, it is worth noting that he has been accused of subverting the regime.24 Lincoln’s ambition pushed him forward to fight slavery, this argument holds, and not even the possible dissolution of the union could hold him back. Furthermore, to serve his ambition, Lincoln was willing to increase the power of the federal government beyond anything previously known, in fact, to such an extent that it transformed the character of the regime. There is some truth to this charge, not as concerns Lincoln’s ambition but with regard to the effects of the Civil War on the federal government. Constitutional amendment and the exercise of power by Washington during the war and after to deal with its consequences changed the character of the regime by changing the balance of power between the state and federal governments. But even if Lincoln had intended to increase the power of the federal government at the expense of the states, would this really have amounted to subversion of the regime? Does any grant of increased power to the federal government mean that a regime based on the consent of the governed has disappeared? Various arrangements of power between the central and state governments are compatible with the principles of the American regime, as long as they do not undermine government by consent. An increase in the power of the federal government to end slavery is not only compatible with a regime based on consent but may be necessary to preserve it. In any event, the claim that Lincoln destroyed the regime in his effort to save it from the slave power would be more compelling if Lincoln had suspended elections rather than or in addition to habeas corpus in a limited way. As a practical matter, a regime of consent is not subverted as long as the electoral process and what it requires (most immediately, freedom of speech and assembly) is not.

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While the Civil War settled the issue of union it did not settle disputes over the principle of equality entirely or forever. The subversive idea that one race was superior to another and that that race had a right to rule others continued to operate in American politics for many years after the Civil War. For instance, the text book that featured in the trial of John Scopes (1925) for teaching evolution in a Tennessee high school, A Civic Biology, asserted that there were distinct races among humans and that “the highest type of all [were] the caucasians (sic), represented by the civilized White inhabitants of Europe and America.”25 In a particularly ironic example of the endurance of racism, in the 1940s and early 1950s, a prominent member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, John Rankin, was a virulent racist and anti-Semite, “who announced more than once that slavery had been a blessing for American blacks.”26 Another and more well-known instance of racial politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which flourished after the Civil War; again in the 1920s, when its targets included Catholics, foreigners, and labor organizers, all of whom it believed were socialists or communists; and a third time in the 1960s to oppose integration. The Klan, the so-called Invisible Empire, was a secret organization that, when public opinion allowed, acted openly, although in disguise. It threatened, tortured, and killed opponents, sometimes with the collusion of local police, some of whom were Klansmen. It helped elect a variety of office holders, including a US senator, and defeat others, including another US senator, who had opposed it. Not all of those it helped elect were known as Klansmen. Hugo Black, who later became a justice on the US Supreme Court, kept his Klan ties hidden when he ran for the US Senate in 1926. The Klan operated in both the Democratic and Republican parties and was a major presence and issue at the 1924 Democratic national convention. At the height of its popularity in the 1920s, the Klan was active throughout the United States and was acknowledged in many places as an open political force. In 1925, 40,000 Klansmen marched in Washington, DC, unmasked at the insistence of the district government. The Klan had the tacit or explicit support of non-Klan politicians, while the silence of others allowed its influence to build.27 In effect, the Klan represented the armed wing of the still living slave or race regime that the union defeated in the Civil War. Although its principles were subversive of the larger regime, and its practice violent and often secretive, during Reconstruction and in later years the Klan produced most of its ill effects through simple terrorism and intimidation, as we discussed in Chapter 1, rather than through infiltration of political and social organizations and the media, although that did occur. During Reconstruction when the Klan first appeared, the union leagues were among the organizations in the South that worked to thwart it and establish the civil rights of the freedmen. Originating in the North during the war

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to support the union cause, chapters of the league developed quickly in the South following the confederate defeat. Some of the chapters were integrated; most were not. Displaying the Bible and the Declaration of Independence at their meetings, league members discussed politics and planned how to educate the freedmen in the principles of the Declaration and the practices of democracy. The Black chapters were in addition mutual aid and self-help societies. In effect auxiliaries of the Republican Party in the South, the leagues also had clandestine paramilitary components.28 One historian of the Klan and the leagues reports that both were “perceived by their enemies as a potentially subversive force that operated outside the accepted boundaries of political contest.”29 But the leagues were devoted to ensuring the rights of the freedmen and hence were legitimate political organizations, as we have defined that term, which used force largely in self-defense. As did members of the union league, southerners opposed to Reconstruction appealed to the Declaration of Independence. They mimicked its language, listing grievances to prove a long train of abuses and in other ways attempted to legitimate their resistance to Reconstruction by appealing to the language of republicanism, in effect casting the government in Washington in the role of the British monarchy.30 But this mimicry does not hide the fact that the opponents of equal rights for the former slaves were violating the principles of the Declaration and subverting the regime it established. The Klan, in principle a subversive organization, had no need for a fullblown subversive effort, since it enjoyed widespread support. Having revived in the 1920s, the Klan’s influence declined in the 1930s, due to its fractiousness, incompetent, and criminal leadership, its violence, and the opposition of Americans and government officials.31 Its decline did not signal the end of racial principles in American politics. On the contrary, the 1930s saw a growing concern with such principles and with subversion. The critical factors in these years were the activities in the United States of emerging enemies, Germany and Japan. German and Japanese ethnic populations in the United States, both citizen and noncitizen, presented a particular problem, as questions arose about whether these populations were loyal. Also presenting a problem were organizations that appeared to push the Nazi line or were pro-Nazi. The German American Bund was preeminent among these, although other right-wing extremist organizations sympathetic to the Nazis, often with former Klansmen as members, also existed, such as the Black Legion, led by a retired Army General, the Knights of the White Camelia and the Silver Shirts. Various investigations and criminal prosecutions revealed that the Nazis were running front organizations in the United States (the Transoceanic News Service, the American Fellowship Forum) and that a German agent of influence had close ties with several isolationist members

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of Congress. In addition, Nazi spies were operating in the United States, as were Japanese spies, which helped raise suspicions about Japanese Americans.32 Although the Nazi government and its sympathizers were carrying out acts of espionage and subversion inside the United States, the German American population as a whole was loyal, as we saw in our discussion of German sabotage efforts in the United States. Government officials by and large discouraged suspicion of and actions against German Americans because of what had come to be seen as the unfortunate excesses of such suspicions and actions during World War I.33 Japanese Americans were not similarly spared, even though the Federal Bureau of Investigation, military intelligence, and President Roosevelt’s own personal intelligence operation had concluded that they were also loyal. Despite this, the combined efforts “of the media, West Coast politicians, and various patriotic, civic, and economic organizations,” as well as the general commanding America’s coastal defenses in the West,34 persuaded Roosevelt to approve the internment ultimately of 111,000 Japanese Americans (out of a population of 126,000 in the continental United States). The internment of the Japanese was questioned by government officials, some of whom saw no need for it, but generally supported by the public. Internment was a policy that contradicted the principle of equal treatment for citizens and was motivated at least in part by simple anti-Japanese sentiment. By and large, it has come to be seen since as a disgrace, even more so than the treatment of German Americans in World War I. There was and has been little controversy over the activities in the United States of the Nazi government and its sympathizers in the 1930s. Seen by contemporaries as a menace, scholars have argued since that the threat was limited, in part because the Nazis themselves, prior to World War II, realized that extensive or heavy-handed efforts to influence American politics were likely to make Americans more hostile toward Hitler’s regime. Similarly, although the depression created opportunities for extremism, American fascist movements were exposed and decried and, tainted by their association with an aggressive and increasingly villainous Nazi Germany, failed to gain popular or electoral support. Congressmen who appeared sympathetic to American fascists typically lost their next election.35 Equally subversive of a regime based on equality and sharing racial principles and membership with the Klan, movements sympathetic to Nazism fared worse in public opinion than the Klan had because the Nazis appeared foreign, while the Klan was native. In addition to the racial politics of the 1930s, the difficult economic circumstances of the decade gave rise to class-based politics. “Voices of protest” arose calling for the redistribution of wealth. At least two of those voices, Huey Long’s and Father Charles Coughlin’s, were accused of being fascist

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and, in effect, subverting accustomed American ways of doing things. In their defense, Long and Coughlin argued that they were simply defending the American way against the power of great wealth, which itself had fundamentally subverted or changed the American way of life. In retrospect, the accusation that Long and Coughlin were fascists seems based on a merely superficial understanding of fascism. Their own claims against the power of wealth seem no more well founded. That Long subverted government by consent in Louisiana seems clearer but the controversial character of judgments about what is reasonable in politics is highlighted by the varying judgments that historians have reached after examining Long’s activities.36 Others besides Long and Coughlin spoke of redistributing wealth. The economic distress of the 1930s gave currency to left-wing distributionist ideas and gave a boost to the popularity of the American Communist Party. The rise of Fascism in the 1930s also contributed to this outcome, as it led communists to follow what came to be called Popular Front tactics. Communists allied with liberals and other noncommunist leftists to battle Fascism abroad and extreme right-wing organizations in the United States. At the same time, however, many Americans remained suspicious of Communism. Defectors from the communist cause published memoirs, which added to the suspicions. The Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact (1939) put an end to fronts against fascists and disillusioned some but not all Communist Party supporters. Following the nonaggression pact, the Communist Party in the United States urged America to stay out of the war in Europe. Unions controlled or influenced by communists struck factories producing war materials intended for the British, who by that point were fighting alone against the Soviet Union’s ally, Germany.37 Such views and actions, while they antagonized Roosevelt, who was trying to aid the British, were compatible with the isolationist views of many Americans. Although it may have been imprudent to be an isolationist in the late 1930s, it was not of course subversive to disagree with Roosevelt’s policy. The isolationists had the best interests of the United States in mind, even if they were mistaken about how to secure them. The communists, on the other hand, as we will see in detail, were disloyal because in all they did they put the interests of the Soviet Union before the interests of the United States and subversive because they were working to destroy the American regime. The communists were able to obscure their subversion and disloyalty by blending in with one or another aspect of legitimate political opinion. For example, once Germany invaded the Soviet Union (1941), the Communist Party argued as strongly for intervention in Europe as it had just argued against it, now exploiting public antipathy to Germany. The communists also returned to a Popular Front stance, building antifascist alliances with many noncommunist liberals and leftists.

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Following the war, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated rapidly, as the Cold War between the former allies took hold. In eastern Europe, communist parties, with Soviet backing, took control through coup d’etats and electoral manipulation. As those events unfolded, in the United States, in 1948, two former Soviet spies, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Their testimony gave public prominence to charges that the Communist Party of the United States and Soviet agents had infiltrated the federal government and American institutions, such as labor unions. Some of the accused had held high-level government jobs, including Alger Hiss, who had played a major role in the conference that established the United Nations. Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 for lying about working with Chambers as a spy. In 1949, communists took control of China. The same year, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. The Korean War began in 1950. Finally, beginning in 1950 with the arrest and conviction of Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British theoretical physicist, and continuing through the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1950 and their trial and conviction in 1951, a string of arrests and prosecutions revealed a conspiracy to steal America’s atomic secrets and give them to the Soviets, assisting them in developing their bomb. Communism did indeed seem to be on the march in the early 1950s, using both armed assault and subversive infiltration. One response was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, in which he claimed that he knew the names of communists who had infiltrated the State Department. This speech saw the beginning of McCarthy’s rise to influence and power, including a committee chairmanship after the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1952, which gave him official sanction to investigate communist infiltration of the government. Another response was the passage of the McCarran Act, the “Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950,” named after its chief sponsor, Senator McCarran of Nevada. The Act asserted that there was an international conspiracy led by the Communist Party of a foreign country to establish communist totalitarian dictatorships everywhere in the world. To achieve its end, the conspiracy’s agents and the organizations they set up acted in secret, using any means they could, including “treachery, deceit, infiltration into other groups (governmental and otherwise), espionage, sabotage, [and] terrorism.” The Act asserted that the international communist conspiracy was already having success around the world. In the United States it was recruiting members, directing them to take positions in government and other institutions without revealing their membership in the conspiracy. When foreign or domestic political difficulties or “industrial or financial straits” made possible the overthrow

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of the US government by force and violence, the conspirators would act. This conspiracy posed “a clear and present danger” to the security and freedom of the United States, the Act stated.38 To fight this conspiracy, the McCarran Act declared it unlawful “to substantially contribute to the establishment within the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship” that would be under foreign control, unless it was done by constitutional amendment.39 In addition, the Act required the registration of communist organizations. Among other measures, it set up a Subversive Activities Control Board to oversee this registration, prohibited passing classified information to members of communist organizations and their employment in defense facilities. The Act also prohibited members from holding nonelective federal office or from using a US passport. It required that members of communist organizations register with the Attorney General. It prohibited communist organizations using the mail to send publications or radio or television to spread information unless the publications or broadcasts identified the material as coming from a communist organization. Citing the experience of World War II, in which “fifth columns” (groups that worked secretly to subvert governments) weakened countries through espionage and sabotage, the Act gave the president the authority, when he declared an “internal security emergency,” to detain anyone for whom there was “a reasonable ground to believe” that he or she will “engage in, or probably will conspire with others to engage in, acts of espionage or of sabotage.” Finally, the Act excluded from admission to the United States members of communist organizations and others, including anarchists.40 With some reason, in 1951 the Columbia Law Review called the Act “the most comprehensive legislation which the United States has ever adopted to deal with a threat to its internal security.”41 It was more far-reaching than the Federalists’ Alien and Sedition Acts. In his veto of the Act, Truman declared its provisions impractical (requiring communists to register “is about as practical as requiring thieves to register with the sheriff”), ineffective (many of its provisions were easily evaded), dangerous to national security (e.g. the bill required the Department of Defense to list its facilities), wasteful (it would generate years of litigation), unconstitutionally vague (what does “substantially contribute” mean?), and redundant (a number of its provisions were already law). He disagreed with all of it, except, as we have seen, the idea that a change from America’s regime based on consent was acceptable as long as it was done constitutionally. Truman summarized his view of the law by calling its provisions “a clear and present danger” to America’s institutions. There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit,

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but never for the opinions they have. . . . The basic error of these sections [of the law] is that they move in the direction of suppressing opinion and belief. . . . [A]ny governmental stifling of the free expression of opinion is a long step toward totalitarianism. . . . To permit freedom of expression . . . protects criticism, and criticism leads to progress. . . . We need not fear the expression of ideas—we do need to fear their suppression.42 Congress overturned Truman’s veto by wide margins the day after he sent it. In response, Truman established the Commission on Internal Security in January 1951 by Executive Order to secure rather than suppress liberty, as he put it, but Congress refused to enact necessary legislation and the Commission died.43 Passage of the McCarran Act led, as Truman’s veto message predicted, to lengthy litigation between the United States and the Communist Party. In 1961, the Supreme Court finally decided, 5 to 4, that the Act was constitutional (Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board ). Accepting congressional findings about the threat that the Communist Party posed, the court found, as we have noted, that requiring the Communist Party to register did not violate the First Amendment to the constitution. Congress had not prohibited the communists from organizing; it had only regulated how they might do so, as it had done in other cases, for example, by requiring foreign agents or lobbyists to register. The purposes of an organization and how it carried them out were relevant to decisions about the regulations under which it should operate. In the majority opinion, Justice Frankfurter wrote that in a number of situations in which secrecy or the concealment of associations has been regarded as a threat to public safety and to the effective, free functioning of our national institutions Congress has met the threat by requiring registration or disclosure.44 Although the Court split 5 to 4 in this case, only Justice Black among the dissenters argued that the McCarran Act violated the First Amendment. In upholding the registration requirement of the McCarran Act, the court did not rule on other provisions of the law, because they had not yet been enforced. When some of those provisions (e.g. denying party members passports and registration of individual party members) came before the court subsequently, it found them unconstitutional ( Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 1964; Albertson v. SACB, 1965; and United States v. Robel, 1967). These rulings came as the court continued to develop its understanding of what were permissible constraints on speech and organizing. Early in this process, Justice Homes had articulated the “clear and present danger” standard, one

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to which both the McCarran Act and Truman’s veto appealed, as we have discussed. In Schenck v. The United States (1919), Holmes wrote that the question in every case [of a speech act] is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. In subsequent rulings, Holmes and the Court continued to refine what “proximity” and “degree” posed a clear and present danger of substantive evil and hence justified interference with speech and assembly. Based on the general principle recognized by Truman in his veto of the McCarran Act that action but not advocacy, acts not opinions, can be restricted, this process culminated in 1969 in the case Brandenburg v. Ohio. In this case, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional an Ohio “criminal syndicalism” law under which a Klan member had been found guilty of “advocat[ing] . . . the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform.” Reflecting on previous First Amendment court rulings, the court’s unanimous opinion was that freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.45 By 1969, the court had decided that “clear and present” mean imminent and likely. One scholar of the First Amendment has argued that the Brandenburg standard, combined with the court’s ruling in Bond v. Floyd (1966), means that punishment of subversive advocacy is constitutional only if three conditions pertain: the speech must expressly advocate violation of the law; it must advocate immediate action to violate the law; and the advocacy must be likely to result in action to violate the law.46 This interpretation, if not the rulings themselves, gave the “clear and present danger” standard announced by Justice Holmes in his Schenck opinion, and used by both the McCarran Act and Truman’s veto, the narrowest possible meaning. Prosecutions for advocating or meeting to advocate the subversion of the government were at an end. The Subversive Activities Control Board went out of business in 1973, when Congress declined to renew its funding. By 1973, of course, the whole notion of subversive activity seemed outdated.47 McCarthy was dust and McCarthyism had become synonymous not

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with Americanism, as the senator had claimed, but with unscrupulous and unwarranted accusations of disloyalty. Through his actions, McCarthy was largely responsible for discrediting anti-Communism and the entire notion of subversion. The Communist Party was itself a great help in this process, its blind obedience to the Soviet Union and inconsequential theorizing steadily reducing its membership and influence to insignificance after the 1950s and making anyone wonder how such an organization could ever have been thought capable of subverting the United States. The reaction of extreme conservatives to the attenuated threat of domestic Communism in the 1960s also helped discredit the notion of subversion. Conservative Christians, for example, criticized or even opposed the Civil Rights movement because they felt it was inspired by communists.48 This reaction, in fact, became the basis for relegating concerns with subversion to the category of mere paranoid style. At about the same time, the experiences of Vietnam and then Watergate engendered skepticism of and cynicism about the US government’s actions even among Americans. Was the government more of a threat to Americans than foreign or domestic conspiracies? In 1987, the federal government indicted 14 White supremacists on charges of sedition; all were acquitted. In 1994, the American Bar Association Journal reported that prosecutions for sedition rarely worked and remarked that “charging a defendant with sedition in the modern-day United States might seem as archaic as making him walk the plank.”49 Subversion has become such a trivial matter that it is now the province of postmodern literary scholars and cultural studies specialists who ponder various attempts to undermine one or another example of what they are pleased to call cultural hegemony.

