More Lone Terrorist Wolves -A Near-Miss in Boston Shows the Reach of Islamic State in the U.S.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-lone-terrorist-wolves-1434150724
At first, last week’s shooting in a Boston parking lot of a man wielding a knife sounded as though it would become another story of the police overreacting. On Friday federal authorities in Boston said the dead man was the ringleader of a plot to behead American citizens or kill Massachusetts cops, in solidarity with Islamic State. The risk of “lone-wolf” terror attacks in the U.S. continues.
Federal prosecutors in Boston also arrested two other men and charged them with helping the dead assailant, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim. The authorities said that Nicholas Rovinski, who calls himself Nuh Amriki, and David Wright, known as Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq, intended to behead Pamela Geller, who staged a Mohammed cartoon show in Texas. The plans changed when Rahim decided instead to go after the police.
It is certainly disturbing to learn that some Americans can be transformed into agents of murder for Islamic State. How that is happening was the subject of a hearing June 3 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, took testimony on how the Web and social media are being used by terror groups to recruit and brainwash accomplices inside the U.S.
According to Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, online jihadists often communicate via heavily encrypted systems that are difficult and often impossible to detect. The online propaganda packages deployed by Islamic State website operators are well-produced.
Of late, alert police work has prevented tragedy. A sharpshooting cop stopped two U.S.-based jihadists from opening fire on the cartoon show in Garland, Texas. Authorities in Boston this week appear to have prevented a homicidal assault on the police there.
The Tsarnaev brothers, however, were not stopped, nor was Nidal Halik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas. Some of our liberal and libertarian friends say the case for surveilling online jihadist recruitment is overstated. We’d say it’s more needed than ever.
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