Lone-Actor Terrorists
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Lone-Actor Terrorists

A behavioural analysis

Paul Gill

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eBook - ePub

Lone-Actor Terrorists

A behavioural analysis

Paul Gill

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About This Book

This book provides the first empirical analysis of lone-actor terrorist behaviour.

Based upon a unique dataset of 111 lone actors that catalogues the life span of the individual's development, the book contains important insights into what an analysis of their behaviours might imply for practical interventions aimed at disrupting or even preventing attacks. It adopts insights and methodologies from criminology and forensic psychology to provide a holistic analysis of the behavioural underpinnings of lone-actor terrorism.

By focusing upon the behavioural aspects of each offender and by analysing a variety of case studies, including Anders Breivik, Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh and David Copeland, this work marks a pointed departure from previous research in the field. It seeks to answer the following key questions:

  • Is there a lone-actor terrorist profile and how do they differ?


  • What behaviours did the lone-actor terrorist engage in prior to his/her attack and is there a common behavioural trajectory into lone-actor terrorism?


  • How 'lone' do lone-actor terrorists tend to be?


  • What role, if any, does the internet play?


  • What role, if any, does mental illness play?


This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism/counter-terrorism studies, political violence, criminology, forensic psychology and security studies in general.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2015
ISBN
9781317660156

1
Introduction

2.45 p.m. Anders Breivik uploads a self-produced film to YouTube and writes the last message in his 1,500-page compendium. At 3:05 p.m., Breivik emails the compendium to over 8,000 people. He leaves his mother’s apartment and walks to a rented Volkswagen Crafter parked nearby. He drives to Grubbegaten Street, central Oslo, and arrives at 3.13 p.m. He stops the car 200 metres from the ‘H-Block’, a government building housing the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Justice and the Police. He waits for two minutes and puts on a bulletproof vest and a visored helmet. At 3:15 p.m. he drives the remaining 200 metres and parks again. He lights the fuse of the bomb he developed in the month’s prior, leaves the car, and whilst carrying a Glock pistol in his hand, walks away quickly. By 3:20 p.m., he reaches Hammersborg Square where he had previously parked another rental car. He drives toward the ferry MS Thorbjørn at Utøkaia in Tyrifijorden, 25 miles north-west of Oslo. At 3:25 p.m., the bomb explodes, killing eight and injuring 209. At 4:55 p.m., Breivik arrives at the ferry and boards. He travels to Utøya Island, a venue hosting a Workers’ Youth League summer camp. He arrives at 5:18 p.m. and begins shooting at 5:22 p.m. In total, 67 were shot and killed at Utøya, two more died in their attempted getaway and a further 110 were injured, 33 by gunfire. 50 of those killed at Utøya were 18 years of age or younger.
Outrage, condemnation, and shock at Breivik’s actions quickly followed. The Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, called it Norway’s ‘worst atrocity since the Second World War’, a ‘national tragedy’, ‘unfair’, ‘incomprehensible’, and an ‘evil act [of] horror’. The European Union, NATO, the United Nations and over 75 states expressed similar sentiments. Condemnation of Breivik was not universal however. Three far-right elected members of parliament (one in Italy, one in the European Parliament and one in Austria) expressed sympathy for Breivik’s anti-Islamic stance. Within a month of the attacks Norwegian far-right groups, Norwegian Defence League and the Stop Islamization of Norway movement, reported membership growths of over 300 and 100 respectively. Within a couple of years, authorities disrupted two apparent copycat plots in Poland and the Czech Republic while a third disrupted plot’s perpetrator labelled Breivik his ‘hero’ in a series of Facebook posts.
The independent parliamentary report on the attacks acknowledged that the threat from lone-actor terrorism was underestimated in terms of the devastation it can cause. Under interrogation, Breivik distinguishes between the combat and media success of the attacks. In the early interviews, Breivik doubts his media success. He concedes that few of his co-ideologues would defend his ‘bestial actions’ (Husby & Sorheim, 2011: 16), and that the day of the actions was ‘the worst day of his life’ (Husby & Sorheim, 2011: 17). He acknowledges further that the events were ‘completely awful’ and that he was ‘not proud’ of what he ‘was forced to do’ in response to Labour Party policies (Husby & Sorheim, 2011: 20). Much of this early antipathy towards his own actions was due to the fact that he defined these victims as relatively low value compared to the political elites of the country. On the other hand, however, he saw the attacks as a combat success, and stated that the fight will continue via ‘the pen from jail’ (Husby & Sorheim, 2011: 23). On the whole, Breivik states that the success of the violent actions could only be ‘measured by the spreading of the compendium’ (Husby & Sorheim, 2011: 131) that he wrote in the years prior which elaborated upon his ideological motivations.
This short illustration provides a number of questions including:
  • Is there a lone-actor terrorist profile?
  • Is there a common behavioural trajectory into lone-actor terrorism?
  • How ‘lone’ do lone-actor terrorists tend to be?
  • What role, if any, does the internet play?
  • What role, if any, does mental illness play?
  • How rational are they?
  • What risk do they pose?
  • How do lone-actors learn and prepare for a violent attack absent of group membership?
  • How do lone-actor terrorists differ?
  • How can we minimize the threat of lone-actor terrorism?
  • Can lone-actor terrorists be detected, prevented, or disrupted prior to engaging in a violent attack?
Until recently, existing research on the topic of lone-actor terrorists was incapable of answering such questions. The literature remained methodologically, conceptually, and theoretically weak. At best, it was certainly underdeveloped, and there was relatively little that the counter-terrorism community could usefully glean from what analysis had been conducted on what most still refer to as ‘lone wolf’ terrorism (a description avoided here). This book provides the first empirical analysis of lone-actor terrorism that focuses upon a range of factors including who lone-actor terrorists are, how they differ from each other (and from other kinds of terrorists), their developmental pathways into terrorism, their pre-attack behaviours and aspects concerning their offence-commission. It therefore marks a departure from previous research on lone-actor terrorism because it largely focuses upon behavioural aspects of each offender. The book adopts insights and methodologies from crime science, criminology and forensic psychology to provide a holistic analysis of the behavioural underpinnings of lone-actor terrorism. Based on an extensive analysis of open-source material, this book contains important insights into what an analysis of their behaviours might imply for practical interventions aimed at disrupting or even preventing attacks. The analyses in this book are based on a unique dataset of 111 lone actors. The dataset includes over 180 variables spanning socio-demographic characteristics to ancillary and antecedent behaviours to terrorist event-related behaviours. The variables cover the life span of the individual’s development, later radicalization and right through to the execution of the terrorist event. As such, this book encompasses what LaFree (2013: 60) refers to as the third major development in the empirical study of terrorism; the expansion of our knowledge of terrorism based on ‘specialized data sets on specific subsets of terrorism cases’.1 Rather than treating all terrorists homogenously, recent improvement in our understanding of terrorist behaviour has come through disaggregated analyses that focus upon types of terrorist behaviours, roles, and functions (more on this later). This book seeks to build upon this strand of research and bring the field closer towards a scientific approach to terrorist behaviour.
As you’ll see from the chapter outline further on, each chapter focuses upon a different aspect of lone-actor terrorist behaviour (and how to potentially counter the threat). First, however, we should take stock of a few factors including the strategy of lone-actor terrorism (and how it differs across ideologies), the drivers behind its diffusion across ideologies, the dynamics that make lone-actor terrorism a threat, definitional issues (it would not be a terrorism book without such an endeavour) and what the existing literature has to say on the topic.