Some lessons from experience We can draw a few lessons from this brief review of the American experience with subversion that will help us understand the claims currently made about both communist subversion in the middle of the twentieth century and religious subversion in the beginning of the twenty-first century. First, subversion and fear of subversion is not a recent experience in American life. It is coeval with the regime. It is inherent in the very principles of legitimate government, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. To repeat, consent is the only basis for such government because individuals are by nature equal, no one having a divine or other right to rule another. Individuals consent to accept authority over themselves as the best way to guarantee their safety and happiness, as the Declaration of Independence puts it. Once government comes into existence, majority rule is the only legitimate form of rule, as the

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closest approximation in political life to the act of consent that establishes government. Majority rule, therefore, is derivative from and does not replace the equality or equal rights of individuals. The majority has power but to exercise that power rightfully, Jefferson argued, it must exercise it reasonably, respecting the rights of the minority. As we argued, the discernment of what is reasonable is a matter of judgment and inherently questionable. Given what is at stake in politics, everyone should exercise vigilance over judgments of right. This vigilance may sometimes become hyper-vigilance or “paranoia” but it is important to remember that the nation began on the discernment of a plot, “a long train of abuses,” aimed at extinguishing liberty and that two of our greatest presidents, Jefferson and Lincoln, came to power at least in part by arguing that conspiracies were afoot to destroy liberty. Governments form because individuals are anxious about their security. Concern with subversion is the extension into political life of the anxiety that all feel in the state of nature. Alternatively, if one takes the Jeffersonian view that citizens have most to fear from their government and not their fellow citizens, constant suspicion of government is the price citizens must pay to remain free. In either case, fear of subversion is the shadow that haunts legitimate political life. If concern with subversion is natural, so to speak, in governments based on consent, we also need to note that it is not always misplaced. Sometimes subversion is afoot. Any regime which respects the right of its citizens creates the freedom in which those opposed to the regime may conspire. Slaveholders, Nazis, and communists did intend to subvert the regime; Huey Long may have intended to. Franklin Roosevelt considered him one of the two most dangerous men in America.50 Secret societies and separatist religions do challenge the tenets of a government based on the will of the people. Certainly, fear of subversion may be exaggerated and charges of it controversial. Tendencies and plots are hard to identify with certainty. No one wanting to change a regime to which citizens are attached will openly declare that intention. Islamic organizations suspected of subversion are said to dissemble about their purposes,51 just as Republicans and communists were accused of doing. But the controversy should not obscure the fact that subversion has both been real and is a constant possibility. Two conditions associated with a government of consent, at least in the United States, stimulate both the practice of and the concern with subversion. First, historians of antebellum America associate both subversion and concern over it with a “rootless and shifting environment.” Familiarity breeds trust, in this view, but Americans are often not familiar with their fellow citizens, since they move so much or have just arrived from some foreign country. Americans are therefore always encountering unfamiliar people with strange practices and ideas. Established Americans in the late nineteenth century

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were suspicious of the recent arrivals from eastern or southern Europe, many of them Catholics or Jews and some talking about socialism and workers’ rights. As this example indicates, a rootless and shifting environment was not characteristic only of antebellum America. It is a constant condition in the United States, the cause and consequence of an open dynamic way of life. If this kind of environment is associated with fear of subversion, then we should expect to see these phenomena regularly in American experience. Secondly, although not every difference of opinion is a difference of principle (and not every difference of principle indicates subversion) opposition to certain fundamental principles is subversion. Opposition to equality, we have argued, is subversive, while opposition to higher or lower tariffs seems unlikely to be. We have argued that elections are necessary for legitimate government. What do elections require? Freedom of speech and assembly, certainly; but what about private property? If individuals do not control their economic life, can they not be intimidated into voting one way or another by those who do control it? Is it subversive of democratic government to work to abrogate the right to private property or to limit it? How much may it be limited before the independence of citizens and thus democratic government itself is brought into question? Could raising tariffs ever implicate the right to private property? Could it be part of a tendency or plot that does? Issues of property may be particularly vexing in regimes based on equality because limiting property may easily be seen as expanding equality. To pick up another thread, does democratic government require the separation of church and state? But does that mean a separation of religion and politics? Does it require a completely secular public sphere? Not only is the reasonableness of majority decisions open to judgment. What constitutes or ultimately implicates the essential principles of the regime and thus what indicates subversion is open to judgment as well. We see the controversial character of charges of subversion in the different responses to Nazism and Communism in the 1940s and 1950s. These two “isms” were in principle the same. Nazism denied equality on the basis of race; Marxism on the basis of class. Marxism or Leninism-Stalinism was as brutal and bloody-minded as Nazism,52 even if less boastful about its brutality. Despite this identity, three circumstances made claims of communist subversion more controversial than charges of Nazi subversion. First, as noted before, in the 1930s Nazism presented the more immediate threat and communists and the Soviet Union were, for the most part, allies against the Nazis. Secondly, as American public opinion turned against Communism and the Soviet Union after World War II, Republicans used anti-Communism against the Democrats, by then the party of the left in the United States and the party in charge of the government when the United States and the Soviet Union

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were allies. In doing so, however, the Republicans were in effect repaying the Democrats in kind. Many of the tactics used against communists and suspected communists in the 1950s (congressional investigations, bullying interrogations, exaggerated or false charges) were first used by the left against the right (opponents of Roosevelt’s policies) in the 1930s.53 The Democrats themselves in effect acknowledged their vulnerability on the left and worked hard to rid the party of those sympathetic to or seen to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union, such as Henry Wallace, FDR’s Agriculture Secretary and Vice President, and his supporters.54 Still, the argument over communist subversion was controversial because it was used for partisan advantage and affected American politics and attitudes toward subversion for a generation or more. Third, as often happens, the partisan nature of the argument over communist subversion represented principled and real differences. For Marxism and Stalinism, class divisions are more fundamental than human equality. This means class replaces equality as the fundamental principle of politics. But in the United States, without even the vestigial class system of Europe, it was possible for many to see talk of class as merely an expression of a reasonable preference for the common man. This was especially so if one tended to see Communism as a secular expression of Christian communalism. In these ways, Communism could appear to be an extreme but not wholly alien version of progressive views that were held among an array of liberal and leftist Americans. In his autobiography, for example, the very establishment liberal Chester Bowles wrote that during the 1930s and 1940s he and his colleagues and friends “broke loose from traditional economic and political concepts. . . . [S]ome of us even dreamed of world government.”55 A sympathetic view of Communism was particularly plausible during the 1930s, as the Depression appeared to confirm the problems of capitalism, and as the Soviet Union could claim to be making important strides in modernizing. Stalin’s brutal purges of the Soviet party and society caused some to doubt and others to defect from the communist cause, but others were willing to excuse the slaughter in the Soviet Union as a price that had to be paid for the development of a new and better way of life. In contrast to Nazi Germany and Depression-era America, and on the basis of incomplete knowledge about what was happening in the Soviet Union, it was possible to argue that the Soviet Union stood for something better than what men had known before in the United States. However unwise it may appear now, it was possible in the 1930s and the early 1940s to see Communism as merely an impatient and hence more brutal relative of American democracy rather than as fundamentally opposed to the American regime. Given the inherent difficulty in discerning subversion, and the particular difficulties of discerning communist subversion, it is not surprising that certain

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markers or cognitive shortcuts have come into use. Americans have taken separateness, exclusiveness, secrecy, foreignness, or foreign influence as such markers. Foreignness, foreign control, or association with a foreign threat has been particularly important. The Republicans would not have scared the Federalists as much if France had not lurked in the background. In the 1930s, there was no difference in principle between Nazis and the Klan (both denied equality on the basis of race) but the Klan’s denial was familiar and homegrown, while the Nazis’ was foreign and associated with aggressive political and military actions. Thus, the Nazis and not the Klan were seen more broadly as un-American and a threat to America’s independence of action. Similarly, Long’s redistributionist policies were generally seen more favorably than similar ideas associated with the foreign notions of communists and Marxists. These judgments that foreign influence poses a threat to democracy and is rightly suspect are understandable. In his ruling in Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board, Justice Black acknowledged this.56 As we will see when we look in more detail at CommunistSoviet subversion, effective foreign support is a critical element in an effective subversive effort. It is worth noting, however, that while foreign assistance increases the effectiveness of subversion, it also prods the American people into action, which ultimately diminishes the subversive threat. Whatever support there was for Communism and Popular Fronts declined after World War II as relations between America and the Soviet Union deteriorated and Soviet actions fueled concerns about communist subversion. Even though the American agencies and officials charged with stopping espionage and subversion knew of Soviet and communist activities in the United States before and during World War II, they did not act effectively against these threats until the Soviet threat abroad emerged after World War II.57 Vigilance is not the only thing that has increased as concerns with foreign threats and influence have increased. The risk of injustice has increased as well, as an anti-German lynching in World War I and the internment of the Japanese demonstrates. Injustice occurred again after World War II in the accusations of subversion made of innocent people. Cognitive shortcuts to subversion are at least on occasion indistinguishable from simple prejudice or partisan advantage-seeking. In addition to the difficulty of discriminating between opposition to a government and disloyalty to democratic principles and the unreliability of cognitive shortcuts in such discrimination, democracies also face another problem when it comes to subversion. The openness of democracy makes the very idea of subversion seem almost impossible. America, for example, is astonishingly open and tolerant. As we have noted, even President Truman seems to have accepted that American democracy was entirely open with regard to

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the ends toward which voting could lead. As we have also seen, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment has moved over time toward more openness, toward more and more freedom of speech, protecting even speech which attacks the freedom of speech. The more open a regime is, the less compelling are the claims that it is being or can be subverted. Doubts about the possibility of subversion are likely to be particularly strong if, as is the case with the United States, a regime enjoys strong legitimacy. The result of openness and legitimacy is a failure to take subversion seriously. This leads some to fear that American tolerance will allow the intolerant to get a foothold in America.58 Another lesson that we may extract from the American experience with subversion concerns how to respond to it. Generally speaking, the restrained constitutional response of Jefferson and Lincoln appears to work better than more heavy-handed responses, such as alien and sedition acts, not to mention internment or the methods used against German Americans during World War I. In any democratic regime, the key to success is public opinion and our history suggests that overall the public responds better to a restrained, law abiding approach than to a wilful assertion of extra-legal power. Lincoln’s calm deliberate statement of the constitutional ground of his position was a striking contrast with the fiery rhetoric of the secessionists. A similar contrast occurred between Joseph Welch, the attorney for the Army during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, and Senator McCarthy. In response to an attack on a young associate of Welch’s by the senator, Welch asked resignedly, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” This exchange, and the longer interplay between the two surrounding it, epitomized the difference between the urbane, if shrewd, Welch and the arrogant McCarthy. (That Welch staged the event, as McCarthy’s defenders have argued, does not alter the effect of the contrast between the two men.) The confrontation with Welch was one of several events in 1954 that adversely affected McCarthy’s popularity.59 In their effect on public opinion, heavy-handed responses to subversion are similar to the violence of terrorists and those who oppose them. Public opinion tends to turn against the bully or the violent. In the instance of McCarthy, so complete was his eventual discrediting that it discredited the very idea of subversion, as we have noted. Anti-Communism in the 1950s came to be seen as an example of crying wolf. But in this case not only did the wolf not come, most now have concluded the wolf did not exist. It was simply a scare tactic of partisanship. Cries of subversion now fall on cynical ears. The notion of sedition or subversion seems archaic. Is it? To answer that question, we need to consider in more detail the controversy over communist subversion, since it has shaped our current dismissal of subversion.

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Was subversion a danger? Is it now? The partisan character of the controversies over communist subversion have meant that both while the accusations and denials were flying and since that time, one has had to choose between McCarthy and those who denied or minimized communist subversion. Many sided with McCarthy in the moment; since then, few have. Accumulating evidence and analysis over the years, including most importantly the brief opening of Soviet archives when the Soviet regime fell, shows that a choice is no longer necessary. The truth is that both McCarthy and those who denied or minimized communist subversion were wrong. Communists thoroughly infiltrated the US government and McCarthy merited his disgrace. As a historian of American Communism and Soviet espionage has written, Normal democratic politics cannot proceed when one side in a partisan battle regards the other as the enemy of fundamental values. Sometimes it is true that one force in a polity does threaten the fundamental values, or the foundation rules of democracy itself . . . . But sometimes it isn’t true, and we have a crisis generated by demagoguery and malign partisan zeal when one side falsely or mistakenly attempts to paint the other as illegitimate. In my view that is what McCarthy attempted to do, and is why I view his role as a negative one.60 To the degree that McCarthy’s actions made “normal democratic politics” more difficult, he subverted or harmed the American regime in the name of stopping its subversion. Whatever McCarthy’s actions or their consequences, however, they do not alter the fact that the Communist Party (CPUSA), dedicated to the destruction of the United States in word, had a clandestine wing dedicated to that outcome in deed. Furthermore, the party and many in its clandestine apparatus worked knowingly and willingly with Soviet intelligence to subvert the United States government. Under directions from the Soviet government through its liaison with communist parties around the world, the Comintern (the Communist International, based in Moscow), the Communist Party in the United States set up its clandestine apparatus so that it would be able to survive repression, police its own ranks, defeat its leftist rivals (principally followers of Leon Trotsky), and “promote secret political subversion” in furtherance of its aim to overthrow the United States government and bring about a worldwide proletarian dictatorship.61 Certain members of the party were asked to join its clandestine wing. They dropped out of the overt party but continued to carry out party orders. They joined rival communist groups and reported on their activities to

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the CPUSA. They sought employment in US government agencies and helped other covert communists and Soviet intelligence agents get such employment and keep their access to classified information. They carried money from the Comintern to the party in the United States. (The party also operated a money transfer or “laundering” system similar to the hawala networks used today to support some terrorist operations.) The covert members were also prime candidates to work for Soviet intelligence services. As discussed in Chapter 2, recruiting people for clandestine work whether as spies or terrorists is risky. Someone who is approached could report the attempted recruitment. Loyal communists were unlikely to do so, however, when approached by Soviet intelligence officers. These approaches were not coincidences, however. The leadership of both the overt party and its covert wing brought promising recruits to the attention of Soviet intelligence. Members of the communist party helped organize fighting units for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and used personal data they collected in this effort to help vet potential recruits for the party and for Soviet intelligence. Some of the people recruited thought they were working only for the CPUSA, but many understood they were working directly for the Soviet Union. Once recruited, party members often acted as couriers, meeting other party members or individuals who were in sensitive positions and carrying their information and documents back to Soviet intelligence officers. This provided security for the sources because they did not have to meet directly with the intelligence officers, who were more likely to be under surveillance than the couriers or other agents. All these espionage activities were part of the reason that the Comintern and the CPUSA set up its covert wing. The overall objective was to further the ends of the Soviet regime, an objective to which the CPUSA relentlessly subordinated itself. In turn, the Soviet government subsidized the party until the Soviet Union collapsed.62 The total clandestine enterprise was impressive. By one count, in the 1930s and 1940s over 500 individuals in the United States were involved in espionage work for the Soviet Union, gathering information, carrying it to Soviet intelligence officers, spotting others who might be recruited, keeping safe houses (places associated with neither the intelligence officer nor the spy where both might meet), acting as couriers, and undertaking all the other tasks required in espionage.63 Documents from the Soviet archives show that the agents included Alger Hiss, who was a high-ranking State Department official; Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs, who provided information on the American nuclear program; Harry Dexter White, a high ranking official at the Treasury Department; Abraham Glasser, an official in the Justice Department, who provided the Soviets with information on FBI investigations of Soviet spying, as did Judith Coplon, “an even more productive” spy; Samuel Dickstein, a

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Democratic Congressman from New York, who as a member of the “Special Committee on Un-American Activities” in the 1930s was the scourge of proNazis and fascists and who, ironically, pioneered many of the tactics later used against the communists; prominent journalist I. F. Stone, for a time; as well as other officials in the State, Justice, Commerce, and Treasury Departments, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a variety of other government organizations and boards, several congressional staffs, the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA), the US nuclear program, the aircraft and other industries, journalism, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.64 The effectiveness of these agents was greater because they could often count on the assistance of other communists, who, of course, were working to further Soviet objectives in any case. The clandestine Communist Party/Soviet apparatus was effective. Probably, its greatest success was in stealing US nuclear secrets. It appears that this allowed the Soviets to develop their bomb sooner than they would have otherwise. Among other advantages, this gave the Soviets sufficient confidence to allow Stalin to support the North Korean invasion of South Korea, which led to the loss of many American lives. Another spy revealed to the Soviets that the National Security Agency had broken a Soviet code. When the Soviets changed the code, the United States lost access to information that indicated Soviet support for the invasion of South Korea. The Soviets also gained much military technical information through their spy networks. More generally, given their extensive infiltration of the US government, the Soviets undoubtedly had a good sense of US policies, which would have been of advantage to them in a number of ways. For example, during the negotiations over the establishment of the United Nations, they knew that the United States might agree to a Security Council veto for the Soviet Union and held out until they achieved that. Covert communists and Soviet intelligence agents were also able to “nudge” US government policy in directions useful to the Soviet Union. Covert communists and Soviet agents exerted influence on the United States in a variety of other ways. They were an influential part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), with communist-aligned unions representing about “one-quarter of the CIO’s total membership.” A secret communist headed the Minnesota CIO. Covert communists on the NLRB favored the CIO in its competition with the American Federation of Labor. Communists also dominated the teachers’ union in New York City. A concealed communist, Harry Bridges, led the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. Communists were influential in other unions, including the United Auto Workers. In 1944, after a trip to the Soviet Union, then Vice President Henry Wallace wrote a book which gave a favorable

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account of Soviet activities in Siberia (Wallace had visited a labor camp especially prepared by the Soviets to impress him). His coauthor was an American Soviet intelligence agent. Communists were behind Wallace forming the Progressive Party for the 1948 election. As John Haynes has remarked, if this influence network had not been largely rooted out by 1950, “it is difficult to imagine that the political mobilization necessary for America’s commitment to the early Cold War would have taken place.” Soviet agents helped the Soviet Union in other ways as well. In the Justice Department, as noted, Soviet agents helped protect themselves and other Soviet agents by gathering information on the FBI’s knowledge of communist and Soviet intelligence activities. Finally, according to one account, by denying their affiliation with the Communist Party, covert communists helped spur the partisan conflicts over their loyalties that poisoned American politics in the 1940s, 1950s, and beyond.65 One might object that in presenting this catalog of activities we are mixing two different activities, espionage and subversion, to make the CPUSASoviet intelligence apparatus look larger and more threatening than it really was. While there is a difference between espionage (collecting information) and subversion (working to weaken or overthrow a government) these clandestine activities are properly considered together. In the first place, they are united by a common purpose, which is harming the country against which the activities are carried out. Second, in this case both espionage and subversion are aspects of what is called, more generally, human intelligence. What links them in the case of communists in the United States is that both espionage and subversion were carried out by people working for the Soviet Union after having been recruited by its intelligence service. From the viewpoint of human intelligence professionals, subversion and espionage are aspects of a common activity.66 The Soviets conducted themselves accordingly, using their human agents to collect information, influence decisions in the US government, or impede their implementation, as circumstances allowed and opportunities occurred. The McCarran Act linked espionage and subversion, as our quotations from it above attest, and was right to do so. We have noted already that the CPUSA-Soviet intelligence apparatus was effective. It did accomplish things. But what did these accomplishments amount to? That the United States still exists while the Soviet Union does not suggests they did not amount to enough; they were not decisive in the struggle with the United States. Still, as one historian has remarked: from the mid-1930s to 1950 the CPUSA was a significant but never a major force in American society. In mainstream politics it was a consequential player in New York, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, and

