Tag Archives: Anwar al-Awlaki

Keeping Our Heads in the Sand After Boston

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IPT News
May 14, 2013

 

The Obama administration’s policy banning references to “Islamic extremism” and “jihad” in discussions about terrorism drew criticism during last Thursday’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Boston Marathon bombings.

The bombings “should again teach us that the enemy we face is violent Islamist extremism, not just al Qaida,” said former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. “Osama bin Laden is dead. And the remaining leadership of al Qaida is on the run, but the ideology of violent Islamist extremism is rapidly spreading.”

The Boston investigation already has shown that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “adopted the outrageously false narrative of violent Islamist extremism, that Islam and America are involved in a struggle to the death with each other,” Lieberman said.

It has been more than five years since the Department of Homeland Security, under the Bush administration, issued a directive about “the difficult terrain of terminology” as recommended by unidentified academics and Muslim American activists. “Jihadist” and “Islamist terrorist” were identified as terms to be avoided. Jihad “glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have, and damages relations with Muslims around the globe,” the memo said.

By identifying them as mere extremists or criminals, they lose some of the luster that attracts recruits, the argument goes.

Is it working? How can you tell?

Anecdotally, this strategy did nothing to dissuade the Tsarnaevs, or any of the otherhomegrown terrorist plotters in recent years. The policy’s effectiveness is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. But skeptics, such as Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program Director Jeffrey M. Bale, say the language policy is illogical.

“Why, after all, would Muslims look to non-Muslims to interpret their religion for them, or for guidance about how to identify and label Islamists?” Bale said in response to an email from the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “Indeed, if we call jihadists ‘criminals,’ it may actually have the counterproductive effect of garnering more sympathy for them given the levels of anti-U.S. and anti-Western hostility throughout the Muslim world.”

Jihadists routinely make it plain that – while religion may not be the sole factor driving them to violence – their Islamic beliefs and identities dominate their thinking. “We in the West just don’t seem to want to believe what they constantly say,” Bale wrote. (Read his full response here.)

Read more at IPT

Media downplay Tsarnaev connection to Muslim student group

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basselnasri2By Charles C. Johnson:

Coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing has ignored admitted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s connection to his college’s Muslim Student Association, a group that has close relations with both the Muslim Brotherhood and a local imam friendly with an al-Qaida operative.

Although a student leader and the mainstream media have downplayed Tsarnaev’s ties to the the group, Tsarnaev associated frequently with the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

The Washington Post on April 27 reported that Tsarnaev, who has admitted his role in the Marathon terrorist bombing to police, played intramural soccer with MSA members, contradicting earlier reports that the U. Mass-Dartmouth student spurned an invitation to join the controversial Muslim Brotherhood-linked student organization.

“For a time, Jahar played on an intramural soccer team composed of students involved with the campus Muslim Student Association,” explained the Post’s Marc Fisher, a fact that has since been missing from coverage.

In fact, Tsarnaev played soccer with the Muslim Student Association nearly every week, according to MSA Secretary Bassel Nasri in an interview with George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer on April 19, 2013. Nasri simply neglected to say they were MSA games. Although Stephanopoulos described Nasri as “a soccer buddy” of Tsarnaev, neither he nor Sawyer mentioned that they were co-religionists and that the soccer games were organized by the Muslim Student Association.

Read more at The Daily Caller

Checks link 9/11 hijacker to Anwar al-Awlaki

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WEB-ONLY-AnwarAlAwlaki001crp_1317412621-600x350Money Jihad:

A newly released FBI report indicates that an unnamed male once received a check from radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki for $280 and gave a check for $175 to Nawaf Al-Hamzi, a hijacker on American Airlines Flight 77 that flew into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.  The transactions suggest that al-Awlaki funded Al-Hamzi through this unnamed intermediary.

This is the third report in the last two months of a U.S.-based imam having helped to finance terrorism.

Hat tip to El Grillo for tweeting this press release from Judicial Watch on Mar. 28:

JW Obtains FBI Records Detailing Banking Activity and Purchases Linking Anwar al-Aulaqi and 9/11 Hijackers

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received documents on March 4, 2013 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that raise new questions about close ties between Anwar al Aulaqi, the U.S.-born terrorist assassinated by a U.S. drone in Yemen on September 30, 2011, and Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, two of the five hijackers who attacked the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In the documents the FBI describes al Aulaqi as “The Spiritual Leader of the Hijackers.”

