Trying to understand what makes terrorists tick has perplexed academics, policymakers, and the public for centuries. The once-popular notion that terrorists must be irrational because they kill innocent people has long been discarded as political, religious, territorial, and other objectives have been linked to various terrorist activities. For those terrorists with consciences, the French anarchist Émile Henry's proclamation in 1894 that “there are no innocent bourgeois”1 created the template that helps soothe the pangs of guilt that terrorsts of any ideological stripe might feel as a result of the deaths of children and other “innocents.” The only justification, however, that most terrorists have needed throughout history for their violence was a belief that the ends justified the means. If those ends were winning a homeland or an autonomous region, then even if innocent civilians were killed, that was the price that had to be paid for the “cause.” The same was true if the objective was the overthrow of a government, a global revolution, or any other cause.

Lone wolves, however, usually do not even have to consider whether the ends justify the means. Since they are beholden to nobody but themselves, they alone can determine the course of action they will take. While some, like many terrorist groups, will make rational decisions based on the costs and benefits of various attacks, others will simply act without much thought being given to the consequences. But, like all terrorists, lone wolves have to decide whether the tactics and targets they choose will achieve their objectives. Understanding those tactics, targets, and objectives can help unlock some of the mysteries concerning who the lone wolves really are.

LONE WOLF TACTICS, TARGETS, MOTIVATIONS, AND OBJECTIVES

Throughout the history of terrorism, there have been a surprisingly small number of different tactics employed by terrorists, whether they are lone wolves or members of a terrorist organization. Just ten basic tactics have characterized terrorist behavior over time: bombings, hijackings, assassinations, kidnappings, armed assaults (machine-gun, rocket, or other violent attacks against people or buildings), barricade-hostage incidents (seizures of embassies or other government or business structures), product contamination, release of chemical or biological agents, cyberterrorism, and suicide attacks. The latter category often overlaps with several of the other types of tactics, such as bombings and armed assaults, in which the perpetrator willingly dies in the attack. And there can be, of course, combinations of tactics, such as the hijacking-suicide attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York City; Washington, DC; and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

While lone wolves can do many of the same things that terrorist groups do, such as hijack an airplane, assassinate a government leader, or shoot up a gathering of people, there are some operations that are better suited for larger groups or cells. For example, a kidnapping usually requires several people to abduct the targeted individual, transport him or her to a safe house, keep guard, and so forth. And lone wolves obviously cannot commit simultaneous attacks, unless they use timing devices and place bombs in several locations. They can, however, commit dual attacks where there is a short time period between incidents. This occurred in Norway in July 2011 when Anders Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo and then two hours later massacred youths at a political summer camp. Lone wolves, for the most part, have at their disposal the same array of tactics that other terrorists have.

The targets of lone wolves are also not that significantly different from those of terrorist groups or cells. Lone wolves have attacked government, business, military, and civilian targets, and they have conducted both indiscriminate and selective killings. Among the indiscriminate murders by lone wolves were those of Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including several children. Among the more infamous selective attacks by lone wolves were those of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who sent package bombs to specific individuals over a seventeen-year period.

It is when we look at motivations and objectives that we begin to see some of the discrepancies between terrorist groups and lone wolves. A terrorist organization is comprised of individuals who join the group for a variety of reasons, ranging from agreement with the group's overall objectives, such as the overthrow of a government or attaining a separate state or territory, to personal needs, such as the desire to belong to a group, rebellion against authority figures, revenge, and so forth. But once in the group, these individuals have to conform to the group's overall objectives. Otherwise, there could be dissension and potential compromise of a mission. As one observer noted, al Qaeda members “pledge their personal loyalty to [Osama] bin Laden, thus declaring their membership in the family of global jihad and willingness to sacrifice their lives for the goal as defined by the group's leader. This personal declaration of loyalty obligated organization members to carry out bin Laden's orders with strict obedience.”2 It can be assumed that Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over the leadership of al Qaeda in the aftermath of bin Laden's killing in May 2011, will try to become the new focal point for pledges of loyalty by members of the group, although al Qaeda has become a more decentralized organization in recent years.