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Oregon, and in 1948 it made a failed but ambitious bid to become a factor in national politics through Henry Wallace’s Progressive party. Its greatest success was in the labor movement where it dominated the leadership of a union with a quarter of the CIO’s membership.67 In addition to being a consequential player in states that contained about 27 percent of the population of the United States, through its “myriad front groups,” the CPUSA-Soviet intelligence apparatus had influence among “immigrant groups, in the Civil Rights movement, on college campuses and in Hollywood”68 and, as noted, it controlled some unions outside the CIO. This is a striking degree of influence and power for an organization entirely under the control of a foreign tyrannical power. It was also an organization for which over 500 Americans worked collecting information, while influencing the US government and other organizations. And, we should remember, all of this was done as part of an organization, the CPUSA, whose “goal was the destruction of American society and its replacement by a state modeled on Stalin’s Russia.”69 One can and should deplore the activities of Senator McCarthy, while still acknowledging that Soviet subversion was a threat. Nor should the fact that it failed suggest that it was not. It failed for specific reasons, none acting with a necessity that warranted complacency then or now. Public statements and testimony of defectors from the espionage subversion underground, as well as various Congressional investigations, brought the Communist Party and its underground unwanted attention at the same time that Soviet activities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world made plain that the Soviet Union was an enemy. Success deciphering some Soviet message traffic allowed the authorities to identify some key members of the apparatus. Bad tradecraft allowed the authorities to identify others. The intercepts and decryption identified Klaus Fuchs, a British physicist working in the American nuclear weapons program, as a Soviet spy. When questioned, he gave up Harry Gold, who had once been a courier between Fuchs and Soviet intelligence. Gold in turn gave up David Greenglass, for whom he was the regular courier, who in turn gave up the Rosenbergs. (The “networked” manner in which the Soviets structured their espionage made it vulnerable, an issue to which we return in Chapter 6). The investigations, arrests, and trials played out over several years in the early 1950s, continually reminding Americans of the threat posed by the Soviet Union and communist subversion. A key battle against communist subversion, led by Philip Murray, was fought in the CIO. To assure the victory of a labor-friendly Democratic president, Murray led a campaign to rid the CIO of Wallace supporters and the communists that he knew were behind Wallace’s campaign. If Wallace gained strength, Murray believed, his candidacy might

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split the Democratic vote and allow a Republican victory. After a long and difficult campaign, Murray and his allies succeeded, but it was not a foregone conclusion that they would or that such a campaign would have been fought in the first place.70 It is certainly the case that anticommunist sentiment was always strong in the United States but the CPUSA found fertile ground in the 1930s and achieved much of its influence by hiding its members’ identities and activities from anticommunist sentiment. It is not possible to claim with confidence that communist influence would necessarily have declined absent Soviet belligerence, the spy scandals, and certain unpredictable dynamics of American electoral politics, none of which had to happen or happen as they did. Nor was it inevitable that Nikita Khrushchev would reveal Stalin’s crimes in 1956 or that the text of his speech would reach the West, an event that “nearly wiped out the [Communist] party” in the United States.71 In assessing the threat posed by communist-Soviet subversion, we should also remember that although the FBI focused on this subversive threat belatedly, when it did, it worked effectively against it. Some of the FBI’s activities became known through the trials that resulted from its investigations. But the FBI also carried on an extra-legal campaign against the CPUSA and other subversive groups, using wiretaps, reading mail, and breaking into offices to search for incriminating evidence. The FBI also secretly harassed members of the Communist Party, for example, inventing and planting evidence that certain of its members were FBI informants, thus sowing discord in the Party.72 It is impossible to say precisely what effect these efforts had, but they did hurt the communist cause and under other circumstances need not have been attempted. If J. Edgar Hoover had not been the FBI Director they might not have been. Indeed, today many of them would be impossible to repeat. In sum then, the description of Communism and the CPUSA in the McCarran Act was accurate, although disbelieved by many at the time and even more since.73 Subversion did occur; the conspiracy did pose a threat to the United States. The ultimate collapse of the conspiracy should not make us complacently think that all subversion is doomed to fail. All that happened could have happened otherwise. It is possible to see how Henry Wallace could have become president and there are reports that, had this happened, Wallace would have appointed as secretaries of state and treasury men we now know were Soviet agents.74 Without exaggerating it, we should acknowledge, as the conventional wisdom has not, the threat of Soviet subversion in the 1930s and 1940s. What of the other part of the conventional wisdom about subversion? Is there currently a threat to American democracy from religious subversion? Consider first the threat from Islamism. Islamism seeks to establish within a given state “a political order that reflects the norms of Islam, and the shari’ah [Islamic law]

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specifically.” The Muslim Brotherhood is an example of an Islamist organization. From it have grown such national Islamist organizations as Hamas, which seeks to make Palestine a Muslim state. Radical Islamism shares the aspiration of Islamism to make shari’ah the law but is considered radical because it rejects any political order based on the sovereignty of nation-states. It seeks instead “to establish a pan-Islamic polity or renewed caliphate.” Some radical Islamists seek to convert the entire world to Islam and some also see “violent struggle (jihad) as the primary or even the exclusively legitimate method for the pursuit of political change.”75 If we accept these definitions, then the leading radical or transnational Islamist organizations (organizations aiming to establish a renewed caliphate) would be Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which claims to be nonviolent, and al Qaeda. HT has been active in the United Kingdom, other European countries, the Middle East, central Asia, and Australia. It also operates in the United States, as does the Muslim Brotherhood,76 which is influential in a number of Middle Eastern countries. Critics of Islam might object to these distinctions by saying that Islamism, the intention to make shari’ah the law of the land or of all lands, is only the explicit expression of an objective that Islam and all Muslims share.77 There is considerable empirical evidence countering this claim, since so many Muslims do not avow the intention to impose shari’ah. But, we are told, Islamic law teaches that Muslims should lie to non-Muslims about such matters as the imposition of shari’ah,78 so perhaps the absence of evidence is actually evidence for the claim. If so, the claim that all Muslims want to impose shari’ah on everyone must ultimately rest on claims about what Islamic law requires, rather than on what Muslims actually do. Islamic law, however, is not univocal and Islamism is only one interpretation of that law. In fact, Islamists disagree among themselves, as do other Muslims, over what Muslim law teaches and requires.79 In a certain sense, sorting out the differences among Muslims with regard to their understanding of their law and what it requires is unnecessary. All religious organizations pose a threat to the United States, whether or not they use violence, if they are opposed to the separation of church and state. This separation is an essential principle of American government because basing government on a particular religion would mean that claims to rule would not be open to all, as the principle of equality requires, but only to those who accepted the religion merged with the state.80 Any organization that seeks to end the separation of church and state, therefore, no matter what its faith or whether or not it is willing to use violence, should be considered subversive, since the separation of church and state is fundamental to the American regime. In this sense, the Muslim Brotherhood, as originally conceived certainly, and HT are subversive organizations.

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Islamism, then, like Communism or Fascism is subversive of democratic government. Like Communism and Fascism it denies that equality is the basis of political legitimacy. (Sayyid Qutb, one of the founders of modern Islamic radicalism, reportedly argued that non-Muslims were subhuman.)81 Islamism says that only one religion is fit to rule, as Communism says that only one class and Fascism one race is fit to rule. In addition, like these other doctrines, Islamism seeks to overturn the political order of particular countries and, in its international manifestation, the established international order. One analyst has even used terms from the Bolshevik revolution to explain the differences among radical Islamists. Al Qaeda is Trotskyite, favoring “continual worldwide Jihad,” while HT is Bolshevik, favoring establishing the caliphate in one country as the basis for revolutionary activity.82 Besides common goals, Islamism and Communism share other characteristics. Like Leninists, HT, for example, sees itself as a vanguard party, an elite leading Muslims to their true destiny. To this end, HT has articulated a threefold strategy that begins with recruitment of individuals, continues with HT members engaging the broader society and infiltrating its institutions, and concludes with a seizure of power, possibly through a coup d’etat. While HT claims to be nonviolent, its literature acknowledges that the final stage of its strategy may require violence, which it may bring to bear through the military forces in a country, after it has infiltrated and controlled them. This is all very similar to Leninist and Maoist methods.83 In carrying out this strategy, HT employs a hierarchical structure, with a national committee directing local versions and members meeting in smaller study groups. When under pressure by the authorities, HT has adopted “a rigorously enforced cell structure”84 to increase its security. It typically keeps the identities and activities of its leadership secret. Not only does HT share with Communism a subversive strategy, it uses similar means to carry it out. In addition to its Leninist-like hierarchical cell structure, HT has also used front organizations, organizations it controls or influences but are not identified as such, and has adopted what could be called Popular Front tactics. Like other Islamist organizations and communists, HT is anticapitalist. As we mentioned in Chapter 2, at its meeting in Chicago in July 2009, a banner proclaimed “Fall of Capitalism, Rise of Islam.”85 Olivier Roy has noted that Jihadist discourses and targets often overlap those of the leftist antiglobalisation movement. . . . Islamic radical[ism] cannot be understood if we do not see that its origins and those of [the] modern Western current of anti-imperialism are similar. It is common to find among Islamic radicals a mix of Koranic injunction and pseudo-Marxist explanations.86

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Roy also claims that the anti-Semitism of radical Islamists is another similarity with the left, rather than something specifically Islamic.87 Like HT, the Muslim Brotherhood also sees itself as a vanguard party, and uses a hierarchical party and cell structure, as well as front organizations. The founder of the Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, “admired the mobilizing potential, totalizing politics, and intense discipline” of Italian and Nazi fascists.88 An internal memorandum in 1991 stated that the Brotherhood in North America was involved in a grand Jihad aimed at “destroying Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house . . . so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”89 Similarities between Islamists and communists also include the importance of immigrants to their recruitment and activity, at least in the United States, and the use of a war to recruit and build support. For the communists it was the Spanish Civil War; for the radical Islamists, the war in Afghanistan with the Soviets and, to a lesser degree, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 and the civil war in Somalia, as well as the long-running Israeli–Palestinian conflict. So extensive are the similarities between Islamists and communists in intent, strategy, and organization that it is possible to see these Islamist organizations as revolutionary totalitarian organizations that have some Islamic flavor rather than as essentially Islamic organizations.90 Abul a’la Maududi, one of the founders of Islamism, wrote that “In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.”91 What threat, if any, do these subversive organizations pose to the United States? Both HT and the Muslim Brotherhood or organizations linked to it and others like them have long been thought to help prepare people to become terrorists.92 They are sometimes, therefore, described as conveyor belts to terrorism, although it remains unclear in the case of the United States exactly how many people have actually needed the assistance of such organizations to become terrorists. Certainly, as stated in Chapter 2, the oppositionist, anticapitalist rhetoric of Islamism may attract the disgruntled, who are in fact “converting” to opposition rather than Islam. The material support to terrorism that some of these organizations have provided seems more significant and better substantiated than their work as recruiters or facilitators of terrorist personnel. As for the threat of subversion they pose, that seems limited. For all the similarities between Islamism and Communism, or Fascism for that matter, with regard to subversion, Islamists in the United States suffer under three crippling disabilities. First, there is no outside power comparable with the Soviet Union that supports their subversive activity. As we have seen, in the American experience of subversion, foreign support has been critical to

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effectiveness. Some foreign powers may look favorably on HT or Brotherhood activity in the United States or directly or indirectly aid them (although no evidence of this has emerged publicly). Nothing like the Soviet Union’s support for the Communist Party in the United States exists, however, as far as we know, with regard to Islamist organizations in the United States. The Communist Party in the United States was entirely a creature of the Soviet government, fully supported by it and entirely devoted to serving its ends. In addition, the Soviet Union posed significant military and political threats to the United States. The evidence does not suggest any comparable relationship between Islamist organizations operating in the United States and any foreign government comparable with the Soviet Union. Second, and more important, there is no sympathetic vibration, so to speak, between the principles of Islamism and the principles of American liberal democracy, as there was between some aspects of Communism and American principles. Americans tolerate the expression of different, even subversive opinions, but this does not mean that they sympathize with these opinions. A theocracy is foreign to the United States, shari’ah or a Caliphate even more so. Furthermore, third, the Muslim population of the United States does not appear to be a fertile recruiting ground for Islamists. As we have seen in Chapter 2, polling data supports the claim that by and large Muslims are well integrated into American life. Membership numbers also appear to indicate the limited appeal of Islamism in comparison with Communism. By one estimate, the peak membership of the Communist Party was 65,000–70,000 in the late 1930s and early 1940s, with a total of perhaps 500,000 Americans participating at one time or another. Nowhere near these numbers are members in HT or Brotherhood organizations in the United States. While one of the Brotherhood’s claimed front organizations has an estimated 10,000 members, not all should be presumed to share the Brotherhood’s views.93 “Fronts” deliberately contain members who are not members of the organization that is being fronted; that is the purpose of the front. If Popular Front liberals were added to the Communist Party total, party membership would be much higher. The lack of sympathy between the principles of Islamism and those of liberal democracy is likely to limit the effectiveness of any popular front strategy. It is quite likely that Muslims who wish to see shari’ah become the law of the land will infiltrate the US government. Some may already have. They may have done so under the sponsorship and guidance of an organization committed to overthrowing the American regime. By themselves or with other conspirators, they may commit espionage or acts of terrorism. Some might point to Major Nidal Hasan, Private Naser Jason Abdo, or Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar, who attacked or planned to attack, their fellow soldiers, as examples of infiltrators, although they apparently joined the army in good faith and turned only

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once in the military. Whether or not we count these three as infiltrators, infiltrators who engage in espionage or terrorism will damage the United States and its citizens. But as bad as that would be, it is not subversion. Subversion is the effort, especially covert efforts, to change or overthrow a legitimate regime. By themselves, infiltrators can accomplish little toward changing or overthrowing the American regime because the government structures of the United States are so vast and their powers so divided and dispersed, and often redundant, that it is almost impossible to control and direct them, as presidents and governors learn repeatedly. The fractious, combative character of America and the decentralized and competitive nature of its political institutions make America a difficult place to subvert. In this way, our political infrastructure is like our physical infrastructure, resistant to damage because it is complex, somewhat uncoordinated, redundant, and hence resilient. Without broad support among the public and effective external support, subversion by Muslims is not likely to be effective. What disputes or fractures in American life, for example, would the infiltrators exploit that are not already exploited by various advocates and interests? To what or whom would loyalty be transferred? Will a majority of Americans embrace shari’ah as the law of the land? Those who feared Catholic control of America could worry about the transfer of loyalty to the Pope. To which figure in Islam will Americans be encouraged to surrender their independence? Illustrative of these problems is the failure of a subversive effort of longstanding. White supremacist anti-Semites have since the 1960s infiltrated a series of popular movements, including the segregationist movement (1960s), the tax revolt (1970s), the farm movement (1980s), and the militia movement (1990s).94 They have found these popular front efforts to be of limited use in building broader support or subverting America because their conspiratorial, “paranoid” views are simply unappealing to all but a relative few and are rejected by everyone else as soon as they become known. In this way, these current White supremacists differ from the Klan of yore, which at times had broad support, as we have seen. Part of the difference lies in the weird theology (Christian Identity)95 of many of the current racists, so at odds with traditional Christianity. The Klan at its greatest popularity, on the other hand, found support among traditional Christians and even some of their clergy. Islamists are unlikely to find that kind of support. We are left wondering then how they will be able to build sufficient political support to take advantage of whatever infiltration they manage. It is true that a survey found that 47 percent of Muslims in the United States thought of themselves first as Muslims and secondly as Americans. But it is also true that another survey by the same organization found that 62 per cent of White evangelical Americans thought of themselves as Christians first

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and Americans second.96 Given that White evangelical Christians vastly outnumber Muslims in the United States, if we are to be alarmed by people who place their religion before their country, then we should be more alarmed about evangelicals than about Muslims.97 This should be the case especially given the dominance of Christianity in American experience and the longstanding interweaving of Christianity and politics in American history. There is nothing foreign about Christianity in America. This makes Christianity appear less threatening to the public and claims about America being a Christian nation more plausible. Yet, as in the case of Islamists, it seems unlikely that Christians espousing the view that America is a Christian nation, a smaller number than those identifying as evangelicals, are likely to mount much of a subversive threat, although they may also inspire violence like the Islamists.98 It is true that occasionally someone in an important position in the government expresses the view that America is a Christian nation, yet this seems the expression not of an organized effort to subvert the government but rather of a merely personal view. In addition, the expression of such views brings widespread exposure, criticism, and the reassertion of America’s secular tradition.99 This response comes not just from secular humanists but from Christians as well, expressing a view now at least several centuries old that their religion is better off if not involved with political power. The vigilant response to apparent efforts to merge Christianity and the state occurs so readily, perhaps, precisely because of the long experience Americans have in dealing with questions of church and state and religion and politics. Christianity in all its forms, in the United States and around the world, has generally achieved a wary although not hostile modus vivendi with liberal democracy. Islam, as opposed to many Muslims, has not yet and may never achieve such peaceful coexistence. Under current circumstances, however, in the United States at least, its failure to do so does not pose a significant subversive threat. The usual response to an official who claims that America is a Christian nation suggests that today as in the past an effective way to deal with the threat of religious subversion is exposure and criticism. More than mere exposure and criticism was thought necessary against the communists (the US government hobbled and pursued them legally and extra-legally) but, to repeat, Communism enjoyed advantages that other subversive efforts do not. Its principles could blend more easily with Americans’ political thinking; it appealed to a large number of Americans, especially in its Popular Front form; it had support from a powerful country, the deadly enemy of the United States, that for a time was thought to be an ally; and it had a well-designed subversive organizational structure in the United States to transform this external support into an effective internal conspiracy. Neither of the current

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religious subversive suspects enjoys such advantages. At the same time, the American people no longer have at their disposal the illegal activities of the FBI, which for decades acted in part as a secret organization that attacked and harassed those whose opposition it deemed unacceptable.100 This was one way in which the United States handled its innate tendency to spawn subversion and fear of subversion. (The CIA carried out this role, among others, overseas.) Even without these extra-legal “auxiliary precautions,” however, the current subversive threat seems manageable.

