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Terrorism in the United States

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A common definition of terrorism is the systematic use or threatened use of violence to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change.[1][2]

Various attacks

1800-1899

1900-1959

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000-present

  • 2001 September 11: September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda. Islamic fundamentalists use airplanes to destroy the twin towers of the World Trade Center and heavily damage The Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed prematurely in Pennsylvania.
  • 2001 September 18: November - 2001 anthrax attacks. Letters tainted with anthrax kill five across the United States, with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets. . On July 31, 2008 Bruce E. Ivins a top biodefense researcher committed suicide. [25] On August 6, 2008 the FBI concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro choice views.[26]
  • 2001 May 21 The Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington burned. Replacement building cost $7,000,000. Earth Liberation Front members pleads guilty[27] [28]
  • May 2002 Mailbox Pipe Bomber: Lucas John Helder rigged pipe bombs in private mailboxes to explode when the boxes were opened. He injured 6 people in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Iowa. His motivation was to garner media attention so that he could spread a message denouncing government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana as well as promoting astral projection.
  • 2002 July 4: Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, kills two Israelis and wounds four others at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport. The FBI concluded this was terrorism, although they found no evidence linking Hadayet to any terrorist group.[29]
  • October 2002 Beltway Sniper Attacks: During three weeks in October 2002 John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and critically injured three others in Washington D.C, Baltimore, and Virginia. An earlier spree by the pair had resulted in 3 deaths in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, California, Arizona, and Texas to bring the total to 16 deaths. No motivation was given at the trial but evidence presented showed an affinity to the cause of the Islamic Jihad.
  • 2006 March 05: Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured 6 when he drove an SUV into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world"[30].
  • 2006 July 08: Naveed Afzal Haq walked into the Jewish Federation in downtown Seattle, Washington and began shooting after shouting, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel"[31]. Haq killed one and wounded five others (three critically). [32][33]
  • 2007 October 26: A pair of improvised explosive devices were thrown at the Mexican Consulate in New York City. The fake grenades were filled with black powder and detonated by fuses causing very minor damage. Police were investigating the connection between this and a similar attack against the British Consulate in New York in 2005[34].
  • 2008 March 3: Four multimillion-dollar show homes place in Woodinville, Washington are torched. The Earth Liberation Front is suspected in the fires[35].
  • 2008 March 6: A military recruiting station in Times Square was bombed in the early hours resulting in minor damage to the facility. It is believed a simply constructed device was used. Surveillance video that recorded the explosion also captured a bicycle riding man who prior to the blast stopped and walked up to the facility. Police are investigating a possible link between this attack and recent attacks on the Mexican and British consulates in New York [36][37]. Police are offering a $15000 reward for information that leads to an arrest[38]
  • 2008 May 4 Multiple nail laden pipe bombs exploded at a Federal Courthouse in San Diego at 1:40 AM causing "considerable damage" to the entrance and lobby and sending shrapnel two blocks away. The F.B.I. is investigating links between this attack and an April 25 explosion at the FedEx building also in San Diego.[39][40]
  • 2008 July 27 Jim D. Adkisson opened fire in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville,Tennessee killing two and injuring seven before being tackled to the ground by congregation members. A note found in his SUV indicated this was intended as a suicide attack and said the church was apparently targeted because of its support of liberal social policies.[41]
  • 2008 August 2,August 3 University of California-Santa Cruz molecular biologist David Feldheim's home was firebombed. A car belonging to another researcher from that University was destroyed by a firebomb. FBI investigating incidents as domestic terrorism.[42]

Attacks by type

Organized KKK violence

Puerto Rican nationalists

Black militancy

  • 1970 October 22: An antipersonnel time bomb explodes outside a San Francisco church, showering steel shrapnel on mourners of a patrolman slain in a bank holdup; no one is injured. The Black Liberation Army is suspected.[49]
  • 1971: During this year the Black Liberation Army is suspected of killing three policemen one at his desk in San Francisco, shooting four others and opening fire on three patrol cars and rolling a grenade which heavily damages a police car and injures two officers. An attempt is made to bomb a police station. These incidents happen in various cities around the country. In August the group runs a one month long guerrilla warfare school in Fayetteville, Georgia. Seven are arrested in January 2007 in connection with the San Francisco desk shooting incident.[49] [50]
  • 1972 January 22: Two St. Louis policemen, Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie, are shot in the back by at least three persons; four suspects in the case are members of the Black Liberation Army; one suspect is later killed in a street battle with police; the recovered pistol matches Laurie's.[49]
  • 1972 December 28: A Brooklyn, New York bartender is held for $12000 ransom by the Black Liberation Army.[49]
  • 1973 January 7: After shooting a police officer a week earlier Mark Essex a former Black Panther party member shoots nineteen people, ten of them police officers, in retaliation for police killings in and around a Howard Johnsons hotel in New Orleans. He also set fires in the hotel before being killed by police.
  • 1973: A New York City transit detective is killed and ten law enforcement personnel are shot four by machine gun during the year mostly in and around New York City by the Black Liberation Army. Also two members of that organization are arrested with a car full of explosives. In the next few years there are a number of violent incidents involving this organization but they are more criminal in nature.[49]