An adaptive idea

High profile examples such as Anders Breivik pushed the threat of lone-actor terrorism to the forefront of national security across the world. The nature and threat from lone-actor terrorism is not new however. For example, Jensen (2014: 86) likens the period from 1878 to 1934 as the ‘classic age’ of lone-actor terrorism dominated by the actions of lone anarchists. The tradition of anarchists acting alone did not end during this phase however. An understudied example is that of Stuart Christie, who at 18 years of age left his native Scotland with the intention of assassinating the fascist leader General Franco in Madrid. This historical acknowledgement of lone actors is also not confined to academic research. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine issue number two provides a detailed outline of lone actors dating back to the time of Muhammad.
Like most terrorist tactics or strategies, lone-actor terrorism diffused easily across ideological domains with many different ideological movements espousing the strategic need for operatives to act alone. According to Kaplan, Lööw, and Malkki (2014: 1), the ‘lone avenger motif has appeared in every era and virtually every culture in the world’.
This book focuses upon lone-actor terrorism from 1990 to mid-2014. This is largely a practical decision based on data availability but it is also because during this period movement leaders of different ideological shades explicitly called for an uptake in lone-actor operations.
Within the extreme right-wing movement for example, the white supremacist Louis Beam championed the ‘leaderless resistance’ idea (Kaplan, 1997). Beam published the original ‘leaderless resistance’ essay in the February 1992 issue of his newsletter, The Seditionist (Beam, 1992). The essay’s introduction credits Colonel Ulius Amoss with the idea. Amoss proposed a ‘phantom cell’ strategy in the event of a communist takeover in the United States. Beam acknowledges that he took Amoss’ ‘theories and built upon them’. The purpose of Beam’s 3,388 word essay is to inspire innovation within resistance movements. Without tactical and organizational innovation, ‘the government’s efforts at suppression [remain] uncomplicated’. For Beam, hierarchical organizations are ‘not only useless, but extremely dangerous for the participants when it is utilized in a resistance movement’ because they are ‘easy prey for government infiltration, entrapment, and destruction of the personnel involved’. Beam’s essay considers and rejects the use of a cell system. Beam concludes the patriot movement lacks the necessary level of central direction, funding and outside support to make a cell system viable. Instead Beam calls for a broad movement in which ‘all individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for directions or instruction’ because they ‘would be extremely difficult to identify’. Beam’s essay is often depicted as one that considers whether to act alone or within a cell or group setting. This is not the case. It is really a consideration of whether to act within a movement that is centrally directed or not. Acting within a cell without central authority is given as much, if not more, prominence in the essay as acting completely alone. Beam strongly concludes:
Patriots are required therefore, to make a conscious decision to either aid the government in its illegal spying, by continuing with old methods of organization and resistance, or to make the enemie’s [sic] job more difficult by implementing effective countermeasures.
(Original emphasis)
Interestingly, Beam regards ‘leaderless resistance’ a ‘child of necessity’ because of pervasive state powers and electronic surveillance that made the actions of groups easier to track than those of lone actors. Over 20 years later, many argue the same dynamics drove al-Qaeda’s championing of lone-actor attacks. The Danish Centre for Terror Analysis, for example, contends al-Qaeda’s focus on lone actors is a result of having ‘limited possibilities for central planning as a result of the international efforts against terrorism’ (cited in Spaaij, 2012: 26).