Judicial Watch received the documents in response to a June, 2012, Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI and the U.S. Department of State (DOS) (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and Federal Bureau of Investigations (No. 1:12-cv-00893). They are part of Judicial Watch’s ongoing investigation of al Qaeda in the United States, including its current operations and support network.

Materials received by Judicial Watch reveal the following information the FBI regarded as worthy of investigation in its probe of ties between al Aulaqi and the 9/11 hijackers:

  • An undated FBI report indicates an individual received a check for $281.50 from al Aulaqi and wrote a check for $175 to al Hazmi on July 7, 2001.  There is no additional information about the transactions. The FBI apparently found the transaction to be of investigative interest because, depending on the identity of the intermediary party, it could indicate direct assistance from al Aulaqi to al Hazmi.
  • On 9/13/2001, FBI agents took possession of and searched the vehicle al Aulaqi rented in San Diego on 9/8/2001 (which he kept for one day and drove only 37 miles).  While there is no report regarding the results of the search, the action highlights the FBI’s interest in al Aulaqi and suspicions about his trip to San Diego, home to both al Hazmi and al Mihdhar leading up to the attacks.
  • An FBI report dated 10/24/2001 indicates that the Bureau became aware three days after the 9/11 attacks (9/14/2001) that al Aulaqi had rented a Mailboxes Etc. mail drop in Falls Church, VA.  The mail box was the subject of a federal grand jury subpoena.

“The more we learn about Anwar al Aulaqi, the more questions arise not only about his activities before and after 9/11, but also about the al Qaeda operational and support network still active in the United States,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is now even more concerning that al Aulaqi was invited to the Pentagon after 9/11 and then let go by the FBI despite warrants for his arrest.”

An earlier release of FBI documents obtained by a Judicial Watch FOIA and reported by Fox News suggest that the FBI was aware on September 27, 2001, that al Aulaqi had purchased airplane tickets for three of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers, including mastermind Mohammed Atta. Subsequent to the FBI’s discovery, al Aulaqi was detained and released by authorities at least twice and had been invited to dine at the Pentagon…

Previous evidence showed that Al-Hamzi and fellow future hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar regarded their San Diego neighbor Al-Awlaki as a spiritual adviser, but the extent of Awlaki’s concrete support for the duo had not been firmly established.

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Three Convicted in Massive British Terror Plot

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Irfan Khalid, Ashik Ali and Irfan Naseer

Irfan Khalid, Ashik Ali and Irfan Naseer

IPT - by John Rossomando:

A court in Birmingham, England has convicted three men of plotting to carry out a suicide bombing campaign inspired by the late terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki.

Irfan Khalid, Ashik Ali and Irfan Naseer were radicalized by Awlaki’s lectures and by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine, which regularly featured the terrorist mastermind’s articles prior to his death in a September 2011 drone strike.

Police found lectures by al-Awlaki on Khalid’s cell phone, including “The Book of Jihad,” “It’s a War against Islam,” “Brutality towards Muslims” and “Stop Police Terror.”

According to the Telegraph, Khalid encouraged his fellow plotters to listen to al-Awlaki’s lectures.

Additional CD-ROMs containing talks by al-Awlaki were found in Khalid’s grandparents’ home. The terrorist leader’s messages were also found stored in Ali’s laptop and cell phone.

The trio experimented with making bombs using ammonium nitrate they removed from sports injury cold packs. Experts told the court they could have developed a viable improvised explosive device (IED) using their bomb-making recipe.

Such tactics resemble the sort of “Open Source Jihad” tactics advocated in Inspire that call for small groups or individual jihadists to make bombs and other weapons using readily available ingredients.

“They wanted to commit their own 9/11. They were critical of the July 7 [2005] bombers because they didn’t kill enough people,” said Marcus Beale, assistant commissioner of the West Midlands Police, the Guardian reported. “From evidence we presented to the court there were 8-10 bombs that they wanted to deploy, a mixture of suicide bombs and IEDs. So in terms of their capability, if they delivered on the plans that they had they would have committed mass murder on a horrendous scale.”

A coordinated series of bombings in London in 2005 killed 52 people in what is known as the 7/7 attacks.

Another of the plans the trio discussed involving the attaching of blades to the wheels of cars to mow down pedestrians came directly from an Inspire article titled, “The Ultimate Mowing Machine.”

Al-Awlaki has been tied to numerous other terror plots, including: Maj. Nidal Hasanand the Fort Hood shooting, Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab‘s plot to blow up an airliner with a bomb in his underwear and Faisal Shahzad‘s plot to blow up a truck in Times Square. The 9/11 Commission Report also stated he was tied to two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Although al-Awlaki might be gone his message lingers in his videos that are still for sale in Islamic bookstores and in more than 2,000 YouTube videos.

