The Dynamics of a Terrorist Targeting Process

Anders B. Breivik and the 22 July Attacks in Norway

Cato Hemmingby,Tore Bjørgo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137579973
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Forensic Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book provides an in-depth analysis of probably the most horrific solo terrorist operation the world has ever seen. On 22 July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people when he bombed the Government District in Oslo, before he conducted a shooting attack against a political youth camp at Utøya. The main focus of the book is on the operational aspects of the events, particularly the target selection and decision-making process. Why did Breivik choose the targets he finally attacked, what influenced his decision-making and how did he do it?
Using unique source material, providing details never published before, the authors accurately explain how even this ruthless terrorist acted under a number of constraints in a profoundly dynamic process. This momentous work is a must read for scholars, students and practitioners within law enforcement, intelligence, security and terrorism studies.

1

Introduction

Abstract: This study provides an in-depth analysis of solo terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, with focus on the target selection process and related operational aspects. In this chapter the authors explain in greater detail the objectives of this study, the need for more research in the area and the unique source material that made this project possible. There are also important ethical aspects related to studies such as this, which is addressed in this chapter.

Keywords: decision-making; operational issues; research ethics; research need; solo terrorist; sources; target selection; terrorism

Hemmingby, Cato, and Tore Bjørgo. The Dynamics of a Terrorist Targeting Process: Anders B. Breivik and the 22 July Attacks in Norway. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137579973.0004.

How do terrorists select their targets? What kind of factors and circumstances influence their decision-making? This book explores these issues by analysing one particular case of terrorism conducted by a single actor. It is based on unusually detailed information about the terrorist’s reasoning and deliberations. The case in question is Anders Behring Breivik’s extremely brutal and ruthless attacks on 22 July 2011 in Norway. He first detonated a vehicle-born fertilizer bomb in the centre of the Government District in downtown Oslo, before he followed up with a shooting attack on the small island Utøya, where the Labour Party’s youth wing (AUF, Worker’s Youth League) arranged their annual summer camp. Eight persons were killed in Oslo, while 69 people lost their lives at Utøya, including 33 victims aged less than 18 years.

The terrorist claimed to be a Justiciar Knight Commander in a network he called Knights Templar Europe. However, the following police investigation did not find any indicators or evidence that such a network actually exists.¹ Thus, he was a solo terrorist, regardless of whether we apply a narrow or broad definition (to be addressed more extensively later) of solo terrorism. Breivik also stands out as the most deadly solo terrorist we know of.

Several books have been written about Anders Behring Breivik, including a few titles that have reached the English-speaking market. These have primarily investigated his personal background and radicalization process, seeking to establish an understanding of how he turned to terrorism and was able to commit such dreadful acts.² Others have tried to explain his extremist acts primarily in terms of the political and ideological context he allegedly was influenced by.³ However, there has not been the same focus on the operational aspects, which is just as important to address since the case can provide important knowledge to practitioners involved in law enforcement and counter-terrorism. The main objective of this book is therefore to contribute to fill the gap regarding the operational aspects, by analysing the planning and target selection process of Breivik. Here there are several important questions to address. How and why did he end up with the two target objects he finally attacked? What were the alternative targets he considered during the build-up phase? Which factors made him dismiss the targets he never attacked, and at what time in the selection process did crucial decision-making sequences take place? In most terrorist plots these questions are unlikely to be answered in detail due to unknown or dead perpetrators, lack of cooperation from terrorists captured, limited research material or no access to classified documentation that do exist. However, for the research project on which this book is based, the amount of source material and quality of sources can be characterized as far better than normal, opening for a unique opportunity to analyse the target selection process in some detail. Especially so because we here learn not just about the two targets actually attacked, but just as much from the targets he considered, but did not choose to attack, and why. This leaves us with a more or less complete picture, at least from the point where he started to develop concrete plans. In addition, this book puts the Norwegian perpetrator into a comparative perspective with regard to other solo terrorists, fully illustrating that he was not the typical lone wolf or solo terrorist.

Regarding primary sources the perpetrator partially wrote and partially edited the extensive compendium 2083 – A European Declaration of Independence, under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick.⁴ This 1400 page document has three parts. The first part covers the historical context, while the second part illuminates the ideology. The third part covers different operational aspects and is sometimes referred to as the military part.⁵ The first two parts were predominantly cut-and-paste from other anti-Islamist authors whereas the third part, which is of greater interest regarding this book, was mainly authored by Breivik himself. Furthermore, from the moment he was captured and up to the trial, Breivik spoke willingly with the police in a series of investigative interviews. These interviews, 220 hours, were all recorded on audio and video (with the exception of the first interview after his capture, which was on audio only). The police investigative interviews with Breivik were based on the principles of free explanation in order to obtain as much factual information as possible from the suspect rather than to extract a confession. The interview procedures used by the Norwegian police are known as K.R.E.A.T.I.V., which is based on the English PEACE model.⁶ This methodology has sometimes been criticized for producing too much information irrelevant to the main issue of the trial – whether the accused is guilty of the crime or not.⁷ However, the investigative interviews with Anders Behring Breivik, produced data of great detail and relevance to academic research on the decision-making processes of the terrorist. Obviously proud of his terrorist attacks, Breivik explained in detail about the operational challenges and difficulties he faced in his preparations and execution of the attacks, about the adjustments he had to make to his plans, and about how he selected and discarded potential targets. This provided a unique access to the thinking and reasoning of the terrorist.