The lone wolf, however, doesn't have to make any pledges to a leader or make his or her desires align with that of a group. While lone wolves often perpetrate their violence for political, religious, ethnic-nationalist, and other “traditional” terrorist-group objectives, some of them also have a personal, psychological, criminal, or idiosyncratic motive for their violence. According to noted terrorism scholar Jessica Stern, “Lone wolves often come up with their own ideologies that combine personal vendettas with religious or political grievances.”3 Because lone wolves have their own agendas, they sometimes tend to be perceived as too dangerous and unstable for membership in a terrorist or similar type of group. Once rejected, the lone wolves can be motivated to take action by themselves. For example, McVeigh began plotting the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City after a Michigan militia group distanced itself from him because, according to the FBI, “it became apparent that his views were too radical.”⁴

We have to be careful, however, in explaining lone wolf behavior as being driven by personal or psychological needs for which the lone wolf then simply attaches an ideology to justify his or her actions. That detracts from the dedication that many lone wolves have to the cause they adopt. Until we have data on the motivations of all members of every terrorist group, we cannot say with certainty that some members of a terrorist group do not have similar personal and psychological factors that are part of their motivations for violence.

In fact, some leaders of terrorist groups have been portrayed as having similar personalities to those of lone wolf terrorists. In an article published shortly after the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks in the United States, a noted political scientist, Ehud Sprinzak, wrote about certain terrorists being “self-anointed individuals with larger-than-life callings.” Sprinzak labeled these individuals “megalomaniacal hyperterrorists” and included a lone wolf such as Timothy McVeigh in the category. But Sprinzak also put in this category Osama bin Laden (the leader of al Qaeda), Ramzi Yousef (the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center), and Shoko Asahara (the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and key figure in the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system). “Megalomaniacal hyperterrorists operate according to an altogether different logic,” Sprinzak wrote.⁵ “While often working with the support of large terror groups and organizations, they tend to be loners. They think big, seeking to go beyond ‘conventional’ terrorism and, unlike most terrorists, could be willing to use weapons of mass destruction. They perceive themselves in historical terms and dream of individually devastating the hated system.” Sprinzak also placed Yigal Amir, a young Israeli man who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995, in the “megalomaniacal hyperterrorist” category, since, even though he was not involved in mass-casualty terrorism, “the impact of his act on the Israeli people could not have been more catastrophic.” Sprinzak notes that Amir, who was a right-wing loner, believed that “God wanted him to personally save the nation.”6

The role of the lone wolf as an assassin has, of course, been well documented.⁷ The list of lone wolf assassins, both those who succeeded in killing their target(s) and those who did not, is long, with motivations ranging from political, religious, and ethnic-nationalist causes to personal and pathological reasons.⁸

THE FIVE BASIC CATEGORIES OF LONE WOLF TERRORISM

In order to better understand who the lone wolves are and what makes them tick, it would be useful to design a simple typology that can account for the basic differences among lone wolves as well as for the differences between lone wolves and terrorist organizations. Any categorization scheme is, of course, open to debate. One may not agree with the choice of categories, their definitions, or the placement of various lone wolves into specific categories. But a typology can nevertheless help organize and clarify our thoughts and assumptions regarding lone wolf behavior.

There are five basic types of lone wolf terrorists. Three of these categories are similar to the categories for terrorist organizations, while two are unique to lone wolves. The first type is the secular lone wolf who, like secular terrorist groups, is committing violent attacks for political, ethnic-nationalist, or separatist causes. This is the most diverse category of lone wolf terrorism, since it covers a wide range of issues, such as terrorism related to protests against government policies or attacks due to desires for a homeland, separate state, and so forth. While secular lone wolves may have personality and psychological issues that affect their decision to commit terrorist attacks (just like members of a terrorist group could have personality and psychological issues that led them to join the group in the first place), their main motivation is the same as that of secular terrorist organizations—namely, to further a political or ethnic-nationalist cause. Secular lone wolves can also use the Internet to learn about various secular extremist movements and subsequently become committed to their ideologies and objectives.