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Jihad in the Amazon.com

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imagesCA0RFEY8BY: :

Online retail giant Amazon.com is profiting from the sale of speeches and writings by one of the world’s most notorious terrorists despite objections from those who argue the website is facilitating the dissemination of jihadist propaganda.

The works of terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki are easily purchased in print, CD, and on Kindle e-readers via Amazon’s site.

Al-Awlaki’s materials are not being sold by Amazon directly but via third parties in the Amazon Marketplace, which acts as a clearinghouse for books, videos, and CDs. Amazon acts as an intermediary and facilitates the sale, taking a portion of the proceeds in the process.

Amazon has failed to remove the writings following multiple appeals from United States terrorism experts who argue that the international online store is aiding the spread of terrorism.

Read more at Free Beacon

Refreshing Candor on Islamist Violence in Congressional Report

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American Jihadist Terrorism Combating a Complex Threatby IPT News:

The path from believing in radical Islamist political ideology to plotting attacks in the homeland can be triggered by a number of factors, a new Congressional Research Service report finds.

The report focuses on homegrown Islamic terrorism, which in itself is remarkable given the reluctance many in Washington have had to clearly naming a leading source of the terrorist threat. The title, “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat,” uses the kind of language all-but-banned by the executive branch since 2008. Cabinet officials in the Obama administration have strained to avoid references to jihadist violence.

But the Congressional Research Service is tasked with producing “authoritative, confidential, objective and nonpartisan” analysis, rather than catering to political semantics. The 137-page report contains more than 500 references to “jihad” or “jihadist.” The term “Islam” or “Islamic” is used 117 times. It doesn’t deny the existence of other forms of violent extremism, including “radical environmentalism, animal rights, or anti-abortion causes,” but the report’s focus is on the threat of attacks motivated by radical Islam.

That is something House Democrats have treated with shrill accusations of bigotry.

The report examines 63 homegrown jihadist plots since 9/11, noting that nearly two-thirds of those took place in just the last three years. That spike “suggests that ideologies supporting violent jihad continue to influence some Americans—even if a tiny minority,” the report says.

Among those are two deadly attacks that have not even been charged as acts of terrorism. The shootings at Fort Hood and at a Little Rock, Ark. military recruiting office were “lone wolf” attacks that left 14 people dead.

“[W]hen someone moves from simply believing in jihad to illegally pursuing it via violent methods, he becomes a terrorist,” the report says. “Because the move from belief to violence is so individualized, there is no single path that individuals follow to become full-fledged terrorists.”

Social interaction – from online sources like terrorist forums to calls to action from al-Qaida operatives like Adam Gadahn or Anwar al-Awlaki and in Inspire magazine – has proven significant in many plots. In addition, converts to Islam were involved in 26 of the 63 cases, and many acted on a belief that “the West is harming the global community of Muslims (the Ummah), or even waging war against it.”

Other reports have agreed that the perception of a “war on Islam” is among the most effective messages in stirring Islamists to seek violence. Despite that, American Islamist groups have repeatedly made the claim.

The report also discusses the FBI’s use of informants and undercover agents in counter-terror investigations and concerns that the tactic might alienate some Muslim Americans. Lawmakers must decide if that tradeoff is worthwhile in facing what is a very real threat.

“A single successful attack can incur scores of casualties and cause considerable socioeconomic disruption. Regardless of their novelty, frequency, or lethality, violent attacks fostered by violent jihadists radicalized in the United States remain a security concern.”

Read the full report here.