Could subversion become a danger? Our historical review of subversion in the United States suggests that for the limited or even nonexistent subversive potential of Islam or Christianity to increase, several factors would have to change. An internal crisis like the Depression would need to occur;101 Americans would have to come to look favorably on the idea that shari’ah or the Old Testament be the law of the land or somehow part of that law; a subversive organizational structure would need to exist in the United States, preferably with the support of an external power, which would infiltrate agents into governmental and other institutions; and a popular base of support would need to develop that would wittingly or unwittingly support the changes to the regime that the subversive organization was promoting. None of these changes seems likely. In 2008–09, the United States experienced its worst economic crisis since the Depression without noticeably altering the balance of power between church and state or leading to increased public pressure for laws forbidding the consumption of pork. Subversive organizations do exist in the United States, will continue to exist, and their members will work in government and private institutions, sometimes holding positions of authority. Absent popular support among Americans and external support, however, these individuals and their organizations are not likely to achieve much. No Christian state exists. Islamic states do exist, of course, and some are hostile to the United States, but the lack of popular support for Islam or shari’ah in the United States means that the efforts of these nations and their allies are most likely to result not in subversion but in terrorism and sabotage. Some trends are worrying or at least worth monitoring. The same polling that suggests that Muslims in America are by and large well integrated into American life also suggests that this is less true of younger Muslims (those aged 18–29 years). Compared with their elders (those over 30 years of age), younger Muslims are more likely to go to the mosque every week, more

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likely to see a conflict between faith and modern life, and more likely to think of themselves as Muslims first and Americans second. What to make of this difference is less clear. It may mean only that Muslims are becoming more like White evangelicals. More worrying, young Muslims are more likely, in fact twice as likely as their elders, to consider suicide bombing to be justified, although they have a slightly less favorable view of al Qaeda.102 The increasing number of cases of young Muslims involved in terrorism or terrorist activities in the United States in 2009–10 fits this apparent pattern of a younger Muslim population less inclined to blend into American life. This data may say something about the likelihood of Muslims being involved in terrorism but does not necessarily suggest that Islamic subversion is likely to become a greater problem in the future. Islam is a growing religion but its growth in the United States is unlikely to be such that it will develop a population base sufficient to support subversion. (The Muslim population of the United States, estimated to be 0.8 percent of the total in 2010 is expected to be 1.7 percent of that population in 2030.103) In addition, the notion that a growing Islamic population is a growing subversive threat rests on unwarranted or dubious assumptions: that all Muslims are opposed to liberal democracy and that Islam will not or cannot change as it grows. As various commentators have pointed out, both Judaism and Catholicism adapted to conditions in the United States. Both became part of a religious establishment that is wary of but not hostile to liberal democracy, an attitude that benefits both religion and liberal democracy. Might Islam, in the United States, if not around the world, become more fully part of this religious establishment and thus as fully part of American life as Christianity and Judaism? In doing so, it would fulfill the hope of George Washington that the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.104 There is some evidence that this integration is happening,105 although Islam is so decentralized and, especially in the United States, so diverse that it is difficult to characterize or speak accurately about it in general terms. This discussion of the prospects for subversion has assumed no great change from current circumstances. A crisis or a sudden change of circumstances, however, is an opportunity that subversives exploit. In the future, is it possible that someone, the so-called next Lenin,106 an utterly ruthless, strategically gifted individual, would use a weapon of mass destruction to create a crisis as part of an effort to subvert the United States? In the past, to have

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any hope of subverting the United States, one would have needed to build a large subversive organization, allied with an overt and unwitting political movement and then wait for a crisis to occur. If the crisis is a nuclear explosion, however, then the magnitude of the disruption and turmoil it caused would arguably reduce the size of the political movement necessary to succeed, especially since the subversives would be able to time the crisis to their greatest advantage. Such a conspiracy is not impossible, but it would face serious obstacles. As we noted in our discussion of sabotage, Hurricane Katrina was in some respects the natural equivalent of an attack with weapons of mass destruction. While it undermined the Bush administration, it did not destabilize the American regime. Too much of that regime and its physical foundation were untouched by the disaster for the “subversion” to be more fundamental. An unprecedented degree of infiltration would have been necessary for anyone to exploit this natural disaster to take over the government of the United States. This would be true even if the blow were to fall on Washington, DC or New York or Los Angeles: enough of the United States and its various governments would survive to make a takeover far from certain, unless an extensive infiltration had already occurred. Implicit in the next Lenin scenario is in fact a trade-off: the more destructive the natural or man-made blow, the less infiltration is necessary and, conversely, the more infiltration, the less destructive does the blow have to be. Consequently, based on the response to Katrina (civic order did not disappear, as is sometimes supposed, a point we return to in the conclusion), it would seem that a single nuclear explosion would not be sufficient to derange the regime, unless one imagined an infiltration and hence a plot of enormous size. (The infiltrators would need at a minimum to be in key positions in a number of different federal organizations and agencies, as well as in key positions in at least a number of the more significant states.) The next Lenin, therefore, will need to collect or control a number of nuclear devices to take out Washington, DC and several other large cities simultaneously or build an enormous conspiratorial network. In either case, his efforts prior to initiating the attack are likely to draw attention. How will he keep his plans secret and his various coconspirators silent? And if, to keep his plot secret, he limits the number of infiltrators, and relies on a bigger destructive blow, how much of the country would he be willing to destroy to rule the rest? This assumes, of course, that he and his coconspirators could get control of nuclear weapons without alerting anyone to their plans. One might argue that the calculations so far are off, because there is a fundamental difference between a natural disaster, with which everyone is familiar, and a nuclear explosion, which would be unprecedented. The “foreignness” of the explosion would give it a menacing and disorienting

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character unlike what we have experienced in any natural disaster. This may be true and is a plausible conjecture based on what we have seen of the American experience with subversion. We cannot know for sure. Neither can we know what the attachment of the American people would be to their regime nor what understanding of it would persist, whether this understanding and commitment would be solid or would be constant enough to withstand even the unprecedented violence the next Lenin scenario asks us to contemplate. Certainly, the events of this scenario or similar events would change American political life, even if the events did not result in a “takeover.” How subversive the changes would be would depend ultimately on the character of the American people. Of course, the attitude of Americans toward their regime and their understanding of it is the most important issue not only in subversion but in homeland security as well.

Conclusion Of the three threats that make up the clandestine threat to homeland security, subversion, although the most dangerous 60 or 70 years ago, is the least dangerous now. This is so because the growing destructive power of technology has the least effect on subversion. The “next Lenin” scenario makes the most of technology but considering this case shows the limits of technology when it comes to subversion. In another sense, however, since subversion is a constant possibility in a regime based on consent and majority rule, we might consider subversion the greatest threat that a democratic government faces. The threat in this sense is not so much violent and foreign as it is homegrown and passive, an inherent tendency in democratic regimes to drift and change in fundamental ways without realizing it, because they are so open. Having finished our survey of the threat posed by terrorism, sabotage, and subversion, we may now consider the appropriate strategy to pursue with regard to them. To do so, we will first consider some of the organizational issues that form part of the argument about the “new” terrorism and the “new” conflict.

Notes 1 William Rosenau, “Subversion and Insurgency,” Occasional Paper, National Defense Research Institute (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007); Zeyno Baran,

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“Fighting the War of Ideas,” Foreign Affairs, 84, 6(November/December 2005), which focuses on Hizb ut-Tahrir. 2 Anonymous, “ ‘Spiritual Heritage’ Hoax: Forbes Resolution Pushes ‘Christian Nation’ Claptrap,” Church and State, 62(June 2009): 15; Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006); Hugh Heclo, “Is America a Christian Nation?” Political Science Quarterly, 122, 1(2007): 59–87; Christian Smith, Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); Shariah: The Threat to America, an Exercise in Competitive Analysis, Report of Team B II (Washington, DC: The Center for Security Policy, 2010). 3 Indictment, United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, March 23, 2010, Count One, http://i2.cdn.turner.com/ cnn/2010/images/03/29/stone.pdf; Nick Bunkley, “Militia Members Released Until Trial in Michigan Plot,” New York Times, May 4, 2010, p. A16. 4 Shariah: The Threat to America, p. 7. 5 John E. Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1996); Rhodri Jeffrey-Jones, The FBI: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 149; Gregory Treverton, Intelligence for an Age of Terror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 49; Baran, “Fighting the War of Ideas”; Lindsay Clutterbuck and William Rosenau, “Subversion as a Facet of Terrorism and Insurgency: The Case for Twenty-First Century Approach,” Strategic Insights, 8, 3(August 2009). 6 Truman, “Veto of the Internal Security Bill,” September 22, 1950, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/ viewpapers.php?pid=883 7 Harry V. Jaffa, Equality and Liberty: Theory and Practice in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 169–89. 8 Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board, p. 101. 9 David Tucker, Enlightened Republicanism: A Study of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008). 10 Bunkley, “Militia Members Released Until Trial in Michigan Plot”; Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terror (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005),, p. 523. 11 Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle, edited with a preface by Lance Banning (Indianapolis, IN: The Liberty Fund, 2004), pp. 169–78, 180–1, 241. 12 Liberty and Order, p. 231. 13 Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 493. 14 Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” pp. 492–3. 15 William Blackstone, quoted in John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), p. 113.

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16 David Brion Davis, “Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47(September 1960): 205–24. 17 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 269. 18 Davis, “Some Themes of Counter-Subversion,” p. 209. 19 Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 16, 36. Hofstadter’s essay on the paranoid style first appeared in 1964. 20 Cf. Henry Tanner, “Italian Elite Embroiled in a Scandal,” New York Times, May 24, 1981, p. A1. 21 David Tucker, “John Quincy Adams on Principle and Practice,” in History of American Political Thought, ed. Bryan-Paul Frost and Jeffrey Sikkenga (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 271–86. 22 Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech,” March 21, 1861, http:// teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76. 23 Abraham Lincoln, “ ‘A House Divided’: Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” June 16, 1858 in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), volume II, p. 465. 24 Thomas DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Prima Publishing, 2002). 25 George William Hunter, A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (New York: American Book Company, 1914), p. 196. 26 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, p. 69. 27 David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987; 3rd edn), pp. 28–38, 202–12, 305–18, 286–7. 28 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988), pp. 283 – 286. 29 Mitchell Snay, Fenians, Freedmen and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), p. 51. 30 Snay, Fenians, Freedmen and Southern Whites, pp. 30, 31–4, 39. 31 Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, pp. 172 and 296–9. 32 Francis MacDonnell, Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 45–6, 49–62, 82–90, 124–6. 33 MacDonnell, Insidious Foes, p. 28. 34 MacDonnell, Insidious Foes, pp. 82–90, 87. 35 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, pp. 21–2; MacDonnell, Insidious Foes, pp. 27 and 32. 36 T. Harry Williams, Huey Long (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression (New

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York: Vintage Books, 1983); Richard White, Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (New York: Random House, 2006). 37 MacDonnell, Insidious Foes, p. 81. 38 US Statutes at Large, 81st Cong., II Sess., Ch. 1024, sections 2(1), (4), (7), and (15). 39 US Statutes at Large, 81st Cong., II Sess., Ch. 1024, section 4(a). 40 US Statutes at Large, 81st Cong., II Sess., Ch. 1024, sections 5–17, 22–30, and 100. 41 Columbia Law Review, 51, 5(May 1951): 606. 42 Truman, “Veto of the Internal Security Bill,” 43. Stone, Perilous Times, pp. 334–9. 43 Stone, Perilous Times, pp. 334–9. 44 Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board No 12, 367 US 1, June 5, 1961, p. 97, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/ historics/USSC_CR_0367_0001_ZO.html. 45 Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 US 444 (1969), pp. 444–5 and 447, http://caselaw. lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=395&invol=444. 46 Stone, Perilous Times, pp. 523 and 683, fn. 384. 47 Hugh T. Lovin, “The Lyndon Johnson Administrations and the Federal War on Subversion in the 1960s,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 17, 3(Summer 1987): 559–71. 48 Daniel Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 70–2. 49 “Sedition Prosecutions Rarely Successful, Government Tries to Beat the Odds in Trial of Blind Cleric’s Followers,” ABA Journal (October 1994): 16. The Blind Sheikh and his followers were found guilty in 1995. As noted, prosecutors charged the Hutaree with seditious conspiracy in 2010. Seditious conspiracy is plotting violent acts to overthrow the government and is thus a subset of subversion. 50 H. W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 260. 51 Shariah: the Threat to America, pp. 7, 8, 14, etc. 52 Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). 53 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, pp. 19, 27, and 29. 54 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, pp. 130–2; Jennifer Delton, “Re-thinking Post World War II Anticommunism,” Journal of the Historical Society, 10(March 2010): 1–41. 55 Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941–1969 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 1. For Christian communalism, consider Henry Wallace’s speech to the Free World Association in 1942, http://newdeal.feri. org/wallace/haw17.htm#15. 56 Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board No 12, 367 US 1, June 5, 1961, p. 138.

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57 John Fox, Jr. and Michael Warner, “Counterintelligence: The American Experience,” in Vaults, Mirrors and Masks: Rediscovering U.S. Counterintelligence, ed. Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009), p. 59. 58 Shariah: The Threat to America, pp. 125–31. 59 Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life of and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator (New York: The Free Press, 2000), pp. 273–6. 60 John Earl Haynes, “Exchange with Arthur Herman and Venona Book Talk,” February 2000, Borders Book Store, Washington, DC, http://www. johnearlhaynes.org/page58.html. 61 Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 21, 25, and 71–2. 62 Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pp. 28–9, 217, and 222; John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and the Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 266, 273–4, and 420–3; Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, p. 198. 63 Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, Spies, pp. 541–2. 64 Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, Spies, pp. 195–291 and 331–91. 65 Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pp. 98–9 and 106; Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, Spies, pp. 143, 188, 260, 281, 297, and 545; Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, pp. 81, 125, and 132; Haynes, “Exchange with Arthur Herman”; Haynes and Harvey Klehr, “Comment on Amy Knight’s review of Spies in the Times Literary Supplement,” http://www. johnearlhaynes.org/page73.html. 66 John MacGaffin, “Clandestine Human Intelligence: Spies, Counterspies and Covert Action,” in Transforming Human Intelligence, ed. Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (Washington, DC. Georgetown University Press, 2005), pp. 81–2. 67 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, p. 197. 68 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, p. 197. 69 Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, Spies, pp. 541–2; Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, p. 198. 70 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, pp. 132–3; Delton, “Rethinking PostWorld War II Anticommunism.” 71 Haynes, Red Scare or Red Menace?, p. 192. 72 Alan G. Theoharis, The FBI & American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2004), pp. 58–9; Jeffrey-Jones, The FBI, p. 170. 73 Stone, Perilous Times, p. 410. 74 James Chace “The Presidency of Henry Wallace,” in What if 2: Eminent Historians Imagine what might have been, ed. Robert Cowley (New York: Berkley Books, 2002), pp. 382–403.

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75 Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 239. 76 http://hizb-america.org/; Madeleine Gruen, “Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Activities in the United States,” Terrorism Monitor, 5(August 2007), http://www.jamestown. org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4377; Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 166–98; Steven Merley, The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States (New York: Hudson Institute, 2009), pp. 46–50. 77 Shariah: The Threat to America; Richard L. Rubenstein, Jihad and Genocide (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), pp. 11–23. 78 Rubenstein, Jihad and Genocide, p. 41. 79 Knut S. Vikor, Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 254–63; Rubenstein, Jihad and Genocide, p. 29. 80 Bernard G. Weiss, The Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2006), pp. 2–7. 81 Hendrik Hansen and Peter Kainz, “Radical Islamism and Totalitarian Ideology: A Comparison of Sayyid Qutb’s Islamism with Marxism and National Socialism,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8(March 2007), p. 61. 82 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, p. 270; Al-Muhajiroun, an offshoot of Hizb ut-Tahrir, is another radical Islamist organization. 83 Paul W. Blackstock, The Strategy of Subversion: Manipulating the Politics of Other Nations (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1964). 84 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, p. 266; Houriya Ahmed and Hannah Stuart, Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy (London: The Centre for Social Cohesion, 2009); Zeyno Baran, Hizb ut-Tahrir: Islam’s Political Insurgency (Washington, DC: The Nixon Center, 2004). 85 http://hizb-america.org/activism/local/195 -photos-khilafah-conference2009-usa. 86 Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 46. 87 Roy, Globalized Islam, p. 49. 88 Mandaville, Global Political Islam, p. 70. 89 “On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” quoted in “The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” NEFA Foundation, October 26, 2007, p. 2, http://www.nefafoundation.org/. 90 Laurent Murawiec, The Mind of Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Roy, Globalized Islam, p. 47; Faiza Patel, Rethinking Radicalization (Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, 2011), p. 10. 91 Abul a’la Maududi, Jihad in Islam (Beirut: Holy Koran Publishing House, 1980), p. 5. 92 Baran, “Fighting the War of Ideas”; Bruce Hoffman, “Radicalization and Subversion: Al Qaeda and the 7 July 2005 Bombing and the 2006 Airline Bombing Plot,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 32(2009): 1110; Shariah: The Threat to America, pp. 109 and 111–12.