Failed attacks

Arrests and detentions

  • 1943 March 31 Clarence Cull arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate President Franklin D. Roosevelt by suicide bombing. Cull blamed Roosevelt for lost convoys of Merchant Ships.
  • 2002 May 8: José Padilla accused by John Ashcroft of plotting to attack the United States with a dirty bomb, declared as an enemy combatant, and denied habeas corpus. No material evidence has been produced to support the allegation.
  • 2003 April 24: William Krar is charged for his part in the Tyler poison gas plot, a white supremacist related plan. A sodium cyanide bomb was seized with at least 100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, and 500,000 rounds of ammunition. He faces up to 10 years in prison.[61][62]
  • 2003 May 1: Iyman Faris pleas guilty to providing material support to Al Qaeda and plotting to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting through cables with blowtorches. He had been working as a double for the FBI since March, but in October was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
  • 2005 August 31: Kevin James and three others indicted on charges to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism in California.
  • 2006 February 21: The Toledo terror plot where three men were accused of conspiring to wage a "holy war" against the United States, supply help to the terrorist in Iraq, and threatening to kill the US president.
  • 2006 June 23: The Miami bomb plot to attack the Sears Tower where seven men were arrested after an FBI agent infiltrated a group while posing as an al-Qaeda member. No weapons or other materials were found.
  • 2006 July 7: Three suspects arrested in Lebanon for plotting to blow up a Hudson River tunnel and flood the New York financial district. The "plot" was talk, and entirely unfeasible because it would require enormous amounts of explosives, and the target was above the water level anyhow.
  • 2006 November 29 Demetrius Van Crocker a white supremacist from rural Tennessee was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to acquire Sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosives that he planned to use to destroy government buildings.[63]
  • 2006 December 8: Derrick Shareef, 22, a Muslim convert who talked about his desire to wage jihad against civilians was charged in a plot to set off four hand grenades in garbage cans December 22 at the CherryVale Mall in Rockford, Illinois.[64]
  • 2007 March 5 A Rikers Island inmate offered to pay an undercover police officer posing as a hit man to behead New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly and bomb police headquarters in retaliation for the controversial police shooting of Sean Bell. The suspect wanted the bombing to be considered a terrorist act[65] [66]
  • 2007 May 1: Five members of a self styled Birmingham, Alabama area anti-immigration militia were arrested for planning a machine gun attack on Mexicans[67]
  • 2007 May 7: Fort Dix attack plot Six men inspired by Jihadist videos arrested in a failed homegrown terrorism plot to kill soldiers. Plot unravels when Circuit City clerk becomes suspicious of the DVDs the men had created and report it to authorities who place an informant in the group.
  • 2007 June 3: John F. Kennedy International Airport terror plot Four men indicted in plot to blow up jet-fuel supply tanks at JFK Airport and a 40-mile connecting pipeline. One suspect is a U.S. citizen and one, Abdul Kadir, is former member of parliament in Guyana. All The airport was targeted because one of the suspects saw arms shipments and missiles being shipped to Israel from that locale. In a recorded conversation one of the suspects allegedly told an informant that "Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow.... They love JFK -- he's like the man". Plot unraveled when a person from law enforcement was recruited[68],[69],[70]
  • 2008 March 26: Michael S. Gorbey who was detained in January 2008 for carrying a loaded shotgun two blocks from the Capitol Building has been charged planning to set off a bomb after a device containing can of gunpowder duct-taped to a box of shotgun shells and a bottle containing buckshot or BB pellets was found in the pickup truck he was driving. The pickup truck was moved to a government parking lot where for a three week period the device inside it went unnoticed. [71] Michael Gorbey gets 22 years prison, but he insisted that police planted weapons[72].

