How many attacks here will it take for us to overcome our PC?
ABC: 'Clusters' Of Homegrown Terrorists Greatest Threat
CAPTAIN ED
ABC News reports that the greatest terrorist threat to the American homeland does not come from the Middle East, but from the Northeast. The report by the New York Police Department's Intelligence Bureau appears to conflict with an FBI analysis that considered the home-grown threat minimal, but provides the names of the mosques and prisons where the risk is greatest:
U.S. law enforcement officials say they have identified more than two dozen "clusters" of young Muslim men in the northeast United States who are on a path that could lead to homegrown terror, ABC News has learned.
"Any one of those clusters may be capable of carrying out a terrorist action that will result in fatalities," Rand Corporation terrorism expert Brian Jenkins tells ABC News.
In a report to be made public today, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly concludes the 9/ll attacks were an "anomaly" and the most serious terror threat to the country comes from clusters of "unremarkable" individuals who are on a path that could lead to homegrown terror.
The report by the NYPD intelligence division, "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat," plots "the trajectory of radicalization" and tracks the path of a non-radicalized individual to an individual with the willingness to commit an act of terror, multiple sources say.
As seen with other home-grown terrorists, al-Qaeda acts more as an inspiration than as a command-and-control chain. The mosques, cafes, bookstores, and prisons serve as incubators for radicalism. They take young men already disaffected from mainstream society and cultivate their anger. The report gives a detailed description of this trajectory that transforms a non-violent man into a jihadist ready to die for the cause.
Law enforcement sources in several jurisdictions appear to support the case made by the NYPD-IB, ABC News insists. All acknowledge the importance of tracking connections to al-Qaeda, but they say it is more important at this point to understand the metamorphosis of the terrorist himself. If the cycle can be better understood, the chances for intervention increase.
And the report says they have plenty of opportunities for intervention. The NYPD-IB has been scouring Internet web sites and found specific clusters to support their argument. "Numerous pockets" of radicalized youth are in New Jersey, recalling the Fort Dix Six, and several on New Jersey college campuses. Prisons also get emphasized as sources for conversions to jihad.
While this doesn't come as a surprise, the conclusions of the IB are somewhat startling. New Jersey appears to be the center of the home-grown jihadist movement, but is that because of the proximity to the NYPD's Intelligence Bureau? Could the homegrown jihadis also be forming in California, Washington, and Michigan?
Prison conversion to radical Islam has gone on for decades in this country. Malcolm X is probably the greatest example, although he got killed for attempting to break out of that mold. Perhaps the time has come for us to consider steps to reduce the number of people we send into that particular incubator by rethinking crime and sentencing policy for violations that involve no violence and free choice, such as a good portion of our drug laws.
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