FBI warns of "Lone Wolf" Norway-style attacks

[RamboLiberal]

Source: CBS News

In a joint FBI/Department of Homeland Security memo (PDF), it states:

"Small-arms operations could be employed through a range of tactics from a lone offender--as illustrated by the recent 22 July 2011 lone shooter attack that took place in Norway--to a coordinated small-unit attack involving several operatives. Recent lone offender attacks and plots in the United States and abroad illustrate the effectiveness of the small-arms tactic and the need for continued vigilance and awareness of this tactic. Attacks by lone offenders--which by definition lack co-conspirators, and therefore provide fewer opportunities for detection--may be more difficult for law enforcement and homeland security authorities to disrupt."

Examples cited by the memo include the soldier from Fort Hood arrested on July 27 of this year with materials to produce a bomb; The lone gunmen who killed two U.S. Airmen at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport on March 2 of this year; and the Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nadal Hassan, who killed 12 with two pistols in a late 2009 rampage.

The domestic "Lone Wolf" threat is far from limited to Islamic-linked individuals, too. As reported by "60 Minutes," the "Sovereign Citizens" movement - a loosely knit group that doesn't pay taxes, carry driver's licenses or hold Social Security cards - has shown a violent and sometimes murderous dislike of law enforcement. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had only two known co-conspirators.



Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/16/national/main20093236.shtml?tag=stack

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Obama frets over 'lone wolf' attack as Sept 11 looms

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday played down prospects for a spectacular Al-Qaeda attack 10 years after the September 11th strikes, saying he worried more now about solitary extremists.

"The most likely scenario that we have to guard against right now ends up being more of a lone wolf operation than a large, well coordinated terrorist attack," he told CNN television during a campaign-style swing through Iowa.

"We still have to stay on top of it, though. We're never letting our guard now, that's part of our job," said Obama, who vowed "heightened" security measures and "extra vigilance" ahead of the grim anniversary.

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"The risk that we're especially concerned over right now is the lone wolf terrorist, somebody with a single weapon being able to carry out wide-scale massacres of the sort we saw in Norway recently," said Obama.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/obama-frets-over-lone-wolf-attack-sept-11-231137985.html

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. One of the key worries is also a trained sniper

Just about nothing the cops can do. Even the Beltway idiot tied thing in knots, and he was far from good.

[TheWraith]

14. True. Frankly, people have NO idea how much havoc one guy, or a few guys, could wreak.

It's one of the reasons I am dead certain that there are no terrorist cells in the US, because frankly, it's idiotic to think that everything is secured. A smart terrorist doesn't throw that pipe bomb into a crowd--he throws it into a transformer substation, blacking out an entire chunk of a city. He doesn't walk into an Army base and starts shooting, he sets fire to the fuel tanks underneath the local gas station.

There's ridiculously large amounts of havoc one guy alone, let alone a few guys, could cause if they did it intelligently. But it doesn't happen... for the simple reason that pretty much all actual terrorism in the US since the anthrax attacks has been insane people doing insane things. Goaded on by other more powerful forces, sure... sometimes religion, but mostly Fox News. But that's hardly an organized offensive. And that doesn't happen because those organized cells do not exist.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

19. Article yesterday about how a single sniper is holding up the rebel takeover of a town

in Libya.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8705359/Libya-rooftop-sniper-takes-a-heavy-toll-in-Zawiyah-a-city-waiting-to-fall.html

[chrisa]

28. The key word is 'intelligently'

Most of them are as dumb as rocks, and even if they tried a campaign of violence, they would be caught quickly. They are, as you said, insane, and also extremely stupid.

[txlibdem]

2. Another thing to FEAR... anything so we don't look at the facts of who is REALLY destroying America

I'm not buying the fear mongering BS. The CONservatives have been recycling one fear after another... just so we're constantly worried about *something* other than the fact that they are robbing us blind!

[Warpy]

7. Lone wolf attackers kill and maim dozens

White collar terrorists are destroying the lives of hundreds of millions.

Excuse me if I think the FBI is wasting its time. The lone wolf kind of squirrel is utterly invisible, usually not so much as a traffic ticket, when he finally decides to go out in a blaze of murderous glory. Even the nutcase in Arizona had been largely invisible although he creeped out everybody who knew him. The only thing close monitoring might do is catch them a little quicker after the fact.

However, were they to take Eliot Spitzer and a few others more seriously, they could make life miserable for the white collar variety and get a lot of them off the street. That alone would start to improve all our lives.