After a lengthy and complex process, the Norwegian General Attorney granted us, the authors of this book, access to all the protocolled, summarizing transcripts from police investigative interviews with the suspect, about 1200 pages, as well as the DVD recordings from these interviews related to the research topic.⁸ These summaries have been analysed to identify interesting and relevant sequences, and then we watched the DVD recordings in case there were more details on these. Breivik also talked willingly during the trial, where he could make a free statement to explain his acts, as well as being subjected to heavy cross-examination. The Norwegian news agency NTB has provided accurate word-by-word transcripts⁹ from the days of the trial when Breivik was examined, supplementing the official court documents. In addition, the authors have also had some correspondence by mail with Breivik, which has provided some additional input. In the writing process Breivik also agreed to be interviewed in prison, since there were a few details we wanted to get clarified, but this was cancelled by Breivik due to “other priorities”. We discuss further the issue of interviewing Breivik under the section on ethical issues.

Finally, the authors have talked to different primary sources, including two security officers from the Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization (GSSO) on duty at the time of the attacks in Oslo.¹⁰ Furthermore, we were given exclusive access to interview the team leader of the national police emergency response unit (Delta), who was leading and participating in the arrest of the terrorist on the island.¹¹

Reliability and validity: can Breivik’s explanations be taken as truth, and do they have any relevance beyond this case?

As mentioned earlier, Breivik’s detailed explanations may provide a unique access to the thinking and reasoning of a terrorist. However, this raises some questions about the reliability and validity of the information Breivik provided to the police during the investigative interviews and to the court during the trial. It is not uncommon that suspects in criminal cases lie to the police and the court. How truthful was the information Breivik provided? And more fundamentally, was it based on reality or phantasy and delusion?

The question of whether Breivik was sane or insane became a main issue during the trial and triggered a huge public debate about the psychiatric evaluation procedures in the Norwegian court system in general. Was Breivik psychotic or schizophrenic, and maybe even not eligible for punishment and imprisonment, or was he an unusually cynical and calculating terrorist?

In Chapter 7, we discuss more in detail into the issue of whether Breivik was insane or a rational actor. Here we merely summarize: Shortly after Breivik was arrested, the court appointed a forensic psychiatric evaluation team to assess whether he was sane and fit for punishment. In the conclusion of their report, made public on 29 November 2011, the two psychiatrists found him to be psychotic at the time of his criminal actions as well as during their observation after his arrest, and also as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. When the full report was leaked to the media, there were substantial protests from fellow psychiatrists as well as from experts on right-wing extremism and terrorism, casting severe doubt about the basis for the conclusions of the psychiatric assessment. As a result, the court appointed a second psychiatric team, which reached the opposite conclusion: Breivik was not psychotic or insane, but suffered from narcissistic and dissocial personality disorders. However, both psychiatric teams agreed (although using different diagnostic terms) that he suffered from severe personality disorders. In their verdict, the court sided with the second psychiatric assessment and found Breivik sane and fit to be punished. Thus, Breivik was not a deluded or insane individual, but a ruthless and rational solo terrorist. If he had been found deluded, then an analysis of his decision-making would have been less useful.

However, that he can be considered to be sane and not deluded does not mean that his statements can be taken as truth. On some key issues in Breivik’s explanations, he obviously bluffed. Shortly after he had surrendered to the police, he claimed that there were two other terrorist cell members out there, ready to strike with even more deadly consequences, and that the police could save 300 lives if they gave in for his demands.¹² These two cell members never materialized and intensive police investigation concluded that there was no evidence or indications that they existed. However, Breivik never admitted that this was a bluff. Similarly, he also stuck to the claim that the Knights Templar organization actually existed and that an alleged meeting did take place in London in 2003 where he was given his mission. He did concede during the trial that his description of the group was “pompous” in order to maximize the propaganda effect, and he played down that dimension when he realized that his preoccupations with uniforms and rituals made him appear insane. When Breivik was asked in court what he meant by his repeated use of the term “pompous”, he explained:

If you represent, let us say, a group and you want to communicate it in a way, which optimise the propaganda effect, you convey it in a pompous way. Instead of telling about four sweaty guys in a basement you use other ways to describe it.¹³

Again, the police found no evidence that such an organization ever existed, even in a less “pompous” version. However, both these rather obvious bluffs can be seen as a rational way to maximize the psychological effect of his terrorist attacks by making his one-man organization appear bigger and more dangerous than it actually was. It was also his expressed strategy to try to instigate copycat operations, hoping to turn his (phantom) organization into reality. Thus, Breivik bluffed and lied when it served his strategic purpose.

However, when it came to operational details, what he actually did and prepared, his explanations seem to be far more reliable. The police investigation found little discrepancy between his explanations and the evidence documented by the investigators. From our analytical purpose, the most problematic part was probably that when the police investigative interviewers sometimes challenged him on why he did this or that, he sometimes seemed to make up a clever reason to make it appear as he had thought about and considered everything. When challenged fur...