Beam published his essay in February 1992. Later that year, the fatal siege at Ruby Ridge occurred in Idaho. This event centred on an investigation into Randy Weaver. Weaver previously attempted to sell firearms to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) informant at an Aryan Nations event. ATF officers attempted to recruit Weaver as an informant in return for dropping the pending charges. Weaver refused and police charged him for the attempted firearms sale. Weaver then missed his court date due to a clerical error. The case passed from the ATF to the U.S. Marshals who were tasked with arresting Weaver. From March to October 1991 a series of negotiations attempting to encourage Weaver to surrender peacefully proved fruitless. The Marshals began plotting to capture Weaver and surveilled his 20-acre plot of land at Ruby Ridge. On one such surveillance sortie, an exchange of gunfire killed Weaver’s 14-year-old son and a U.S. Marshal. A day later an FBI sniper shot Randy Weaver, injuring him in the back. Soon after, the same sniper fatally shot Weaver’s wife while she held her 10-month-old son. An associate of Weaver’s (who had killed the U.S. Marshal) was also injured in a shooting that day.
A couple of months after these events, a 160-strong delegation of far-right adherents and leaders attended a meeting convened by Pete Peters. According to the anti-Defamation League, Peters is a leading ‘anti-Jewish, anti-minority and anti-gay propagandist’. Attendees formed a Sacred Warfare Action Tactics committee to ‘evaluate what our people would be forced to consider should tyranny and despotism become the order of the day’. The committee recommended Beam’s ‘leaderless resistance’ essay to supporters. Between the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco a year later, the concept of leaderless resistance moved from being an ‘isolated theory’ to being ‘seen as a matter of survival in the face of a government now determined to eradicate the righteous remnant of the patriot community once and for all’ (Kaplan, 1997: 85). Beam’s mantle was later taken up by other white supremacists such as Tom Metzger and Alex Curtis in the early 1990s. While Beam’s essay allowed for small autonomous cells as well as lone actors, both Metzger and Curtis pushed the lone actor to the forefront.
Metzger authored essays entitled Begin with the Lone Wolves and Laws for the Lone Wolf. The latter2 starts with the words ‘Anyone is capable of being a Lone Wolf’. Both make the case that the lone wolf strategy is necessary at the beginning of a movement’s mobilization. Metzger’s Laws of the Lone Wolf stems from the same worries as Beam’s essay e.g. the ability of pervasive state powers to monitor communications and disrupt plots. Metzger therefore also frames this strategy as a child of necessity. In a 2013 interview with a white nationalist podcast, Metzger states that he was involved with membership organizations since 1963 ‘and they all failed’ because such organizations were too difficult to manage internally (‘short of using brute force’) and externally (against the FBI) (HerrNordkamp, 2013). In one of his essays, Metzger outlines that
the less any outsider knows, the safer and more successful you will be. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Never truly admit to anything…. Communication is a good thing, but keep your covert activities a secret. This will protect you as well as others like you.
Metzger also lauded a series of lone-actor attacks. In 2000, Richard Baumhammers killed five people in a racially motivated spree shooting in Pennsylvania. Metzger commented on the incident:
Since we never get an apology for the thousands of hate crimes inflicted on whites each year from the nonwhite community, I no longer make any judgments on the acts of white men or women against nonwhites or other racial integrationists. Every individual in society is either a lone wolf or a lone sheep.
Two days after the shooting, Metzger’s website wrote: ‘Mr. Richard Baumhammers, a white man from Mt. Lebanon in Pennsylvania, recently decided to deliver Aryan justice in a down home way’. Metzger’s group was also linked to Dennis Mahon’s bombing of city officials in Phoenix in 2004.
Whereas the extreme right-wing essays cited previously solely focus upon strategic calls for lone actors, the writings of Alex Curtis went a step further and provided some instruction on target selection. Curtis developed a ‘Lone Wolf Point System’ (adapted from a previous Louis Beam essay) that would help potential lone actors ‘intelligently judge the effectiveness of proposed acts against the enemy’ (Anti-Defamation League, 2012).
The anti-abortion group the Army of God likewise provided (albeit more) detailed instructions on how to carry lone-terrorist attacks (something later copied by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine). Through the 1990s, the Army of God explicitly championed the activities of lone actors (often referred to as termites or covert activists in their propaganda). Their manual states that they are not
a real army, humanly speaking. It is a real Army, and God is the General and Commander-in-Chief. The soldiers, however, do not u...

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