The second type of lone wolf terrorist is the religious lone wolf. Just like a terrorist group, this type of individual perpetrates terrorist attacks in the name of some religion, whether Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or another religious belief system. Islamic extremists and white supremacists have been among the most active religious lone wolves in recent years. White supremacists and neo-Nazis can be classified as religious terrorists because many are adherents to, or are at least influenced by, the Christian Identity movement and use its racist and anti-Semitic ideology as a religious justification for their violence.9 Just like secular lone wolves, religious lone wolves can also find inspiration for their violence on the Internet, through various chat rooms, websites, and Facebook pages of religious extremist movements.

The third type of lone wolf terrorist is the single-issue lone wolf, who perpetrates attacks in the name of specific issues, such as abortion, animal rights, or the environment. These lone wolves also resemble their counterparts in single-issue terrorist groups. In fact, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are basically loose affiliations of individual militants without leaders or formal organizational structures. One of the FBI's most wanted terrorists is an individual with ties to animal rights extremist groups. Daniel Andreas is wanted for involvement in the 2003 bombings of two office buildings in northern California.

While secular, religious, and single-issue lone wolves have, in many ways, the same objectives and motivations as their counterparts who are members of terrorist organizations, the fourth type of lone wolf is more unique. The criminal lone wolf is motivated mainly by the desire for financial gain. While some terrorist groups may also have money in mind when they commit a particular attack, their main motivation is not financial. The secular or religious (or on rare occasions, the single-issue) terrorist group that kidnaps or takes hostage an individual for ransom is still driven by the ultimate goal of a change in government policy, a revolution, a separate state, and so forth. Not so for the criminal lone wolf, who has no political, social, religious, or ethnic-nationalist goal in mind. As noted earlier (and in the appendix), I consider acts of violence committed by criminals to be terrorism when the tactics used and the effects upon government and society are the same as if the act(s) had been committed by a “terrorist.”

The fifth type of lone wolf terrorist is the idiosyncratic lone wolf. This category of lone wolves is also unique, since, with the exception of cults that commit terrorist acts, there are really no idiosyncratic terrorist groups in operation. Although the idiosyncratic lone wolf may commit attacks in the name of some cause, it is the severe personality and psychological problems that mainly drive these individuals to violence. Their causes are usually irrational, and they are often diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics.

As with any typology, there is some overlap among the categories described above. For example, special-interest lone wolves such as antiabortion militants have a religious theme connected to their violence (i.e., the belief that human life begins at conception), while animal rights and environmental terrorists have a left-wing, antibusiness, and antigovernment theme attached to their attacks. White supremacists and neo-Nazis, while placed in the religious category above due to their adherence to the Christian Identity movement, tend to hold extreme right-wing, antigovernment views. But even though the category boundaries are not ironclad, a typology can still be useful for providing insight into the lone wolf phenomenon. Further insight can be gained by examining in detail some of the more intriguing cases of secular, religious, single-issue, criminal, and idiosyncratic lone wolf terrorism.

SECULAR LONE WOLVES: TIMOTHY McVEIGH AND ANDERS BREIVIK

One individual perpetrated an act of terrorism that claimed more lives than any other terrorist event on US soil, with the exception of the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks. The fact that he was a homegrown terrorist surprised and shocked most people. Another homegrown terrorist committed the worst mass shooting in Norway's history. Both cases illustrate the impact that a secular, antigovernment extremist can have upon a nation.