See also

References

  1. ^ "Terrorism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2006-08-11. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessyear=, |month=, |accessmonthday=, and |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ "Terrorism". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Retrieved 2006-08-11. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessyear=, |month=, |accessmonthday=, and |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ Bombing of the Los Angeles Times
  4. ^ [ 200 Notable Days: Senate Stories, 1787 to 2002 - Chapter IV
  5. ^ Lies My Teacher Told Me. Loewen, James W., Touchstone Simon and Schuster, 1996.
  6. ^ [[1]]
  7. ^ [[2]]
  8. ^ [[3]]
  9. ^ strike
  10. ^ a b [[4]]
  11. ^ [[5]]
  12. ^ Discovery of CIA tip on Israeli envoy's killer could revive 1973 case - Haaretz - Israel News
  13. ^ Explosion at LAX, August 6, 1974
  14. ^ CNN.com - LaGuardia Christmas bombing remains unsolved 27 years later - Dec. 24, 2002
  15. ^ MIP T Terrorism Knowledge Base
  16. ^ World And Nation Update Newsday July 25, 2008
  17. ^ Hanafi Islam
  18. ^ Washington, DC / Hostages NBC News broadcast from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive
  19. ^ [6][dead link]
  20. ^ http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020805fa_fact
  21. ^ http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/stories/ny-usagri135016305dec15,0,3491937.story
  22. ^ CNN:[[7]]
  23. ^ New York Daily News:Killer's daughter admits it was political, February 18, 2007
  24. ^ 4 Charged in 1999 Michigan State Fire Associated Press March 12, 2008
  25. ^ Anthrax scientist commits suicide as FBI closes in Associated Press July 31, 2008
  26. ^ US: Ivins solely responsible for anthrax attacks Associated Press August 6, 2008
  27. ^ New York Times: [[8]]
  28. ^ Jury in University of Wash. ecoterror trial reaches verdicts AP March 5, 2008
  29. ^ CNN.com - FBI, Justice: El Al attack was terrorism - April 12, 2003
  30. ^ ABC News: [[9]]
  31. ^ Seattle Times: [[10]]
  32. ^ CNN News: [[11]]
  33. ^ Milwaukee Jewish Federation: [[12]]
  34. ^ Police Probe Mexican Consulate Explosion AP October 26, 2007
  35. ^ Ecoterrorism Suspected in House Fires in Seattle Suburb The New York Times March 4, 2008
  36. ^ NYPD: Surveillance Video Captures Times Square Blast WNBC-TV March 6, 2008
  37. ^ Video of Times Square Bombing
  38. ^ Cops seek help in Times Square bombing probe Newsday April 3, 2008
  39. ^ Probe of San Diego court pipe bomb looks at earlier blast Associated Press May 5, 2008
  40. ^ FBI: Courthouse bomb was simple, but deadly San Diego Union-Tribune May 5, 2008
  41. ^ Rampage Attributed to Hatred of Liberalism Washington Post July, 29, 2008
  42. ^ Animal rights activists defend firebombing attacks against US researchers The Guardian August 4, 2008
  43. ^ Jonathan M. Bryant: Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era, The New Georgia Encyclopedia, October 3, 2002
  44. ^ The Bloody Shirt Terror After Appomattox by Stephen Budiansky Viking Press
  45. ^ Terrorism Incidents and Significant Dates Calendar - Terrorism Information Center
  46. ^ [ http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s368066.htm Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Terrorism Chronology]
  47. ^ Three Cops honored For '82 Bomb Heroics New York Post January 1, 2008
  48. ^ 3 cops' fateful New Year's Eve Newsday January 1, 2008
  49. ^ a b c d e The Freedom Fighters
  50. ^ Newsday Article January 24, 2007 Herbert Lowe
  51. ^ The Monumental Plot - TIME
  52. ^ MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base
  53. ^ Keerdoja, Eileen (1976-11-08). "Squeaky and Sara Jane" (HTML). Newsweek. Retrieved 2007-01-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  54. ^ "Putting the Ass Back in Assassin" (HTML). Suck.Com. 2001-02-12. Retrieved 2007-01-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  55. ^ Lee, Vic (2007-01-02). "Interview: Woman Who Tried To Assassinate Ford" (HTML). ABC-7 News. KGO-TV. Retrieved 2007-01-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  56. ^ Larabee, Mark (December 16 2000). "Two Rajneeshee members plead guilty: Sally-Anne Croft and Susan Hagan return to the United States to face 15-year-old wiretapping charges". The Oregonian. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  57. ^ Carter, Lewis F. (1990). Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram. Cambridge University Press. p. Pages 202, 222, 225, 235-238. ISBN 0521385547. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  58. ^ http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060912/NEWS/60912022/1001/NEWS
  59. ^ "Explosive found at Austin women's clinic". Associated Press. April 26, 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  60. ^ Cratty, Carol (April 26, 2007). "Bomb found at women's clinic". CNN. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  61. ^ The Memory Hole > The US Terrorism Plot That the Media Ignores
  62. ^ Tyler Morning Telegraph - TYLER MAN, COMPANION PLEAD GUILTY IN FED COURT
  63. ^ (AP) Man sentenced to 30 years in prison on terrorism charges | WKRN.COM
  64. ^ Ill. man arrested for alleged bomb plot - Security - MSNBC.com
  65. ^ http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyhit065119743mar06,0,340430.story?coll=ny-nynews-print March 6 Newsday Article
  66. ^ wcbs-tv
  67. ^ MSNBC Agent: Ala. militia planned attack on Mexicans
  68. ^ CNN 4 charged with terror plot at JFK airport
  69. ^ JFK TERROR PLOT: three under arrest Newsday June 3, 2007
  70. ^ CBS News JFK Terror Suspects Face Extradition
  71. ^ Capitol Police Missed Device Washington Post March 26, 2008
  72. ^ Man Found With Gun, Bomb Near Capitol Gets 22 Years. Washington Post, August 16, 2008