Al Gore Profits from the Stealth Jihad

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Current AlJazeeraBy Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Let’s call it Al Goreera.  That seems a fitting title for the new network that former Vice President Al Gore is launching with the jihadists’ favorite television outlet: Al Jazeera.  The effect will be to create vast new opportunities for our enemies to propagandize the American people, a key ingredient of their “civilization jihad” against our country.
It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this treachery.  Imagine the furor that would have erupted if, during the Cold War, one of the United States’ most prominent former leaders had enriched himself to the tune of $100 million by giving the Soviet Union’s intelligence service, the KGB, a vehicle for engaging in information and political warfare in some 40 million homes across this land.  If anything, the danger posed by Al-Goreera today is even greater since most of us — and especially our elites — are unaware that such warfare is even afoot.
Yet it is.  In the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history — the government introduced into evidence the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plan for its operations in America. This 1991 document, entitled “The Explanatory Memorandum on the Strategic Goal of the Group,” established that the Brothers’ mission here is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…by their hands [meaning ours] and the hands of the Believers  so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Toward this end, Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood employ various subversive techniques.  Among the most important are those aimed at achieving what the military calls “information dominance.”  Al Jazeera is used by jihadists the world over — including its Wahhabi owner, the Emir of Qatar — to promote their narratives of hatred of the infidel West in general, and Israel and the United States in particular.
The Washington Free Beacon recently identified (http://freebeacon.com/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-al-jazeera/) seven illustrative examples of the network’s regular dissemination of praise for terrorists and their sponsors.  These include the likes of the late Yemini-American al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Sudan’s genocidal dictator, Omar al-Bashir.  The virulently shariah-promoting, Qatari-based cleric Yousef al-Qaradawi even has a regular show on Al Jazeera’s programming for Muslim consumption.  He uses it to sanction murderous holy war against American soldiers and Israelis, including women and children.
Of course, those promoting the network’s penetration of the United States — among them Mr. Gore, who will get a board seat on the new network to be formally known as Al Jazeera America — tend to pooh-pooh concerns about the Arabic-language mother ship’s service to the jihadi cause.  In any event, these apologists insist that the programming in English is objective and fair, claiming that Colin Powell says it is the only network he watches.  Who knows, given their appalling predilections, it may also be the favorite of President Obama’s newest nominees, Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel and CIA Director-designate John Brennan.
The truth, however, is that over time if not immediately, the dictates of the owner and the editorial board in Doha will ensure that the content of Al Goreera helps obscure, rather than illuminate, the ominous nature of civilization jihad and promotes the shariah doctrine it seeks to insinuate into this country.
Regrettably, the Federal Communications Commission has washed its hands of this transaction claiming, in the words of a spokesman, it “doesn’t have regulatory oversight of transactions relating to ownership of cable networks.”  It’s a safe bet that the deeply Islamist-penetrated Department of Justice (see Part 9 of www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) won’t intervene, either.  In light of the stakes, Congress must inject itself into the matter.
At the very least, Al Jazeera America should be obliged to register as a foreign agent.  That term is defined by the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) as individuals or entities that are wholly owned by a foreign government, that take instruction from the owners or their agents and that attempt to influence public opinion and policy in America.  Al Goreera would certainly fit that description, and Congress should ensure that its broadcasts are identified accordingly.
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Exclusive: Cleric may have booked pre-9/11 flights for hijackers, FBI documents show

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imagesCAX75C8TBy

The FBI suspected within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that  the American Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki may have purchased tickets for some  of the hijackers for air travel in advance of the attacks, according to newly  released documents reviewed exclusively by Fox News.

The purpose of these flights remains unclear, but the 9/11 Commission report  later noted that the hijackers had used flights in the lead-up to the attacks to  test security and surveillance.

The heavily redacted records – obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom  of information Act request – suggest the FBI held evidence tying the  American-born cleric to the hijackers just 16 days after the attack that killed  nearly 3,000 Americans.

“We have FBI documents showing that the FBI knew that al-Awlaki had bought  three tickets for three of the hijackers to fly into Florida and into Las Vegas,  including the lead hijacker, Mohammad Atta,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial  Watch, told Fox News.

He added that the records show the cleric, killed in September 2011 by a U.S.  drone strike in Yemen, “was a central focus of the FBI’s investigation of 9/11.  They show he wasn’t cooperative. And they show that he was under  surveillance.”

One FBI investigative report known as a 302 summarizes the bureau’s investigation  of Al-Awlaki’s Visa transactions. While heavily redacted, the document  indicates a credit transaction for “Atta, Mohammed — American West Airlines,  08/13/2001, Washington, DC to Las Vegas to Miami,” the document says.

The mid-August flight, according to the Joint Congressional Inquiry into  9/11, which first investigated the attacks, was one of Atta’s numerous and  crucial surveillance flights.

“On August 13, Atta flew a second time across country from Washington to Las  Vegas on a Boeing 757 (seated in first class) returning on August 14 to Fort  Lauderdale,” the 9/11 report reads.