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93 Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, pp. 175–6; Madeleine Gruen, “Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s Activities in the United States,” Terrorism Monitor, 5(August 22, 2007); Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, “MAS’s Muslim Brotherhood Problem,” Weekly Standard, May 25, 2005, http://www.weeklystandard. com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/651lbxol.asp. 94 Stuart A. Wright, Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 95 Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997; revised edn). 96 Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, p. 3; Pew Global Attitudes Project, National Survey, May 2006, reported in Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans, p. 31. 97 Smith, Christian America?, pp. 3–6. 98 Alex P. Kellogg, Lauren Etter, Keith Johnson, and Timothy W. Martin, “Militia Chief’s Mistrust Built, Friends Say – Portrait of Man Who Despised Authority; Undercover Agent Played a Role in Probe,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2010, p. A7. 99 CNN, “General explains statements criticized by Muslims,” October 17, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/10/17/boykin.apology/index.html; http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec03/boykin_10-21.html. 100 Theoharis, The FBI & American Democracy, p. 121; Jeffrey-Jones, The FBI, pp. 126–8; John Drabble, “The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE, and the Decline of the Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Alabama, 1964–1971,” Alabama Review, 61(January 2008): 3–47. 101 Blackstock, The Strategy of Subversion, p. 53. 102 “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” Pew Research Center, May 22, 2007. 103 The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010–2030 , Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, January, 2011, p. 141. 104 George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, The Writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, ed. John Clement Fitzpatrick, 1876–1940, http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2wwwwashington?specfile=/texts/english/washington/fitzpatrick/search/gw.o2w& act=surround&offset=38759003&tag=Writings+of+Washington,+Vol.+31:+ To+GOUVERNEUR+MORRIS&query=stock+of+abraham&id=gw310101. 105 Robert Wuthnow, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 62–63. 106 Fred Charles Iklé, Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

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The clandestine threat, networks, and strategy At several points in our discussion of the clandestine threat to homeland security, we have come across the issue of networks. Preexisting social relationships, or trust networks, figured prominently in our discussion of how someone becomes a terrorist. A physical network, the internet, underpins much current terrorist activity. This network and the infrastructural network of networks of which it forms an increasingly important part is a target of saboteurs. Subversion, like terrorism, relies on clandestine human networks. In fact, the clandestine threat to homeland security—terrorism, sabotage, and subversion—rests on the strength and efficacy of networks because clandestine activity relies on preexisting social networks to operate, as we argued in Chapter 2. Furthermore, networks play an important role in arguments that we face a “new” terrorism or a “new” conflict. Networks are supposedly new organizational forms that give advantages to various non-state actors in their conflicts with states, which are hindered by their cumbersome industrial age hierarchies. To understand the clandestine threat to homeland security and assess claims about the new terrorism and the new conflict, we must consider the role of networks and hierarchies. In doing so, we will prepare ourselves to understand the strategic implications inherent in the competition between different organizational designs. A good place to begin this task of understanding is with the al Qaeda network. In an interesting account of drug trafficking and terrorist networks, an author depicts al Qaeda prior to 9/11 in Figure 6.1.1 This is a network, a set of nodes and the links between them. Osama bin Laden was not the only decision-maker, the only one with authority in the organization. Far-flung

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Import-export firm Bank

Relief agency Construction company

Currency trading

Agricultural Company

Business/ finance

Training camp

Arms dealer

Arms dealer

Safe house

Safe house

Training camp

Military Foreign purchases

Equipment provider

Training camp

Safe house

UBL

Shura majlis

Security

Shura Media Video

Websites

Figure 6.1 The al Qaeda network, 2001 Source: Kenney, From Pablo to Osama.

elements made decisions and carried out operations as seemed best to them. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, for example, had some autonomy from bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders as he set up the operation. He used individuals and institutions in various places to move money or provide other operational support and these were not entirely under his control but carried out other activities as they saw fit. As the author’s description unfolds, however, it becomes clear that one could as easily depict al Qaeda prior to 9/11 in another way (Figure 6.2). This is a hierarchy. As the report of the 9/11 commission makes clear, even though the structure of al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks was not rigid, and lines of command and control were not always simple and clear, not all the nodes in al Qaeda were equal in authority.2 Some individuals in the organization had more authority than others and were “higher” in the organization chart than others. Was al Qaeda a network or a hierarchy? Is it now a leaderless jihad?3 To answer such questions, we should take a step back and consider the critical differences in these various organizational forms. This will lead us to the conclusion that the terms “network” and “hierarchy” are ultimately not useful and allow us to see that the struggle between networked non-state actors, such as terrorists, and hierarchical state actors is not a one-sided contest in

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UBL Shura Majlis

Business/ finance

Construction company

Bank

Relief agency

Shura

Security

Currency trading

Media

Foreign purchases

Military

Websites

Arms dealer

Training camp

Importexport Co.

Safe house

Figure 6.2 The al Qaeda hierarchy, 2001 Source: Kenney, From Pablo to Osama.

which the former have all the advantages. On the contrary, in the strategic competition between terrorists and a government, the advantage lies with the government precisely because it is a “hierarchical” organization.

Differences among organizations One way to understand the differences between organizations is to focus on two key variables: frequency of personal contact and the location of authority, the ability to make and enforce decisions. In a market, individuals deal with each other once or infrequently and authority has no location. The price mechanism structures the market, not any authority separate from the price mechanism. If the relationships in a market are recurring, they may come to rest on some sense of trust and certain expectations among those involved. For example, a contractor might conclude that it is more efficient to deal with one or two carpenters. Both the contractor and the carpenters benefit from this arrangement. Price is still important but a personal connection and some degree of trust also keeps the network together. The contractor might be willing to pay more to carpenters whose work is good and are willing to make his jobs a priority. The contractor has ultimate responsibility for the work and tells the carpenters what needs to be done but he trusts them and cedes some

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authority to them about how the work is done. All participants in this relationship share some authority and control over their relationships. The contractor may in fact work for the people who sometimes work for him, if they are the ones who have a job to do and the contractor has the skills and time to get it done. All these relationships together form what we call a network. Recurring relationships might lead to a more formal relationship, perhaps including a contract that specifies the terms of the relationship in a legally binding way. Alternatively, if for some reason the general contractor thinks he needs more authority over the carpenters and other skilled personnel (e.g. if the number or the complexity of the projects increases), he might hire them permanently. A company would then have formed. The general contractor would become the boss and the others work for him. The boss’ contact with his employees would be recurring but authority would clearly reside in him. Trust might well diminish, especially if the company becomes large, because the boss will not know the individuals who are actually doing the work as well as he did when he was a contractor. Laws and regulations would replace trust and expectations. The network or at least part of it would have become a hierarchy.4 Using the example of the contractor, we have described three different arrangements: a market, a network, and a hierarchy. What distinguishes both a network and a hierarchy from a market is that in the network and the hierarchy contact among the members is recurring. What distinguishes a market and a network from a hierarchy is that in the latter the recurring contacts take place under a central authority (see Table 6.1) If we consider just the network and the hierarchy, which are alike in consisting of recurring contact, what distinguishes them is the location of authority. In a network, it is decentralized, belonging to everyone in the network. In a hierarchy, authority is centralized, residing in one person or in designated individuals, whose different degrees of authority constitute the different levels in the organization, as depicted in Figure 6.2. The distinction between a decentralized organization or a network and a centralized organization or a hierarchy that we have just drawn, while true in a general sense, is also both inaccurate and inadequate. For example, we stated that in a network, authority belongs to everyone. This may be so, but Table 6.1 Characteristics of markets, networks, and hierarchies Market

Network

Hierarchy

Authority

Decentralized

Decentralized

Centralized

Contact

Infrequent

Recurring

Recurring

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it may not belong to everyone in equal degrees. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had less authority in the al Qaeda network than bin Laden. If authority is not equal, then the network, a system of recurring personal contacts, may begin to look like a hierarchy, recurring contacts with different degrees of authority. The al Qaeda network of 2001 (Figure 6.1) may also appear to be the al Qaeda hierarchy of 2001 (Figure 6.2) depending on whether we highlight the distribution of authority or the “unevenness” of the distribution that leaves some individuals with more of it than others. Two things are important to note at this point. First, networks and hierarchies are not entirely different, unrelated, and opposed forms of organization. The recurring contacts in a hierarchy mean that every hierarchy consists of networks or has network characteristics. These may be formal (interagency or interdepartmental working groups) or informal (those who worked on the president’s or governor’s campaign staff), but they will exist. Similarly, virtually every network has some “unevenness” or inequality in the distribution of authority among its recurring contacts, which establishes levels, as in a hierarchy. In understanding an organization, the important point then is not whether it is a network or a hierarchy, but whether and to what degree authority is centralized or decentralized. One analysis of decentralized organizations offers Hezbollah as an example, saying of it that “although the formal structure is highly bureaucratic, interactions among the members are volatile and do not follow rigid lines of control.”5 This remark shows the blend of centralization and decentralization that exists in organizations. Since the remark could equally apply to the US federal bureaucracy, it also reminds us that structures that are reputed to be quite different (a hierarchical bureaucracy and a networked terrorist organization) may be similar. In fact, it is most accurate to think of organizations not as fundamentally different and opposed but as placed somewhere on a continuum that runs from little or no centralization (a “leaderless” organization) to one that has a good deal of centralization, such as a military staff. Even at the ends of the continuum, however, we should remember that elements characteristic of the other end will be present. In the military, as in other centralized organizations, working through networks of friends or former classmates is often how things get done. In the “leaderless” world of extreme right-wing activity, it is clear that some individuals have more authority than others.6 As discussed in Chapter 2, even the small groups associated with such attacks as the London bombing have some kind of hierarchy or centralized authority. The operational leaders and spiritual sanctioners have more authority in these groups than the other members. Second, determining the location of authority in an organization is not only a question of how much we know about the organization or the kinds

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of connections its members have. The location of authority may change as the organization responds to changes in its environment. In discussing violent clandestine organizations and the US government, we have repeatedly remarked on how each centralizes in response to security threats. Indeed, the important point about an organization is not whether it is a hierarchy or centralized or a network or decentralized but how well its structure is adapted to the activities it carries out and the environment in which it does so. In addition, for organizations that are not bound by laws and regulations, such as violent clandestine organizations like terrorist groups, or an organization like Hezbollah that participates in established legal activities but also has covert elements, authority is likely to be more fluid than it is in governmental organizations or corporations. With these distinctions in mind, we can consider the advantages and disadvantages in the different ways of distributing authority. This will allow us to understand whether “networks” are superior to “hierarchies.” It will also bring us closer to understanding the strategic opportunities inherent in the clash of different kinds of organizations.

Advantages and disadvantages of different organizations In an organization with centralized authority, information flows up from the bottom and decisions and information flow down from the top. “Bottom” and “top” are defined by the degree of authority an individual has. Authority and rank go together; the more authority one has, the higher is one’s rank in the organization. Forms of authority other than those derived from rank exist in the organization, such as authority based on technical expertise, but rank confers ultimate authority. Rules and regulations express that authority. Those lower in the organization have less say in making the rules and regulations but are bound by them and therefore have less autonomy and less room to exercise initiative than those above them. The lower in rank one is, the more restricted and specialized is one’s task. This division of labor, supervised at each level, and denial of initiative means that trust is less important in a centralized organization. Each level knows what those below are supposed to do (this is often specified in writing) and works to see that it gets done. Trust may develop because of recurring contact inside the organization but no one relies on trust alone to see that those below them in the hierarchy do their jobs. Inherent in authority and rank is the obligation to provide oversight of those below.

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The centralized structure presented (perhaps caricatured) here offers advantages and disadvantages.7 First, we will discuss the advantages. It is a good way to organize a mass of poorly educated workers, for example. They do not have the knowledge or the skills to be trusted to operate efficiently or effectively on their own, so they need to learn to do simple tasks and be carefully supervised to see that they do them. In this setting, there is accountability. The boss at the top can find out what each of his workers or production lines has produced and if it is not producing enough, knows exactly whom to blame. Such a structure allows for fast and efficient implementation of decisions, once they are made at the top. The boss and every supervisor below the boss has the authority to impose change on those he or she supervises. In the case of the modern military forces, a centralized ranked structure was a good way to organize a mass of poorly educated soldiers into an effective fighting force. Especially within its tradition of attrition warfare, in which it sought to apply uniformly the greatest possible degree of firepower to overwhelm its opponents,8 the US military found a highly developed rank structure effective. Similarly, a government organization that employed many clerks to process more information would find a centralized structure governed by detailed rules and procedures and efficient way to organize. In addition, in all government bureaucracies, the accountability in a centralized structure is a great boon for those who care about the rule of law. Those who represent us in the legislature and wield our power and implement it through the bureaucracy can in principle find out exactly who made which decisions and who wrote which memos. Balancing the advantages of the hierarchy are certain disadvantages. It may be that implementation of decisions can happen quickly in a bureaucracy once the decisions are made but it is also true that the information needed to make those decisions may flow to the decision-makers slowly because it must go through many levels. Not only do the levels slow information transfer and, therefore, ultimately decision making, but they may well distort it. Even inadvertently, as information passes through many hands, it changes, much as the message that begins the children’s game of “telephone” emerges garbled at the end of the line of children who have transmitted it. But there may also be malicious distortion. Each level in a bureaucracy may have its own interests. Refracted through those interests as it moves along, information may arrive at the top both too slowly and in a distorted form. Whether the various advantages and disadvantages of centralization predominate depends on the environment in which the hierarchies must survive. As suggested before, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, centrally organized factories and armies may well have been the best way to take advantage of masses of relatively uneducated workers and soldiers.

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As the education and capabilities of workers and soldiers improve, that may no longer be the case, at least to the same degree. Similarly as information and communications technology improves, it may be possible to distribute or decentralize work. The relative advantages and disadvantages of organizational forms is not just a question of the historical period in which and the technology with which they operate, however. For example, firms that operate internationally may profit from a different form of organization. In this case, a head office would not know what would work best in a variety of different countries around the world, so it would make sense to decentralize, to disperse its authority down and out to branches operating overseas. This would be useful with regard to all decisions that require a high degree of local knowledge, such as local dietary laws. Improved communications and information technology have made such fl attening of authority possible by lowering the cost of doing business even over vast distances. This flattening gives more autonomy to lower levels and thus requires that a certain amount of trust move down and out as well. At the same time, improved communications and information management mean that a centralized authority can make decisions that do not require local knowledge efficiently and effectively for dispersed components. For example, an international corporation could centrally manage routine supplies (pens, stationery, computer software). Compared with the centralized model, the flattened structure just described should see an increase in the speed with which information moves to the decision-making level (because the decision-making level has moved lower) and less distortion of information (because it travels through fewer levels to reach decision-makers and, in this case, fewer cultural filters). The result should be faster and more accurately informed decision making. In the context of the US military, one might think of the regional commands as an example of this flattened hierarchy. For example, Washington has shifted authority for much activity having to do with the Middle East to Central Command, whose distributed personnel are in daily contact with counterparts throughout the Middle East. The command’s personnel, in principle, are better positioned to make the decisions that depend on local knowledge. Within at least one of these regional commands this flattening has led to experiments with additional flattening.9 Certain disadvantages balance the advantages of the flattened structure, however. First, faster, decision making may not necessarily be better decision making. Faster decision making may mean in some cases that bad decisions are made faster. Furthermore, the original or centrally controlled organization loses some control over the components to which it has distributed authority. The loss of control means that there may also be an increase in the difficulty of implementing any decisions that the center arrives

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at. For example, the Pentagon gave the Special Operations Command authority over the global war on terrorism but the regional commands were able to resist this attempted change.10 It may also be the case that the dispersed components “go native” or lose focus on the goals of the larger organization. Finally, from the viewpoint of the center, there may be less accountability or a decreased ability to identify who exactly is responsible for which decisions. All of this is the consequence of delegating authority down and out from a Central Command or decision-making authority. We can illustrate these dynamics by considering an example mentioned in Chapter 1, urban police forces. Historically, urban police precincts have had significant autonomy. This was the case originally because communications were so poor across urban areas that it was hard for central authority to know what was happening in the city. The decentralization was also good, however, because the police served a social welfare and order maintenance function that required more local knowledge and the flexibility to respond to local circumstances. As urban communications improved and the police lost most of their social welfare functions it made sense for the authority to become more centralized. New York City is a case where the recent centralized collection and analysis of crime statistics is thought to have helped reduce crime. This came at some cost to traditionally decentralized precinct authority but, arguably, increased security in the city. This does not mean that all police authority has been centralized. In fact, because of the kind of work police do and the situations they face, they still need discretion to carry out their jobs. Authority has to be left to officers on patrol. It is probably most accurate, then, to see the development of urban policing as the movement of some of the authority not only from the captain at the precinct to central headquarters but also to officers on patrol. If this is so, then the development of policing would correspond to developments in other fields. If the workers involved in an activity are well educated and what they must do cannot be reduced to simplified tasks performed repetitively but requires initiative and creativity, then flattening may be necessary to gain the full value of their work. Ultimately, the flattening may continue until it reaches an organizational design in which recurring interactions take place without any legitimate or accepted central authority controlling or directing them. The members of such an organization might be linked by nothing more than a common purpose and, implicitly at least, a good deal of trust that each is serving that common purpose. As noted, such an organization would be well suited to take advantage of highly skilled, motivated members. The Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front present themselves as such organizations. Their members and supporters claim that these fronts consist of autonomous individuals or groups united only by a common purpose

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(protecting the environment or animals) and a few operational rules, perhaps only a commitment not to harm humans. In such an organization, given the absence of layers between actors, information should flow as freely as it can and with as little distortion as possible. This should make the network, certainly its individual nodes, highly responsive and adaptive to its surroundings. It should also be resilient, since if one node runs into trouble, others can carry on. Another example of such a decentralized organization would be the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which started with six nongovernmental organizations united by a common purpose (banning land mines) and grew to include numerous organizations sharing that purpose. With no central authority dictating how members of the coalition should act, the campaign managed within five years to get a treaty banning land mines signed by 122 nations,11 out-maneuvering the traditional hierarchical government bureaucracies, including the US government, that opposed it. The decentralized form does have disadvantages, however. Having no central authority, there is no way to move the organization as a whole, unless this happens over time through discussions and information sharing which build a consensus. Such an organizational design would not be good for activities requiring the integration of different functions and activities at specified times. Managing military fire support, for example,12 or the flow of resources in an emergency would not be a strength of a decentralized organization. Decentralized organizations have no formal control over their members, although peer pressure might operate to some degree as such a control. Trust replaces control and this trust might be misplaced. If it is misplaced, there is also likely to be less accountability in a decentralized network. This is not to say that in centralized organizations there is always accountability. But the failures in accountability that we see in these organizations are precisely that, failures. Accountability is inherent in a centralized organization and when it does not occur, whether negligently or intentionally, it is a failure. A decentralized organization is defined in a sense as an organization in which no one has the authority to hold someone else accountable. This would be most true in a flat organization but since another way to understand authority is as the ability to hold someone else accountable, the more evenly distributed authority is, the less accountability there will be. Individuals or nodes in a decentralized organization may in fact hold someone accountable (“I won’t get that jerk to do my wiring again,” says the disgruntled contractor) but that is a personal not an organizational decision. One might argue that fear of isolation or not being hired again imposes accountability in the decentralized organization. This is no doubt true in a sense but it also moves the “network” closer to being a market: contact recurs only if the price and quality of service warrant it. Over time in a decentralized organization, the individual decisions of

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practitioners when communicated among members may begin to coalesce into an accepted set of standards of conduct. Peer pressure may support them. The next step is that the network or community establish mechanisms to enforce these standards. At this point, there is organizational accountability and some form of centralized authority among the members of the organization or community. We may summarize the different advantages and disadvantages of the organizations we have been considering as follows. Hierarchies, or more exactly organizations with centralized control, provide accountability and can enforce standards. They also can implement decisions more quickly and efficiently than networks, or organizations without centralized control, but they may make those decisions more slowly than the speed at which their environment is changing, since information must travel through many layers to get to decision-makers. In addition, the information may be distorted when it arrives. This means organizations with centralized authority may not be as responsive and adaptable as they need to be given the changes occurring in their environment. This means in turn that they face the long-term risk of extinction. Also, a centralized organization may not be very resilient. If the center fails, then the whole organization is at risk. Decentralized organizations, on the other hand, respond more quickly to their environments than centralized organizations because every node is in effect a sensor and a decider. Information does not have to go anywhere to be effective. It is also the case that as information from all the sensor–decider nodes travels through the system, the members in effect get to sample various ways of adapting to the environment, which allows for the increased adaptability of the system. As nodes communicate, they get to see what works and what does not, which allows the nodes and ultimately the system to deal with mistakes and distorted information in a way that is more efficient and effective than that in a centralized organization. Decentralized organizations are also more resilient. If one node fails, the whole network does not fail. But the lack of centralized control over members means that what the decentralized organization does in toto (the sum of the actions of the individual nodes) is unpredictable. This generates the risk that in the short term an individual node will do something that adversely affects the whole system. A node in a terrorist network might commit an act of violence that alienates the terrorists’ supporters. This means that decentralized organizations suffer from short-term risks, even as their adaptability lowers their long-term risk. Finally, decentralized organizations make accountability more difficult, since authority is diffuse and control limited or nonexistent. Table 6.213 summarizes these various advantages and disadvantages.