Timothy McVeigh

For most Americans, the first image of Timothy McVeigh on television and in newspapers was shocking. Clad in an orange prison-issue jumpsuit as he was taken into federal custody two days after the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including fifteen children, people saw an all-American boy with a crew cut. This was not the portrait of a terrorist most Americans had come to expect. With the 1993 World Trade Center bombing still fresh in the public's memory, Islamic extremists were the poster boys for terrorism, not clean-cut American youths. Yet McVeigh demonstrated how a secular lone wolf with fervent antigovernment sentiments could inflict horrific damage upon a community and, by extension, the country as a whole.

On the morning of April 19, McVeigh parked a rental truck packed with almost five thousand pounds of explosives in front of the federal building and then left the scene before the bomb exploded. He had some help from Terry Nichols, who assisted McVeigh in mixing a deadly combination of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other explosives used in the bombing. Nichols was convicted of his crime in December 1997 and later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, while McVeigh was found guilty in June 1997 and executed for his crime in June 2001.

The Oklahoma City bombing caused more casualties than any other act of terrorism in the United States until the 9/11 attacks. It led to a focus on right-wing militias as the new terrorist threat in the country, since McVeigh (and Nichols) had attended meetings of a militia group in Michigan. McVeigh was upset with the 1993 government raid on the Branch Davidian cult's compound in Waco, Texas, in which more than eighty cult members died when the compound burst into flames during the raid, which took place after a fifty-one-day standoff. Federal authorities had claimed that the cult members possessed large numbers of illegal weapons. The Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the government's raid.

For McVeigh, like others who belonged to or were sympathetic to the militia movement, the raid symbolized the government's intent to confiscate all citizens’ weapons, thereby abrogating the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right of all citizens to keep and bear arms. “Waco started this war, hopefully Oklahoma would end it,” McVeigh said in an interview in prison. “The only way they're going to feel something, the only way they're going to get the message is quote, with a body count.”10 McVeigh further explained his kinship with the victims of the Waco raid: “You feel a bond with this community. The bond is that they're fellow gun owners and believe in gun rights and survivalists and freedom lovers.”¹¹ McVeigh's sister recalled his anger over Waco as they watched a documentary together about the government raid on the compound. “He was very angry,” Jennifer McVeigh testified during her brother's trial. “I think he thought the government murdered the people there, basically gassed and burned them.” She also said that McVeigh felt that “somebody should be held accountable” for the deaths of the people inside the compound.¹²

Two other events contributed to McVeigh's path to becoming a terrorist. One was the 1992 government siege at white separatist Randy Weaver's cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Weaver had failed to appear in court on weapons charges, and when FBI agents came to arrest him, an eleven-day siege ensued. Weaver's wife and son and a deputy marshal were killed before Weaver and an associate surrendered. McVeigh, like many others in the militia movement, felt that the government had been intrusive and used excessive force. “What the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge was dirty,” McVeigh said. “And I gave dirty back to them in Oklahoma City.”13 McVeigh's experience as a solider in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 also shaped his fervent antigovernment feelings. He believed that the US government made him kill innocent people. “My overall experience in the Gulf War taught me that these people were just that—they were people, human beings. Then I had to reconcile that with the fact that I killed them.”¹⁴

McVeigh had originally considered other targets, including assassinating elected officials, but chose to bomb the federal building instead because a bombing would have a better visual impact for the television cameras. There would also be several federal agents inside the building.¹⁵ The fact that he originally considered assassination as a tactic reveals that, at one point in his planning for a terrorist operation, large numbers of casualties were not necessarily a prime objective. He even claimed that he did not know there was a daycare center inside the building, and had he known, “it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage.”¹⁶ That assertion, however, was dismissed by the lead FBI investigator, Danny Defenbaugh, who said there was enough evidence just by glancing at the building from the outside that there was a daycare center inside, including “little [paper] cut-out hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there's a kindergarten there, that there are children in that building.”¹⁷