The FBI documents also show a credit card record for a “Suqami, S. —-Southwest Airlines, 07/10/2001, Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando.” Satam al-Suqami  was one of the muscle hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which slammed  into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The third individual, identified in the records is a “W. al-Sheri — National  Airlines, 08/01/2001, San Francisco to Las Vegas to Miami.”  This appears  to be either Waleed al-Shehri or Wail al-Shehri. The two brothers were also  muscle hijackers, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

As part of its ongoing investigation of the cleric, Fox News was first to  report in the special “Fox  News Reporting – The Secrets of 9/11,” broadcast in September 2011, that the  cleric was an overlooked key player in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Read more at Fox News

 

The Wrong Man for the C.I.A.

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By GREGORY D. JOHNSEN

WITH the resignation of David H. Petraeus, President Obama now has a chance to appoint a new C.I.A. director. Unfortunately, one of the leading candidates for the job is John O. Brennan, who is largely responsible for America’s current flawed counterterrorism strategy, which relies too heavily on drone strikes that frequently kill civilians and provide Al Qaeda with countless new recruits. Rather than keeping us safe, this strategy is putting the United States at greater risk.

For all of the Obama administration’s foreign policy successes — from ending the war in Iraq to killing Osama bin Laden — the most enduring policy legacy of the past four years may well turn out to be an approach to counterterrorism that American officials call the “Yemen model,” a mixture of drone strikes and Special Forces raids targeting Al Qaeda leaders.

Mr. Brennan is the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser and the architect of this model. In a recent speech, he claimed that there was “little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits for A.Q.A.P.,” referring to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Mr. Brennan’s assertion was either shockingly naïve or deliberately misleading. Testimonies from Qaeda fighters and interviews I and local journalists have conducted across Yemen attest to the centrality of civilian casualties in explaining Al Qaeda’s rapid growth there. The United States is killing women, children and members of key tribes. “Each time they kill a tribesman, they create more fighters for Al Qaeda,” one Yemeni explained to me over tea in Sana, the capital, last month. Another told CNN, after a failed strike, “I would not be surprised if a hundred tribesmen joined Al Qaeda as a result of the latest drone mistake.”

Rather than promote the author of a failing strategy, we need a C.I.A. director who will halt the agency’s creeping militarization and restore it to what it does best: collecting human intelligence. It is an intelligence agency, not a lightweight version of Joint Special Operations Command. And until America wins the intelligence war, missiles will continue to hit the wrong targets, kill too many civilians and drive young men into the waiting arms of our enemies.

Without accurate on-the-ground intelligence, our policies will fail. George W. Bush launched two major ground invasions, and Mr. Obama has tried several smaller wars. Neither strategy has worked. In Yemen, which has been the laboratory for Mr. Obama’s shadow wars, A.Q.A.P. has more than tripled in size after three years of drone strikes. When the United States started bombing Yemen in 2009, A.Q.A.P. had just 200 to 300 fighters. Today, the State Department estimates it has a few thousand. Since 2009, the group has attempted to attack America on three occasions, coming closest on Dec. 25, 2009, when a would-be suicide bomber narrowly failed to bring down an airliner over Detroit. When it tries again — and it will — the organization will be able to draw upon much deeper ranks.

Not surprisingly, American officials reject the claim that current policy is exacerbating the problem. In June 2011, Mr. Brennan declared that “there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.” This came almost exactly a year after a botched drone attack in Yemen killed a deputy governor and four of his bodyguards instead of the intended target.

Under Mr. Brennan’s guidance, the United States has also adopted a controversial method for determining how many civilians it has killed, counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. This means that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen killed by a drone in October, was classified as a militant despite evidence that he was simply a shy teenager whose father happened to be Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been killed by American missiles two weeks earlier.

Read more at NYT

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Leader of California Taliban cell arrested yesterday was US Air Force veteran

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PJMedia: by Patrick Poole

The complaint filed by federal prosecutors yesterday against four California men who were actively planning on joining the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers and attack U.S. bases there was led by , a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan. Kabir converted two of the other cell members, eventually radicalizing and recruiting all three other men. He was arrested in Afghanistan.

One curious element noted in the complaint is that Kabir also served in the U.S. Air Force prior to the 9/11 attacks. So the leader of a homegrown terrorist cell led by a U.S. Air Force veteran had recruited others to kill U.S. soldiers in the field.

This is the kind of insider threat that two of my colleagues and myself warned the U.S. Army about 18 months prior to the Fort Hood attacks by Major Nidal Hasan (and were ignored). After those attacks I reported here at PJ Media that little has been done by the U.S. military to define and address the threat. Back in June, NPR reported that the Defense Department was investigating more than 100 extremists in the U.S. military, with at least a dozen of those cases considered serious.

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