[txlibdem]

9. True, that was my point as well. This is either just a show for the masses or misdirection

so they can get us looking to stage left while at stage right they take away more and more of our civil rights.

The real killers are on wall street and their accomplices are on Capitol Hill. Those are the true dangers to the future of America and they are the ones who should be water boarded or kept in solitary confinement for as long as The Patriot Bradley Manning was.

And just as we do with drug lords, any and all of their personal property, vehicles and real estate should be confiscated and sold at auction to help pay for their wall street crimes.

Do any of you honestly see any of that happening??? Until the FBI starts investigating the REAL threats to our internal security that I mention above they are just wasting time and resources.

Do your *job*, FBI!!!

[EFerrari]

13. FBI has always protected the oligarchs. That is what they do. nt

[formercia]

16. The FBI was founded by the Knights of Malta

It was conceived as an organization to protect the Elites.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

20. Not the Masons or the Rosicrucians?

:sarcasm:

[formercia]

21. J Edgar was KOM as well

Some people just can't handle the Truth.

[No Elephants]

10. +1

[LanternWaste]

23. I think you're conflating 'concern' and 'fear.'

I think you're conflating 'concern' and 'fear.'

One may concern themselves with a pragmatic reality without fearing it, whilst yet maintaining the not-too-difficult regimen of being concerned with other issues also.

Unless of course we should simply turn a blind eye to any and all security warnings and rather engage ourselves in a Pollyanna world-view... :shrug:

[tabasco]

3. Assholes don't need to insult wolves.

Wolves don't mass murder each other. Only humans do that.

[DRoseDARs]

4. Oh, you mean like clinic bombers?

Sorry, sorry, my bad. Those aren't "lone wolf" terrorists, they're actually part of a broader cancer.

[Maine_Nurse]

5. This is nothing new...

it has been known for centuries that a lone, determined individual is a threat that can't generally be defended against except to have people prepared to REACT after such an attack begins. To state that we are going to "guard against" such events is pretty stupid and/or misleading unless they have figured out a way to read minds.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Secret Service style defense in depth works, but is very expensive

[No Elephants]

12. Any evidence it works to protect against lone wolves within a population of 310 million in a country

as big in square feet as the U.S.?


Are you saying everyone in the population gets the same protection as the POTUS? Even then, Reagan and Brady got shot.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

18. My point was that only a few can have POTUS like security

Secret Service has gotten more insistent about the security rings since the Reagan shooting.

Private security is easier since those who seek it do not have the public visibility requirements that go with being a politician.

[No Elephants]

11. Fear is almost all we manufacture anymore.

Homeland Security and the Pentagon and their RW contractors get enough of our tax dollars as it is.

[Trajan]

8. If they hadn't already been worried about it ....

Then they should have been fired ....

BTW ? .... Already happened .. numerous times throughout the decades ....

And THIS passes off as news .....

[ForeignandDomestic]

15. ...

Unless they can read minds how do they know what some "lone wolf" maniac is planning to do?

In other news we need to be diligent against lone Car jackers, lone rapist, lone wife beaters, etc...

Be very careful of people who are in the business of fear, eventually they have to find a way to stay in business!

[Trajan]

26. Ridiculous ....

Not what I meant at all ...

The point is; The very notion that a lone wolf might exist should have already been posited and planned for ....

[War Horse]

17. Spencer/Geller publish "Enemies List"

http://biggovernment.com/pgeller/2011/08/15/the-afdi-threats-to-freedom-index/

When someone goes Breivik they'll be "shocked" of course...

[txlibdem]

22. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party?

If the answer is "yes" then the FBI knows who to wire tap, water board, stake out, and eventually arrest.

[Xithras]

24. Most of the great crimes in our countries history have been pulled of by 1 or 2 people.

Presidential assassinations. Church bombings. School shootings. Office shootings. Bombings. In nearly every case, these kinds of attacks are carried out by a single person, or at most a group of only a few people.

This has been recognized as a serious problem for just about as long as law enforcement has existed. They're nearly impossible to catch beforehand, and it's incredibly difficult to stop them in the act.

It's been pointed out in the Norway attacks that, even if an armed SWAT team had been on that island, the attacker probably would have killed a number of those teens before he could have been taken out. The best they could have hoped for was to reduce the body count.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

25. Few people understand the value of OPSEC

or generally just keeping your mouth shut about certain things

[AverageJoe90]

27. And they'd be right.

Problem is, how many of these terrorists might actually be assisted by certain corrupt factions of law enforcement.........including the FBI?