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Table 6.2 Comparison of centralized and decentralized organizations Centralized

Decentralized

Advantages

Speed Efficiency

Adaptability Resilience

Disadvantages

Brittleness Sclerosis Long-term risk

Lack of control Unpredictable Short-term risk

To reiterate, organizations have some blend of these advantages and disadvantages, since they are a blend of centralization and decentralization. The critical point is how an organization’s blend aligns with its tasks and the environment it is operating in.

Decentralized organizations and the clandestine threat Given what we have just presented on centralized and decentralized organizations, we can see that it is not very helpful to describe al Qaeda or the larger al Qaeda movement as a network and contrast it with a government hierarchy. It is useful, however, to consider how the organizational characteristics we have discussed affect the clandestine threat to homeland security. As we have seen in several instances, preexisting social relationships are critical to building the kinds of organizations that pose clandestine threats. For example, we noted how the Weather Underground on the left and the Order on the right both emerged from preexisting social relationships forged in larger legal and more peaceful movements. In these and other cases, a web of established relationships aided the mobilization and recruitment process. The array of preexisting social networks involved in this process include those consisting of family (or kin and tribe), ethnic group, religious organization, occupation, education, and residency relationships.14 These threads, knitted together through daily life, create a dense fabric that at each step supports the mobilization process. A sociologist examining how these relationship webs support social movements has identified three ways in which they do so. First, they perform a socialization function, helping members sort out who they are as they interact with the trusted members of the group. Second, network connections help create opportunities to participate, from the first demonstration or study group that someone attends, to training in bomb making. Third, network relationships affect calculations of

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costs and benefits that enter into someone’s decision to engage in the risks of clandestine opposition to the established order.15 What another study has called the “social and behavioral dynamics of small groups”16 make the decision for terrorism—to benefit the group even at one’s expense—more plausible than it might be if one were calculating costs and benefits by oneself and only with regard to oneself. We can see the mobilizing power of these relationship webs in the case of the radical Islamist movements that threaten the United States at home and abroad. These webs form part of the Islamic tradition. Mohammed himself recruited among family and friends and built his movement by relying on various preexisting social and commercial relationships. According to one scholar of Islam, the hostility that greeted Mohammed’s teaching required that his movement operate at first as a “secret society.” Recruiting through family and business relationships, people he could trust, Mohammed and his followers survived in their hostile environment and were able to develop their movement. Mohammed’s “political acumen and astute leadership” were also necessary, of course, but would not have been effective without the preexisting relationships within which he worked. Ultimately, through his political work and military campaigns, Mohammed built a movement that transcended the original world with which he began. Scholars have noted that within the Islamic world of the Middle East, the model of the Prophet remains effective. Both those who hold political power and those who aspire to it have used and continue to use and manipulate a variety of social networks to mobilize people and build their movements. In the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood has built itself and operated through a system of social networks.17 One thing that characterizes these movements is an organizational style in which “lines of authority and responsibility tend to be fluid and blurred.” The leader and his relationships are paramount but authority is not exercised through clearly established organizational lines. “Even when institutions such as formal bureaucracies have developed, the real business of ruling and political decision making has resided in personal networks.”18 As noted, similar claims could be made about governments in the United States but we are again dealing with matters of degree. Authority in American bureaucracies resides in an office rather than the person filling it much more so than in the Middle East or some other parts of the world. In the context of the Middle East, then, it is worth noting that the networked character of Hezbollah cited earlier (a bureaucracy without rigid lines of control) does not represent the emergence of a new organizational form19 but the reliance on a centuries-old technique of mobilization. For example, similarities exist between Hezbollah’s organizational and operational style and “the structure of religious authority” in the centuries-old Shiite academies of Najaf, Iraq.20 We can see even in the

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emergence of the small groups that attacked the United States on 9/11 and the London metro system in 2005 a replication of the Prophet’s methods, if not his intention. Nonviolent Islamic groups also use these techniques, of course (as do groups that are not Islamic) but, as we have seen, such techniques are particularly useful for violent groups that cannot publicize what they are about. Violent Islamic groups, for example, benefit from the traditional decentralized uncontrolled ways that Muslims give and distribute alms (the zakat ). Decentralized forms of organization are particularly useful for mobilizing, then. Every contact is a possible recruit and source of money and in a decentralized organization or movement contacts can proliferate rapidly because no one needs to seek the permission of a higher authority to make them. The internet—websites, chat rooms, Youtube—has made this approach more effective, as we discussed in Chapter 3. Yet, if we consider decentralized movements from the perspective of those who recruit or build organizations and try to manage violent politics, we can see that such organizations are problematic. Because they do not have a higher or controlling authority, they are difficult to direct. Strategic direction, therefore, will be difficult. Consider the case of the loosely structured group that carried out the attacks on the USS Sullivans (January 2000, which failed), USS Cole (October 2000), and the French tanker Limburg (October 2002). Abd al Rahim al Nashiri was the leader of this group. He had the idea of attacking US naval vessels and got bin Laden to support it. He went to Yemen to organize. A veteran of fighting in Afghanistan, Nashiri contacted in Yemen other veterans or people with some relationship to bin Laden. One of these was Waleed Mohammed bin Attash (also known as Khallad), an associate of bin Laden who had useful local knowledge and contacts. He bought the explosives for the group’s operations locally, for example. Also assisting were others with connections to bin Laden or Attash or through them to the Aden Islamic Army. The group’s first effort against the USS Sullivans failed when they put too much explosive in their boat and it sank. The second effort against the USS Cole worked. The third attack also succeeded in that the terrorists hit a target, the Limburg, but it was a failure in a larger sense. When it occurred, the attack on the Limburg was thought by analysts to be part of a strategy to attack the West economically by attacking its oil supply. In fact, the attack took place not as the result of a carefully planned strategy but because members of the group were upset that one of their acquaintances had been killed by the government of Yemen. The group lashed out at the first target it could find. Because the group struck a commercial vessel, insurance rates for the waters near Yemen increased substantially. This led to a decrease of traffic into the Yemeni port of Aden, which in turn cut the revenues of the Yemeni

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government. The government responded by cracking down on the group. Members and associates were arrested.21 The case of the Cole bombers shows the utility of preexisting relationships for mobilization and recruitment. Nashiri’s organizational work was made much easier by the fact that he could exploit these relationships in Yemen. Yet, they also posed problems for Nashiri and bin Laden. Relationships do not cease to exist when individuals join a clandestine violent organization.22 In the case of the Cole group, connections to an individual outside the group led the group to make an ill-considered operational decision that in turn led to the compromise not just of those directly involved in the Cole bombing but of many members of the larger network from which the bombing group was drawn. This occurred because there was insufficient authority in the group or, to put the same thing another way, because authority was dispersed in the group, so that no one could impose operational discipline. If an organization has fluid and blurred lines of control and authority, which has tended to be true of organizations in the Middle East, then it will be hard for leaders to impose strategic direction on the organization. We see another example of this in the letter of Ayman al-Zawahiri to the former leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zawahiri wrote that Zarqawi’s actions were discrediting the al Qaeda movement but he had no control over Zarqawi to correct this problem.23 The radical environmental movement in the United States presents another example of this phenomenon. Inspired by a set of ideas and a code of operational conduct, this movement can grow freely and readily adapt to local circumstances because there is no central authority to control or inhibit what the various components of the movement do. The movement proudly proclaims that anyone who adopts its goals is a member. Balancing these advantages is an important, perhaps decisive, disadvantage. As there is no central authority to inhibit mobilization, there is also no central authority to impose a strategy on those who are mobilized. Various chat rooms may create opportunities to discuss how the movement should go about achieving its goals but there is no way for the movement to impose on all its members any strategy that might be generally agreed upon. This creates great shortterm risk for the movement. For example, despite all the attacks the radical environmental movement has carried out, it has not suffered the opprobrium of other terrorist organizations because it has typically attacked only property. But some members of the movement have raised the possibility of killing humans. While freeing animals from research facilities may appear a sophomoric stunt, firebombing a researcher’s home and threatening her family is likely to produce a much more adverse effect on public opinion. If one tiny cell of the larger movement does kill someone, the whole movement will suffer,

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perhaps irreparably. As a decentralized organization, the movement has no way to control this risk. Not only will decentralized organizations have trouble with strategy, security is likely to be a problem for them as well. Preexisting relationships are important for violent clandestine groups or for those who want to start one because these groups are at risk. If an organizer wants to recruit someone, he must think about whether the person he approaches will turn him in. To minimize risk, organizers turn to those they trust and those they trust are those they already know. What constitutes a trustworthy relationship may vary from culture to culture,24 but the need for such relationships in risky clandestine activity is universal. Again, however, these relationships do not simply cease to exist when the individuals involved in them enter the violent clandestine group. If there is no central authority to impose discipline over communication and other operational and personnel matters, then the preexisting relationships may become, in fact, the bread crumbs that the authorities can follow to identify members of the clandestine organization.25 A cell structure can enhance security but only if the cells are compartmented, that is, if the links between the cells or nodes are kept to a minimum. To do this it is required that discipline or authority exists over the cells and those in them. In other words, limited linkages between cells or nodes imposed and enforced by a higher or superior authority creates better security but it also creates a centralized organization (hierarchy) and not a decentralized one (network). It is important to note that violent clandestine organizations are not free to choose how they organize. If they wish to survive and prosper, they must respond to their environment. If they face competent police, the evidence suggests that they will need to change from a decentralized into a more centralized organization, if they can. As we discussed in the previous chapter, under pressure from the authorities, Hizb-ut-Tahrir adopts “a rigorously enforced cell structure”26 to increase its security. Rigorous enforcement means centralized control to limit contacts and preserve security. The Provisional Irish Republican Army did the same thing when it found that the social networks that existed inside its hierarchical military structure made it vulnerable to the counterterrorism work of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Under interrogation, provisionals gave up names and they knew many names because of the social networks they were part of. Dealing with this threat required reorganizing to break contacts (personal links in social networks) and put cells under central control. A study of left-wing groups in Italy and Germany found the same dynamic at work.27 When violent clandestine organizations centralize control, they risk isolating themselves from their constituents, a significant disadvantage for any political organization, as we argued in Chapter 2. On the other hand, a closed

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cellular structure would be good for an organization working as the clandestine component of a subversive effort. This was the idea behind the clandestine wing of the Communist Party of the United States. This effort and its associated espionage work failed, however, because Soviet intelligence did not sufficiently curtail the decentralized or networked aspects of this clandestine organization. Too many people knew too many people. This network of contacts made mobilization (recruitment) easy but operating securely nearly impossible.28 In a sense, Soviet intelligence faced a difficult task. How do you get friends not to be friends anymore? Operational security discipline is sure to break down, even inadvertently as people talk and go about their daily lives. To an important degree, the inherently networked character of human life, so useful for mobilization, is at odds with the clandestine life. We may say, therefore, with regard to violent clandestine organizations that decentralization is good for mobilizing resources and recruiting but bad for security and strategic direction. On the other hand, centralized or hierarchical organizations are good for security and strategic direction but bad for mobilizing resources and recruiting. To get an optimal result, an organizer should try, to the degree possible, to modify his organization so that in a given environment it is situated on the centralized–decentralized continuum in such a way so as to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of each kind of organization. A key consideration will be the level of risk to the organization in the operational environment. Generally speaking, the more at risk the organization is, the more centralized the organization should be. 29 The organizer’s dilemma, however, remains that security and strategic direction, on the one hand, and mobilization of resources on the other are both necessary for success but that the former is best done through a centralized organization and the latter through a decentralized one. This statement of the advantages and disadvantages of organizational structure and the need for a non-state organization to balance these does not take into account its competition with a state. When a non-state and a state organization are in competition, the state has advantages in both strategy and mobilizing resources. Because it is centralized and has established enforceable command and control, a state can implement its strategy. A state is also an established mobilizer or extractor of resources. It can tax its people, impose duties on imports and exports and, typically, call on some sense of legitimacy to motivate its population. If it lacks legitimacy or to the degree to which it does, a state can use coercion. If it were not able to mobilize in these ways, it would not be able to exist as a state. When we discussed sabotage, we saw that modern industrialized states have vast unmobilized resources they can call on. As we saw in our brief review of political violence in American history, the American state responded to security concerns by

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mobilizing its resources and increasing its centralization, as well as its surveillance and coercive powers. The restraints on increasing this mobilization and these powers even more are not technical. They are only political. Non-state actors do not have these mobilizing advantages. Through hard work they may be able to mobilize resources but in the states they contend with, they face powerful, usually overpowering, mobilizing competitors. Added to this mobilizing advantage, are the advantages in strategy and security that centralized organizations such as states enjoy.

Strategy Strategic implications follow from our discussion of organizational characteristics. If we are dealing with a movement that has a historic and cultural tendency toward decentralized authority, we may surmise from the foregoing analysis that this movement will be better at mobilizing and recruiting than at maintaining security and imposing strategic direction. This appears to be true of the al Qaeda movement. 30 It is the “network” functions of this movement that are its strengths and its “hierarchical” functions that are its weaknesses. If we attack the network, we are attacking our opponent’s strength, a dubious strategic choice. This is one way to understand why a strategy of killing or capturing high value targets (i.e. key personnel in the movement) is unlikely to be decisive against the al Qaeda movement, although it may provide tactical advantages in some circumstances. We have managed to kill or capture a large number of al Qaeda leaders and driven the organization itself out of Afghanistan but it has reconstituted itself in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. As in any organization, the leadership of a decentralized movement is the end product of a mobilization and recruitment process. In the case of the Islamic movements that we oppose, this process is deeply rooted in social structures and in historical and cultural traditions, sanctified by the example of the Prophet. It is powerful and effective. We are unlikely to defeat it by attacking it or its end product, the leadership, directly. Trying to do so would be a strategic error. Defeating the mobilization and recruitment process directly would require disrupting or destroying the social and political structures and traditions through which it thrives. But this would require transforming large portions of at least the Middle East, hoping that different structures and traditions would rise from the rubble of the old and then waiting decades, perhaps centuries, for the benefi cial consequences to emerge. Beginning that transformation was, ultimately, the purpose of invading Iraq.

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Similarly, if we consider how this network works domestically, combating its ability to mobilize would require breaking down relationships within Muslim communities and disconnecting those communities from communities overseas. It is difficult to see how a liberal democratic government can do this and remain liberal. Such a government or regime has an alternative, however. Ultimately, integration not coercion changes traditional social relationships. The American Mafia is not the organization it was in the past. Those aspiring for membership in this criminal activity are a tiny fraction of the Italian community now solidly part of America’s middle class, whose members are well represented in the ranks of professionals and public offi cials. 31 This does not mean that no Italians engage in organized crime. Nor has the integration of Muslims in America, to the degree that it has happened, meant that no Muslim has become or will become a terrorist, as we discussed in the previous chapter. But integration, which is largely not a governmental function, will ultimately limit crime and terrorism based on traditional social relationships. Direct assaults on those relationships are unlikely to do much more than antagonize and alienate those in them, thus contributing to the exact opposite of the preferred outcome. That is not a sensible strategy. We would compound this strategic error if we tried to make ourselves more “networked” on the assumption that it takes a network to fight a network. 32 In the strategic struggle between the clandestine threat and those who oppose it, the side that wins is generally the one that best controls and limits its use of force. 33 This is because terrorism and efforts to counter it are not a war or a battle of firepower. The struggle takes place amidst a population and over its opinions (this is the strategic competition that we described in Chapter 2), rather than between two military forces separated from civilians. Civilian populations are sensitive to the violence inflicted on them. Unlike organized military forces, they are not trained or equipped to function in the midst of violence. Winning the struggle over the opinions of civilian populations requires, then, that violence be controlled and limited. Centralized authority is best for controlling and limiting the use of force because centralized authority implies control over the individuals in an organization and what they do. Decentralizing authority so that sensing and deciding to shoot occur in the same individual is an advantage only when bringing firepower to bear most efficiently is the key to success. That is not the key to success in our conflict with the al Qaeda movement, whether we are talking about contending with its manifestations abroad or in the United States. Because that movement’s mobilization and recruitment functions are so good and we operate under strategic, political (moral), and legal constraints on the use of force, control of the use of force and thus separating

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the sensor and the decision to shoot, by providing oversight and control of the shooter and inculcating that control through training, is to our advantage. For the same reason, the other constraints under which we operate, such as bureaucratic rules and regulations and respect for civil liberties, which have limited the application of the government’s power over individuals, are also to our advantage. All of this requires that we fight decentralized authority, a network, with centralized authority, a hierarchy. In this sense, it takes a hierarchy to fight a network. 34 A standard objection to reliance on centralized authority against a decentralized opponent is that the opponent will make decisions faster than the centralized authority and thus adapt more quickly. As we have argued, speed, agility, and adaptability are in fact advantages of a decentralized organization. Speed in decision-making, or adaptability is a good thing, however, as we have also argued, only if the decisions made quickly are made well. If bad decisions are made, making them quickly is not an advantage and decentralized organizations will tend to make bad long-term decisions. This happens because decentralized organizations will tend not to have specialists, since they will not have the resources to support specialization. Not having people who specialize in strategic thinking and long-term planning, decentralized organizations, we may surmise, will on average not be as good at these activities as centralized organizations. Centralized organizations are likely to have people who specialize in strategic thinking and long-term planning and a command and control function that can distribute their thinking throughout the organization. One might argue that networks, as transitory and shifting coalitions, do not need long-term planning or that their strength is that this “planning” is distributed throughout the network. But in this case, the network can no more be said to plan than a market can be said to plan the distribution of the resources that fl ow through it. There is no reason to think that the collective decision making of a market will suffice for strategic planning. Whatever happens in a market is a success because a market consists of all the exchanges that occur in it and the assumption is that exchanges only occur when both parties gain. Nothing like this is true of the strategic competition between a state and non-state actors. In any event, decentralized organizations that aspire to be something more than transitory (can transitory networks produce fundamental political change?) will suffer from their lack of a strategic planning capability. This will decrease the advantage that their adaptability offers them. On the other hand, the possibility of having a robust strategic planning capability helps offset the long-term risk of extinction that centralized organizations suffer from because of their impaired ability to sense their environment and change accordingly.

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The organizational analysis of the strategic competition between decentralized and centralized organizations suggests some more specifi c strategies, both short and long term. If our ability to affect mobilization and recruitment is limited in the short term, we are likely to face a prolonged struggle. In this case, we should emphasize limiting the damage to ourselves that might occur during this struggle. If we are likely to confront militant Islamists for some time, then we should do our best to make sure that they can do us as little harm as possible. The greatest damage they can do would come from their use of weapons of mass destruction, principally biological or nuclear weapons of some sort. Consequently, our greatest efforts should now be spent on stopping the proliferation of those weapons and the materials that can make them rather than on stopping the mobilization of terrorists. The short-term payoff in security is likely to be greater from counterproliferation than from the effort to destroy networks by capturing or killing their members or leaders. One might object that it is both necessary and possible to simultaneously target networks and stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, targeting networks might be one of the best ways to stop proliferation, as well as damage the operational capabilities that threaten us. This is true but, as we have argued, the strength of our opponent’s recruitment and mobilization networks poses a limit to the effectiveness of counternetwork strategies. We should also recognize that there is likely to be a tension between counterproliferation and counternetwork operations, especially when those operations focus on killing so-called high-value targets (HVTs). Counterproliferation puts a premium on multilateral cooperation; targeting HVTs will often require unilateral action that will make multilateral action on other issues more difficult to achieve.35 At a minimum, we will face trade-offs between counterproliferation and targeting HVTs. When we do, the analysis of our opponent’s networks argues for putting the emphasis in the short term on counterproliferation. Putting an emphasis on the multilateralism necessary for counterproliferation might also produce some long-term benefits. Lack of strategic command and control and thus the misuse of violence is one reason why the al Qaeda movement has not prospered, why it has lost support among the Muslim masses.36 That the militant Islamists have not suffered or the United States has not benefited more from this declining support is owing largely to the loss of support that the United States also suffered at the same time.37 An emphasis on counterproliferation and multilateralism could be a significant part of the long-term effort to build support for the United States and its allies. The prospects for this approach look good. The same polls that reveal decreasing support for the militant Islamists show broad support, even in the

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Islamic world, for ideas (democracy, capitalism, and globalization) that are more congenial to the United States than to its enemies. Simply emphasizing these ideas is unlikely to be decisive, however. We may be engaged in a struggle for public opinion and thus in a war of ideas but especially in such a war, actions speak louder than words. Remembering this and acting accordingly will allow the greatest possible opportunity for our opponents to suffer from the isolation, insecurity, strategic drift, and ultimate decline that violent clandestine political organizations are prone to.

Conclusion In Chapter 2, we discussed the strategic competition between non-state actors and states. We argued there that states had significant advantages in that competition. It was, in fact, theirs to lose. Proponents of the new terrorism have argued that developments in information, communication, and weapons technology have now tipped the competition in favor of the terrorists, in large part because the two former technologies had encouraged the development of “networked” forms of organization that the proponents argued gave significant advantages to non-state actors. The analysis in Chapter 3 concluded that none of the new technologies was necessarily decisive, especially the new information and communication technologies. We have just seen that networked or decentralized organizations, supposedly typical of non-state actors, are not inherently superior to the hierarchical or centralized organizations of states. Indeed, on balance centralized organizations, at least traditional nation-states, are better off, especially if they adopt strategies that play to their strengths.

Notes 1 Michael Kenney, From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), pp. 149–52. 2 Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, n.d.), pp. 67, 250–2. 3 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terrorist Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 4 Joel M. Podolny and Karen L. Page, “Network Forms of Organization,” Annual Review of Sociology 24(1998): 59–62. 5 John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, and Michele Zanini, “Networks, Netwars, and Information Age Terrorism,” in Countering the New Terrorism, ed. Ian O. Lesser,

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Bruce Hoffman, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, and Michele Zanini (Santa Monica: RAND, 1999), p. 62. 6 Stuart A. Wright, Patriots, Politics and Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 7 Francis Fukuyama and Abram N. Shulsky, The “Virtual Corporation” and Army Organization (Santa Monica: RAND, 1997), pp. 18–24. 8 Edward N. Luttwak, “Notes on Low-Intensity Conflict,” Parameters 13(December 1983): 335–7. 9 Christian M. Averett, Louis A. Cervantes, and Patrick M. O’Hara, “An Analysis of Special Operations Command—South’s Distributive Command and Control Concept,” Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2007. 10 Ann Scott Tyson, “New Plans Foresee Fighting Terrorism Beyond War Zones; Pentagon to Rely on Special Operations,” Washington Post, April 23, 2006, p. A.01. 11 Jody Williams, “David with Goliath,” Harvard International Review 22(Fall 2000): 88–9. 12 Fukuyama and Shulsky, The “Virtual Corporation” and Army Organization, p. 52. 13 Fukuyama and Shulsky, The “Virtual Corporation” and Army Organization, p. 19. 14 For example, Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, “Suspects in Britain Bomb Plot Linked by Family, School, Work,” Washington Post, July 8, 2007, p. A12. 15 Florence Passy, “Social Networks Matter. But How?” in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, ed. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 23–7. 16 Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” (New York: New York City Police Department, 2007), p. 16. 17 James A. Bill and Robert Springborg, Politics in the Middle East (3rd edn) (New York: HarpersCollins Publishers, 1990), pp. 139–51, 141, 144; Guilain Denoeux, Urban Unrest in the Middle East: A Comparative Study of Informal Networks in Egypt, Iran, and Lebanon (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 209–10; Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004) Quintan Wiktorowicz, ed.; and D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), pp. 112–17; Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 175, 179. 18 Bill and Springborg, Politics in the Middle East, pp. 161, 167. 19 John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, and Michele Zanini, “Networks, Netwars, and Information Age Terrorism,” pp. 39–41. 20 Denoeux, Urban Unrest in the Middle East, p. 188. 21 Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, n.d.), pp. 152–3 and unpublished research, Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. 22 Bonnie Erickson, “Secret Societies and Social Structure,” Social Forces 60(September 1981): 196; Kenney, From Pablo to Osama, p. 34.

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23 Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, http://www.globalsecurity.org/ security/library/report/2005/zawahiri-zarqawi-letter_9jul2005.htm. 24 Erickson, “Secret Societies and Social Structure,” p. 195. 25 Kenney, From Pablo to Osama, pp. 98–9; Vernon Loeb, “Clan, Family Ties Called Key to Army’s Capture of Hussein,” Washington Post, December 16, 2003, p. 27. 26 Peter Mandaville, Global Political Islam (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 266. 27 Peter Taylor, Beating the Terrorists? Interrogation at Omagh, Gough and Castlereagh (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), Appendix 3: IRA Reorganization Document, pp. 345–7; Donatella della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 113–35. 28 Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Alexander Vasiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 29 Erickson, “Secret Societies and Social Structure,” pp. 202–3. 30 Mark E. Stout, Jessica Huckabey, John R. Schindler, with Jim Lacey, The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of al Qaida and Associated Movements (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), p. 137. 31 Professor Howard Abadinsky, phone conversation, February 2, 2011. 32 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001), p. 15. 33 Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security 31(Fall 2006): 42–78; Ivan Arreguín-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919–1960 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Colonel Mark Cancian, “Capitalizing on Al Qaeda’s Mistakes,” Proceedings (US Naval Institute), 134 (April 2008), http://www. usni.org/magazines/proceedings; Stout et al., The Terrorist Perspectives Project, pp. 50–5, 126, 128, 137, 138, 141, 151, 211. 34 I am indebted to Chris Bellavita for suggesting this formulation. 35 Stephen Biddle, “American Grand Strategy after 9/11: An Assessment” (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, April 2005). 36 Stout et al., The Terrorist Perspectives Project, pp. 50–5, 120–3; Andrew Kohut and Richard Wike, “All the World’s a Stage,” May 6, 2008, The National Interest Online, http://www.nationalinterest.org/PrinterFriendly. aspx?id=17502. 37 Kohut and Wike, “All the World’s a Stage.”

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Conclusion In 1927, Major B. C. Dening published an article in the British Army Quarterly and Defence Journal on the “Modern Problems of Guerrilla Warfare.” Dening began by stating that the prospect of a great war was rather remote. All the more reason, then, to pay attention to guerrilla warfare. Looking at the history of such warfare, Dening concluded that it was fought “with the utmost ferocity on both sides.” As long as Great Powers could bring their means and will to bear, however, they prevailed. In the ten guerrilla wars that the Major identified between 1792 and 1927, the Great Power won five, drew two, and lost three. While this record was reassuring, Dening concluded after examining it that guerrilla warfare had changed to the advantage of the guerrillas. They now had better communication and weapons technology. With new means of communication, principally the radio, guerrillas could now reach a world-wide audience, including an audience in Great Britain. Progress in civilization, according to Dening, had made the British population unwilling to tolerate the ferocity with which in the past the British had suppressed national aspirations. Political propaganda was thus a new weapon that guerrilla forces were taking full advantage of to rally their supporters and weaken the will of the British. At the same time, the new weapon technologies available to guerrillas (bombs, automatic weapons, high explosive mines) allowed the guerrillas to attain an unprecedented level of lethality. This in turn might provoke a strong response from the British, which if carried out simply enhanced the guerrilla propaganda campaign. Finally, the Major noted that whereas in the past guerrillas had focused on attacking military forces and officials in hopes of wearing the Great Power down, they now focused on economic targets as well, to drain “the financial rather than the military resources of the Great Power.”1 In describing the new guerrilla warfare, Major Dening and some of his colleagues2 anticipated the proponents of the “new” conflict and “new” terrorism by 70 years or so. It is true that he did not mention decentralized or networked forms of organization, as his successors would. On the other hand, he did mention morality, a significant factor in decisions about how states wield their power, something that the advocates of the new conflict

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often neglect. In other respects, however, a situation that current experts present as a recent or emerging phenomenon, Dening described as already established in the late 1920s. Dening highlighted that the transfer of power to non-state actors was made possible by the new communication (radio) and weapon technologies (explosives). He noted an interest by non-state actors in economic targets. The Major even argued, as the new conflict theorists would do, that the net result of changes in communication and weapons technology and moral sentiment was an advantage to the guerrillas or non-state actors. The new conflict, then, is not so new. It had emerged by the 1920s and has been present ever since. It is more prominent now, as it was in the 1920s, because war between Great Powers seems remote. 3 In fact, one aspect of the new conflict, the weakening of state power, has been evident for many more than 70 years. The greatest weakening of state power that has occurred came about through the development of the idea of popular sovereignty in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its first implementation in the United States in the 1780s. Popular sovereignty holds that not the state but the people are the ultimate repository of power, and that the people grant only limited power to the state. As we saw in Chapter 1 and in our discussion in Chapter 2 of Beam’s erroneous claim that the American opposition to Great Britain was a kind of leaderless resistance, it is possible to see the history of the United States as a process of the people granting more power to the government, especially the federal government, from the 1780s onwards. In doing so, the people were centralizing their power in response to their changing domestic and foreign security needs. When we take this long view we see that, contrary to the claims of the new conflict theorists, at least as regards the United States, state power is actually strengthening over time. One of the security needs that has led to this increase in power is the threat that non-state actors pose, which we might see as an alternative expression of popular sovereignty. One consequence of growing state power in security matters has been the growing power of the state in the economy over the last 100 years or so.4 In the long view we can see that Major Dening was prescient in grasping what was happening in his confrontation with the forces of national aspiration. Conflict with non-state actors was changing. Major Dening, like the advocates of the new conflict, was wrong, however, we have argued, to conclude that the net advantage in the evolving strategic competition between states and non-state actors was with the latter. In his case, with regard to the affairs of the British Empire, he may have been right in a sense to reach this conclusion. As stated by him, the success of the Great Power depended on the application of means and will. Following World War I and, especially, World War II, the Great Powers not only had fewer means to control their

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empires, but they also lacked the will to do so. In the postimperial context, however, when states are concerned primarily with domestic security and aim externally not for control (certainly not territorial control) but for influence, they have at their disposal both sufficient means and the will to employ them. In this context, certainly when fighting on their own turf, we have argued that the advantage lies with states and not with non-state actors. Neither new technologies nor supposedly new decentralized organizational forms provide non-state actors decisive advantages over states. Indeed, as we have noted, terrorism, sabotage, and subversion pose the greatest danger to states when other states, not non-state actors alone, use them. Advocates of the new conflict have overestimated the power of non-state actors for at least three reasons. First, while they have noted how new technologies might help non-state actors, they have not paid sufficient attention to the ways that new technologies increase the power of states. The limit on the power of surveillance and weapons technology used by states, for example, is political and moral, not technical. Even within these political and moral limits, which may change, states are in a better position than nonstate actors to exploit technology. Second, in assessing the effects of nonstate actor networks, advocates of the new conflict have tended to assume that these decentralized forms are new and that they offer only advantages. Networks are not new, so they are not some recent element added to the competition between states and non-state actors that tips the balance toward the latter. They have always in some way been part of the struggle between established governments and their opponents, as we saw when considering the Prophet’s activities. Even if decentralized forms of organization were new, or if technology has made them more powerful now, they are not without drawbacks. Advocates of the new conflict have paid insufficient attention to the problematic character of networked or decentralized organizations, especially when these organizations are both decentralized and clandestine. In effect, the requirements and consequences of clandestinity nullify much of the advantage that decentralized organizations draw from that kind of organization. The evidence indicates that non-state actors come to understand this. Under pressure from states, they centralize or fail. Even if violent clandestine organizations transition into open political movements, centralization is still necessary for strategic direction. Since they are now open political organizations, however, centralization no longer poses the risk of alienation from base constituencies that clandestine political organizations suffer from. Finally, some advocates of the new conflict lower the standard for non-state actor success unjustifiably. Are citizens to consider their state a failure in meeting their security requirements if hurricanes harm them? Has a state failed its citizens if a terrorist attack occurs?5 If the standard is that states must provide

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risk-free lives for their citizens, then we have increased the power of nonstate actors by lowering their standard for success. They merely need to pose a risk to succeed against states. Considering the standard of success for state and non-state actors with regard to homeland security returns us to the homeland security dilemma we mentioned in the introduction. Determining what the threat is from terrorism, sabotage, and subversion is not simply a question of weighing the strengths and weaknesses of non-state actors and states. Or rather, even if we estimate properly that the threat is low, there is some threat and thus some risk to citizens. For homeland security, citizens’ appreciation of this risk is critical. How much risk are citizens willing to tolerate? This is not a question for which analysis alone can supply an answer. For example, we have argued that given the strengths of states and the weaknesses of those posing clandestine threats, the risk to states from these threats is low. Someone may feel, however, especially if the threat is of a terrorist attack with a nuclear or biological weapon, that any risk is too much and that everything, including significant abridgement of civil liberties, must be done to remove the risk. Even apart from such “low-likelihood/high-consequence” threats as nuclear or biological attack, some citizens may accept the apparent risk-free standard that some advocates of the new conflict have espoused. While accurate analysis of the threat alone cannot determine what risk Americans individually or as a people should accept, such analysis is nonetheless necessary to determine what the risk is that we face. In addition, evidence indicates that accurate information can lessen fear and lead to more accurate evaluations of threats.6 The effect of information on threat perception is one reason why political leadership should portray accurately both the threats to homeland security and the costs of reducing those threats. Over time, given how public opinion forms, effective and realistic risk communication should affect public opinion7 and reduce exaggerated perception of the threat. But for this realistic communication to take place, those involved in homeland security must themselves be accurately informed. Often at homeland security meetings, one hears officials say that terrorist attacks “paralyzed” a city or country. In fact, when one looks at these cases, one sees that there was no paralysis at any point during the crisis.8 People took precautions and altered their activities in varying degrees but carried on with their lives, much as did people who lived through the vastly more destructive urban bombing of World War II. Moreover, contrary to what some claim, lawlessness, looting, panic, and despair are not the inevitable consequences of natural or man-made disasters. People actually remain calm, help one another, and search for survivors.9 Officials and various experts today tend to overestimate the threat and underestimate popular resilience in responding to it, as did strategic bombing theorists prior to World War II.

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Underestimating popular resilience may be one reason why discussion of responding to homeland security threats has tended to put the emphasis on government action. Indeed, in keeping with the historical pattern, the perception of increased threat since 9/11 has led to further increases in and centralizing of government power. Indeed, one analyst has called for “rethinking” sovereignty and centralizing power beyond even the nation-state in some kind of supranational institution or set of institutions that will, as it defeats terrorists, somehow preserve the liberties of citizens.10 Like other such prescriptions, this one overestimates the threat and underestimates the power of states. In addition, it underestimates the threat that supranational institutions pose to democracy and to the liberties of citizens that it rightly cherishes and wishes to preserve. If we seek above all to protect the liberties of citizens and the sovereignty of the people, perhaps we should seek to reinvigorate this sovereignty. This approach would make sense given the clandestine threats we face. A state response is appropriate for an open threat from another state. But to the threat from clandestine non-state actors, whether acting independently or at the behest of a state, the people form a necessary part of the response. The clandestine threat is hidden among the people; therefore, the people are best positioned to counter it. To see what invigorating the popular response to homeland security threats might mean, consider the worst case, the threat of a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear (CBRN) terrorist attack. Such an attack is unlikely, we have argued, but still possible. Unlike an attack by the Soviet Union that would have destroyed the United States, a terrorist attack with a nuclear or biological weapon will leave much of the United States untouched. This means that most Americans and their religious and secular nongovernmental associations will also remain untouched. This represents an immense resource. A nation of active, participating citizens, who take responsibility for themselves and their families and neighbors would increase the resilience of American society in the face of a CBRN attack, as well as in the aftermath of natural disasters. For example, many churches and church organizations responded to Hurricane Katrina by providing food, shelter, and other care. Such efforts are often spontaneous but are more effective when organized, for example, through the Red Cross. Government has a role too, its centralized command and control functions being unsurpassed certainly for organizing disparate efforts. But government involvement should occur so as to encourage rather than discourage reasonable citizen participation. Citizen participation should not be restricted to dealing with the consequences of terrorist attacks, however. Citizens might also help prevent such attacks. This has already happened. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear airplane bomber (2009), was subdued by his fellow passengers, as was

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Richard Reid, the airplane shoe bomber (2001) before him. The fizzling, smoking bomb ignited by Faisal Shahzad in Times Square (2010) was spotted by vendors working nearby. Reporting by vigilant citizens has led the police to break up other plots. The Department of Homeland Security is encouraging citizen vigilance with the slogan, “If you see something, say something.” The Los Angeles Police Department has instituted a program, called iWATCH, which aims to educate citizens on what to look for and to involve them actively in preventing terrorism. As the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief said, “an alert community can act as a deterrent to terrorism, and a trained public can feel more in control of their lives, if they partner with law enforcement in the fight against terrorism.” The Major Cities [Police] Chiefs Association, representing the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the United States and Canada, endorsed iWatch in 2009.11 As we noted in Chapter 3, alert citizens would pose a major security threat to the plan to build a nuclear terrorist device on a remote ranch in the American west. Any talk of citizen participation in preventing attacks raises concerns about vigilantism. Reports of volunteers patrolling the southwest border, for example, suggest interference with the work of the professionals charged with border security, or worse. In surveying the history of political violence in the United States in Chapter 1 and popular responses to the fear of subversion in Chapter 5, we noted the injustices that have accompanied citizen vigilance. But we should also remember that the government’s responses have not been free of injustice. President Wilson’s inflammatory rhetoric was in part to blame for anti-German violence during World War I. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, who had lived through the anti-German hysteria of World War I as a government official, took steps to prevent it from recurring but notoriously did nothing to resist popular agitation against Japanese Americans. Both increased government power and increased citizen vigilance might lead to abuses, but only the latter will increase the capacities and the freedom of American citizens. Beyond working to prevent terrorist attacks and deal with their consequences, there is other work that citizens should undertake. Throughout the Cold War, the US government took steps to preserve the constitutional succession of legitimate authority in the United States even in the event of a cataclysmic attack. Such preparation for the continuity of government is a vital task, but even more vital is ensuring the continuity of the principles and spirit of American democracy. If much of the physical United States survives a terrorist CBRN attack, will the same be true of the political United States? Our typical response every time there is an attack has been to place more restrictions on Americans. What would we do in the aftermath of a CBRN attack? How much of our freedom will we be willing to surrender—or, perhaps more

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to the point, how much will be taken from us by well meaning officials and their “expert” advisors to deal with the consequences of such an attack and to prevent another? Would free government survive? We have argued that the decentralized, federal nature of our political institutions will help preserve our political way of life, much as the decentralized nature of our infrastructure makes it resilient. We have no one centralized political point the failure of which dooms us, and distance from an attack may promote political as well as physical recovery. But we will reap the benefit of this advantage only to the degree that the American people, the ultimate sovereign power in the United States, are prepared. Unlike the legal and bureaucratic preservation of authority in the federal government, this preparation is not best left to government. Perhaps the best immunization from the harms of a catastrophic attack is citizen involvement in civic and political life, including a willingness to discuss the possibility of such an attack. The same civic organizations that play a role in dealing with the physical aftermath of an attack should play a role now in preparing for the political aftermath. This would be a boon to our political well-being, whether the attack ever comes or not. All the more reason, then, for the government to see the American people and, above all, for the people to see themselves not as subjects requiring protection but as citizens participating in the risks and rewards of citizenship.

Notes 1 Major B. C. Dening, “Modern Problems of Guerrilla Warfare,” Army Quarterly and Defence Journal 13(1926): 347–54. 2 Timothy Llewellyn, “The Development of British Counterinsurgency Policies and Doctrine, 1945–1952,” Thesis, King’s College, University of London, 1991. 3 David Tucker, Confronting the Unconventional: Innovation and Transformation in Military Affairs, Letort Paper (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2006). 4 “Taming Leviathan,” Economist, March 17, 2011, http://www.economist. com/node/18359896?story_id=18359896; Jennifer Delton, “Rethinking Post-World War II Anticommunism,” The Journal of the Historical Society 10(March 2010): 19–20. 5 Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), pp. 16–17, 215 and passim. 6 Damon P. Coppola, “Gripped by Fear: Public Risk (Mis)perception and the Washington, DC Sniper,” Disaster Prevention and Management 14, 1(2005): 32–54; Lasse Wallquist, Vivianne H. M. Visschers, and Michael Siegrist, “Impact of Knowledge and Misconceptions on Benefit and Risk Perception

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of CCS,” Environmental Science & Technology 44(September 1, 2010): 6557–62. 7 Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). 8 Coppola, “Gripped by Fear.” 9 Bobbitt, Terror and Consent, pp. 216–218, perpetuates the disaster myths; that they are myths, see Binu Jacob, Anthony R. Mawson, Marinelle Payton, and John C. Guignard, “Disaster Mythology and Fact: Hurricane Katrina and Social Attachment,” Public Health Reports (1974–) 123(September/ October 2008): 555–66; Timothy Berezina and Joanne M Kaufman, “What Really Happened in New Orleans? Estimating the Threat of Violence During the Hurricane Katrina Disaster,” Justice Quarterly 25(December 2008): 701–22; Mark Constable, “Disaster Mythology: Looting in New Orleans,” Disaster Prevention and Management 17, 4(2008): 519–25; Kathleen Tierney, Christine Bevc, and Erica Kuligowski, “Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in Hurricane Katrina,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Scienc e, 604(March 2006): 57–81. 10 Bobbitt, Terror and Consent, pp. 507–8 and 539–45. 11 http://blog.dhs.gov/2010/11/if-you-see-something-say-something.html; http://www.lapdonline.org/iwatchla; Eileen Sullivan and P. Solomon Banda, “New iWatch Program Hopes to Collect Tips on Possible Terrorist Actions,” Denver Post, October 4, 2009, http://www.denverpost.com/news/ ci_13481163#ixzz1H4xq6JCg.

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Vikor, Knut S. Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. “Vulnerability of Telecommunications and Energy Resources to Terrorism.” Hearings before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, U. S. Senate, 101st Congress, First Session. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989. Waldrep, Christopher. Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Wallquist, Lasse, Vivianne H. M. Visschers, and Michael Siegrist, “Impact of Knowledge and Misconceptions on Benefit and Risk Perception of CCS.” Environmental Science & Technology 44(September 1, 2010): 6557–62. Watts, Clinton. “Foreign Fighters: How Are They Being Recruited? Two Imperfect Recruitment Models.” Small War Journal. 2008. http://smallwarsjournal.com/ blog/journal/docs-temp/69-watts.pdf. Weimann, Gabriel. Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2006. Weiss, Bernard G. The Spirit of Islamic Law. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2006. Werrell, Kenneth P. Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. Whelehan, Niall. “‘Cheap as Soap and Common as Sugar’: The Fenians, Dynamite and Scientific Warfare,” in The Black Hand of Republicanism: Fenianism in Modern Ireland, edited by James McConnel and Fearghal McGarry, 105–20. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009. White, Richard. Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long. New York: Random House, 2006. Wiktorowicz, Quintan, ed. Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004. Wilhelm, Cornelia. “Ethnic Germans as an Instrument of German Intelligence Services in the USA, 1933–1945,” in Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century, edited by Heike Bungert, Jan G. Heitmann, and Michael Wala, 35–57. London: Frank Cass, 2003. Williams, Daniel. God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Williams, T. Harry. Huey Long. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Witcover, Jules. Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914–1917. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1989. Wittes, Benjamin. “Innovation’s Darker Future: Biosecurity, Technologies of Mass Empowerment, and the Constitution.” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, December 2010. Woolsey, Lester H. “Litigation of the Sabotage Claims against Germany.” The American Journal of International Law 35, 2(April 1941): 282–304. Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Wright, Stuart A. Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Wuthnow, Robert. America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

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Young, Joseph K. and Laura Dugan. “Why Do Terrorist Groups Endure?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, February17, 2010. Zimmerman, Peter D. and Jeffrey G. Lewis. “The Bomb in the Backyard,” Foreign Policy 157(November/December 2006): 33–9.

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Index Abdulmutallab, Umar Farouk 247 abolitionism 13, 15, 18 Abu Nidal Organization 59 airpower theory 147–8, 149–50, 152, 246 Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) 176, 187 anarchists 5, 23–4, 32, 51, 128, 187 Animal Liberation Front 35, 38 , 227–8 anthrax attacks (2001) 118 antiabortion movement 41 Anti-Horse Thief Association 27 Atta, Mohamed 68 Aum Shinrikyo 36, 38, 65, 70, 74, 75, 95 chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons 108, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 125 Auschwitz 56 Ayers, William 52 Ba’asyir, Abu Bakar 114 Banna, Hassan al- 204 Beam, Louis 53–4, 60 Bentley, Elizabeth 186 Berg, Alan 34 bin Attash, Waleed Mohammed (Khallad) 232 bin Laden, Osama 3, 38, 52, 63, 83, 86, 223, 232 Black Liberation Army 30 Black Panthers 30 Boston Massacre 11 Boston Tea Party 11 Branch Davidians 35 Brooks, Preston 15

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Brown, John 15–18, 68 abolitionists 16 Declaration of Liberty 16 as martyr 17 and the media 17 and terrorism 17 Catholics 1, 2, 3, 13, 17, 85, 88, 178–80 Central Intelligence Agency 35, 207 centralized organization 219, 220, 221–6, 229–30 Chambers, Whittaker 186 chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons (CBRN) 107–27, 247 biological 117–18 buying 122–3 chemical 117 future 126–7 insider threat 125 Iraq 115 nuclear 119–21 al Qaeda 112–16, 121, 124–6 radiological 118–19 Russia 122 stealing 123–4 Chesser, Zachary 102 Christian Identity 60, 206 Christianity 16, 17, 20 Christians 3, 41, 171, 207 Civil War 18 clandestinity 3, 4, 53, 56–8, 78, 245 organizational decline 57–9, 61, 62, 69, 76, 79 organization 230–4 Clarke, Richard 36

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clear and present danger doctrine 188–9 Clinton, Bill 35 COINTELPRO 33 combatants 4, 135 Committees of Correspondence 12 communications revolution 6, 13, 16–17, 28 Communist Party (CPUSA) 185, 186, 190, 196–7, 201 communists 3 complexity theory 156 Confederate Army 19 conflict see new conflict Continental Congress 12 continuity of government 248–9 Coughlin, Charles 184–5 counterterrorism 76–7 Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord 58 Crenshaw, Martha 57 decentralized organization 6, 28, 96, 219–24, 226–30 Islamic 231–2 mobilization 232 security 234–5 strategic direction 232–4 Declaration of Independence 14, 16, 20, 23, 32, 37, 42, 79, 183 DeFreeze, Donald 63–4 Democratic party 13 Dening, B. C. 243–4 Dilger, Anton 137 dynamite 23, 24, 110 Earth Liberation Front 38, 227–8, 233–4 Egyptian Islamic Jihad 68 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Fatherland and Freedom) (ETA) 41, 68, 69 evangelicals 87, 206–7 Fassnacht, Robert 31 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 33, 34, 38, 39, 102, 104, 207 see also sabotage, terrorism extra-legal activity 33

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Fenians 23 foreign fighters 103 Franklin, Joseph Paul 31 Fries’ rebellion 12 Fuchs, Klaus 200 Furrow, Buford 53 Geneva conventions 4 German Americans 138, 183–4 globalization 5 Gold, Harry 200 golden rule 16 Greenglass, David 200 Guevara, Che 86 habeas corpus 20 Hamas 60, 74, 125, 202 Hamburg 148, 153 Harper’s Ferry 15, 18 hate crimes 2, 30 Hezbollah 60, 74, 83, 112, 125, 223, 224, 231 hierarchy see centralized organization Hiss, Alger 186 Hizb ut-Tahrir 86, 202, 234 Marxism-Leninism 203 homeland security 30 homeland security dilemma 7, 246 House Un-American Activities Committee 182, 186 Hutaree 171 individualism 13, 14 informants 40, 87, 104–5 information warfare 36 infrastructure 143–4 computers 144 government protection 144–5 political and physical 206 redundancy 150–3 resilience 150–3, 156 substitution 154–5, 156 terrorist threat 159–61 vulnerability 145, 146, 150 insider threat 135 International Campaign to Ban Landmines 228

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INDEX

internet 96, 97–100, 102, 104–7, 232 fund-raising 106 training 105–6 Iran 74, 125 Iraq 236 Irish 1, 13, 88, 136–7 and black violence 19 and terrorism 1, 64, 84, 85 see Molly Maguires Irish Republican Army 5, 41, 57–8, 111, 234 Sinn Fein 60, 62 Irish Republican Brotherhood 5 Islam 51, 52, 57, 66, 84, 85–8, 207 converts 57, 68, 84, 86, 204 Islamism 201–7, 231 Communism and Fascism 203–5 Israel 113 iWATCH 248 Japanese internment 184 Jefferson, Thomas 16, 174, 175, 176–7 Jemaah Islamiyah 114 Jewish Defense League 34 Jihad 98 Jihad Jane see LaRose, Colleen Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) 33, 38 Kasi, Mir Aimal 35 Katrina (hurricane) 158, 210 Khallad see bin Attash Khan, A. Q. 122–3 Ku Klux Klan 2, 19, 20, 26, 29, 31, 81, 182 Lashkar-e-Taiba 125 Laqueur, Walter 64 LaRose, Colleen, (Jihad Jane) 103 Leaderless Jihad (Sageman) 98–101, 102 leaderless resistance 53–4, 223, 244 Lee, Robert E. 15 liberal democracy 4 Lincoln, Abraham 180–1 Long, Huey 184–5, 191, 194 Los Angeles Police Department 248

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Lovejoy, Elijah 15 lynching 12, 14, 19, 20, 25, 26 decrease 29 McCarran Act (1950) 186–7, 188, 201 Truman veto 187–8 McCarthy, Joseph 172, 186, 189–90, 195 McCauley, Clark 68 McVeigh, Timothy 37, 38, 53, 54, 64 madrassa 74 Madrid bombing (March 11, 2004) 59–60, 101, 103 martyrdom 17 Masons 3, 178–80 Matthews, Blayney F. 135, 138, 139 Maududi, Syed Abul A’ala 87, 204 May 19 Communist Organization 31 military 4, 28, 38 militias 27, 32, 35, 37 millennialism 72, 73 mobs see rioting Mohammed 231 Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh 220, 223 Molly Maguires 21–2, 69–70 Morgan, J. P. 137 Mormons 3, 13, 17, 178–80 Muhammad, Abdulhakim Mujahid 54 Murrah Federal building 37, 38, 52, 64, 108, 110 Murray, Philip 200–1 Muslim Brotherhood 68, 202, 204, 231 Muslims 3, 41, 84–5, 86–7, 171, 202 American 87–8, 205, 206–7, 208–9 Nashiri, Abd al Rahim al- 232 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9-11 Commission) 61, 72 National Emergency Support Team 33 national guard 27 National Security Agency 105, 144–5 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 145 National Security Directive 42 145 nation-state 5, 6, 97–8

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network see decentralized organization industrial web theory 143–4, 148, 150–1 Newburgh, New York 102 new conflict 5–6, 43, 59, 70, 96, 107, 108, 219, 243–4, 245 new terrorism 5, 6, 38, 59, 70, 83, 95–6, 108, 109, 243–4 New York City 13, 138 Police Department 38, 227 next Lenin 209–11 9-11 attacks 34, 38, 62, 71, 95, 108, 157, 158 non-combatants see combatants non-state actors 5, 6 CBRN 111–12, 114, 116 power of 28, 97–8, 107, 128, 159, 243–6 Obama administration 39 Olson, Mancur 154–5 Order, the 59, 230 Padilla, José 38, 119 Philadelphia 13 Pinkerton detective agency 22, 28 police 4, 23, 28, 39, 80, 227 development of 18, 27 and riots 42 political violence decline 37 definition 2 popular sovereignty 27 Posse Comitatus 32 Presidential Decision Directive 63 145 President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection 145 Provisional Irish Republican Army see Irish Republican Army al Qaeda 5, 38, 39, 56, 59, 61, 69, 111, 202, 239 infrastructure 160 mobilization 236–7 structure 219–20 see also chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons

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Qutb, Sayyid 87 radicalization 67–8, 104 prisons 85 Rahman, Omar Abdel (Blind Sheikh) 36, 214n. 49 Red Scare 24 Redeemers 20 regulators 11, 12, 32 Reid, Richard 247 Revolutionary war 11–12 rioting 11, 12, 15 antebellum 13 Civil War 18–19 decrease of 29 draft 19 racial 26, 29 urban 30, 31, 36 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 184, 185, 191 Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel 186, 197, 200 Ruby Ridge 35 Rudolph, Eric 37, 53, 54, 60, 70 sabotage 4–5, 6, 135 American 141, 153 Black Tom 137–8 Chinese 145–6 Civil War 136 definition 2, 136 different from terrorism 146–7 Federal Bureau of Investigation 138, 140 German 139–41 information technology 161–4 infrastructure 142–3 intelligence 142, 151, 153–4 Islamist 159, 161 Soviet 141–2, 161–2, 163 terrorist 142–3, 157, 159–61, 163–4, 165 World War I 136–8 World War II 138–41, 153, 156 see also infrastructure Sabotage! The Secret War Against America (Sayers and Kahn) 138 Sageman, Marc 97, 98–105, 107

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INDEX

Secret Six 15 seditious conspiracy 171, 190, 214n. 49 al Shabab 101–2 Shahzad, Faisal 53, 54, 248 Shays’ rebellion 12, 32 Shultz, George 82, 83 slavery 13, 180 Smadi, Hosam Maher Husein 102 socialists 3 Southern Poverty Law Center 37 sovereignty 4 special operations forces 142, 143, 151 Specter of Sabotage (Matthews) 135 State Department 34 state police 27 strategic bombing 148–9, 152 tactical and strategic supply 155 strategy 76–83, 236–40 government-terrorist competition 77–83, 96, 107, 110–12, 127–8, 219, 220, 235–8, 244–6 Stuart, J. E. B. 15 Stuxnet 162–4 subversion 2, 4–5, 6 Communist 193–4, 197–200 Declaration of Independence 173–5, 190 definition 3, 172–5 espionage 199 Federal Bureau of Investigation 201 future 208–11 Islamist 204–6 Subversive Activities Control Board 187 Sumner, Charles 15 Symbionese Liberation Army 64 Taliban 61 technology 23, 25, 42, 96 Fenians 23 terrorism 95 see internet; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons telegraph 19, 97 terrorism 31, 109 decline of 31, 34, 40, 57–8, 76

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definition of 2, 5, 30 ethnic 57 entrepreneurs 63–4, 66 Federal Bureau of Investigation 33, 38–9 free rider 63 freedom 79–80 government response 62 grievances 51–2, 63 homegrown 49, 83–8 individual choice 50–62 and infrastructure 36 international 31–2 Islamist 36, 39, 51, 55, 98 leaders 69 left-wing 30–1 lone wolves 53–4, 105 media 81–3 organization 56, 96, 97–8 1970s 40 psychology 64–6 group 66–9, 76–7 Puerto Rican 29–30, 51 religious 57, 70–5 and economics 72–5 right-wing 37, 51, 83, 112 trust 56, 66, 104 see also internet; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons; new terrorism; sabotage; strategy Truman, Harry 172 Turner, Nat 12 TWA 847 82, 112 Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) 31 union leagues 182–3 USS Cole 232 USS Sullivans 232 vigilantes 14, 19, 27, 248 Vinas, Bryant Neal 68, 102 violence, against Blacks 26 antiabortion 37 and Civil Rights Movement 29 decline of 41, 42 ethnic 25

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government response 32–4, 36, 38–40, 42 immigrant 25 labor 21–3, 24 left-wing 30 and Reconstruction 19–21 rural 32, 35 see technology; terrorism Vinas, Bryant Neal 68, 102, 104

Welch, Joseph 195 What You Should Know about Spies and Saboteurs (Irwin and Johnson) 138, 140 Whig party 13 Whiskey rebellion 12 White supremacists 206 World Trade Center 3, 35, 70, 95

Wallace, Henry 198–9, 200, 201 weapons of mass destruction see chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons Weather Underground 30, 51, 59, 67, 230

Yousef, Ramzi 35, 38, 53, 54

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Zarqawi, Abu Musab al- 115–16 , 233 Zawahiri, Ayman al- 68, 233 Zazi, Najibullah 102

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