The Oklahoma City bombing had a profound effect on the United States. Americans discovered that homegrown terrorists could be just as lethal as those who come from foreign shores. McVeigh had single-handedly changed the perception of the terrorist threat in this country away from Islamic militants and toward right-wing, antigovernment extremists. The bombing led to renewed efforts to combat terrorism in the United States, including heightened security measures across the country, the creation of a Domestic Counterterrorism Center headed by the FBI, and the hiring of a thousand new federal officials by the administration of President Bill Clinton to deal with terrorism. McVeigh demonstrated how a lone wolf extremist could be as deadly and effective as larger terrorist groups. Until the 9/11 attacks occurred more than six years later, Oklahoma City remained the tragic symbol of America's vulnerability to terrorism. As McVeigh said, “The truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building. And isn't it kind of scary that one man could reap this kind of hell?”18

Anders Breivik

The same could be said for Anders Breivik, a thirty-two-year-old Norwegian man, who, in a couple of hours of violence, put his country through a “kind of hell” people there never imagined could happen. Norway, for the most part, had been spared the endless terrorism that for decades plagued many other countries around the world. Between 1970 and 2010, there were only fifteen terrorist attacks in Norway, with only one person killed and thirteen wounded in those incidents.¹⁹ Yet on July 22, 2011, Breivik launched a twin terrorist assault that resulted in seventy-seven deaths and changed his country forever. “I think what we have seen,” said Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, “is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22.”²⁰

After setting off a car bomb that killed eight people in Oslo near government offices (including the prime minister's), Breivik traveled by boat to Utoya Island, approximately twenty miles to the northwest, where a summer camp attended by the youth wing of the ruling Labor Party was in its third day. Wearing a policeman's uniform, Breivik told camp officials he was there to protect the campers, who had already heard the news about the Oslo bombing. Breivik then walked to the area where the campers’ tents were located and began shooting whoever he could find. Some of the campers fled to the shore and jumped into the water in an attempt to swim away, but Breivik began shooting them, too. At one point during the massacre, four campers ran toward Breivik, thinking he was a real policeman who could protect them from the gunman on the island. Breivik shot all four dead. When Norwegian police finally arrived—they were delayed for more than an hour due to several problems, including a stalled engine on the first boat they tried to use to reach the island—Breivik surrendered. He had killed sixty-nine people, mostly youths, during the rampage.21

Breivik was not in the Norwegian police's database of right-wing extremists.²² “He just came out of nowhere,” a police official said after the carnage was over.²³ Indeed, one of the advantages lone wolves have over terrorist groups is that they are often not on anybody's radar, as they quietly plot their attacks with minimal or no communication with others. Breivik was, however, put on a Norwegian security-service watch list in March 2011, after buying large amounts of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from an online store in Poland. The fertilizer was used to construct the car bomb that Breivik set off in Oslo. He was soon taken off the list because Norwegian authorities decided that the purchases were for use on a farm that Breivik had rented.²⁴ Breivik was careful not to raise any alarm bells as he planned his attacks. Janne Kristianse, the director of the Norwegian Police Security Service, said that Breivik “had been extremely law-abiding” and that there were “no warning lights” that he was a terrorist. “He has also deliberately failed to be violent in statements online, not been a part of any extremist network and had registered guns, but was a member of a gun club,” the director said.²⁵

Breivik, though, advocated violence in passages he wrote in a fifteen-hundred-page manifesto that he posted online shortly before the attacks. “Once you decide to strike,” he wrote, “it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike.”26 Breivik called for an end to “the Islamic colonisation and Islamisation of Western Europe” and the “rise of cultural Marxism/multiculturalism,” blaming Norwegian politicians for allowing that to happen.²⁷ The Labor Party had long been in favor of immigration.²⁸ More than 12 percent of Norway's population of five million consists of immigrants or children of immigrants, with half coming from Asia, Africa, or Latin America.²⁹ Breivik wrote the following chilling warning in the manifesto:

We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe, hereby declare a preemptive war on all cultural Marxism/multiculturalist elites of Western Europe…. We know who you are, where you live and we are coming for you. We are in the process of flagging every single multiculturalist traitor in Western Europe. You will be punished for your treasonous acts.³⁰

Breivik's path to violence does not appear to stem from his upbringing. Although his parents divorced when he was one year old and he eventually became estranged from his father, he wrote that he had a happy childhood. He attended an elite high school, where he joined the youth wing of the Progressive Party, which had an anti-immigration platform. He soon became angered by reports that immigrant gangs were attacking ethnic Norwegians. He was also incensed by the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, which he perceived as an attack on Christians for the sake of Muslims.³¹

Although Breivik was described after the attacks by some observers as a religious extremist—the New York Times carried a headline portraying Breivik as a “Christian extremist”³²—he fits more into the category of a secular lone wolf terrorist than a religious one. He attacked symbols of the ruling Labor Party—government offices and a government-run youth camp—during his rampage, rather than mosques or other Muslim targets. He even tried to spare one person, whom he thought was not a leftist, when he began his shooting rampage at the camp. “Certain people look more leftist than others,” Breivik said during his trial in April 2012. “This person…appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That's the reason I didn't fire any shots at him.”33 In his manifesto, which he said took three years to complete, Breivik warned against targeting Muslims, since it would likely elicit sympathy for them.³⁴ He also wrote, “As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings.”³⁵ Religious extremists, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, are likely to view their religion's holy books as the guiding force in their lives.

Breivik wrote that the attacks, which were several years in the making, were aimed at drawing global attention to his manifesto. He certainly accomplished that, for soon after the attacks, the manifesto, titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” was studied, assessed, and debated by scholars, journalists, policymakers, pundits, and many others throughout the world. It led to accusations that Breivik had been influenced by some of the anti-Islamic blogs and other Internet materials that were prevalent in the United States and Europe. In his manifesto, Breivik quoted Robert Spencer numerous times. Spencer runs a “jihad watch” website. Breivik also cited other Western writers who argued that Muslim immigration posed a threat to Western culture.³⁶ Furthermore, Breivik included, without citing them, several passages from the manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Breivik substituted the words “multiculturalists” or “cultural Marxists” for Kaczynski's diatribe against “leftists” and others.³⁷

In addition to igniting a debate over the effects that anti-Islamic writings on the Internet may have had on Breivik, there was also criticism lodged against some right-wing politicians in Europe who had advocated anti-Islamic and anti-immigration policies in inflammatory speeches.³⁸ One view held that “a trend toward xenophobia and nationalism in the region had fostered the attacks in Norway.”³⁹ The right-wing, antigovernment nature of Breivik's attacks drew comparisons to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In both cases, the prevailing terrorism threat before the attacks was seen as emanating from Islamic extremists and not from right-wing, homegrown terrorists. A Norwegian Police Security Service report released in early 2011 stated that “the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society.”40 That it wasn't a far-right or far-left “community” that wreaked havoc on Norway, but rather an individual extremist, illustrates the dangers of lone wolf terrorism. Although Breivik tried to portray himself as being part of a larger movement, warning that there were other cells planning future attacks throughout Europe, authorities were not able to uncover any evidence to support those claims.

A panel of five judges at Oslo's district court declared Breivik sane and therefore legally responsible for the murder of seventy-seven people in August 2012.⁴¹ The verdict most likely pleased Breivik “who had hoped to avoid what he called the humilaiton of being dismissed as a madman.”⁴² He was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison, the maximum term allowed under Norwegian law. He will probably, however, spend the rest of his life in prison, since the sentence could be extended, potentially indefinitely, if he is still considered dangerous to society.⁴³

Anders Breivik is clearly an angry young man who, according to his manifesto, began thinking as early as 2002 about taking action to defend the “free indigenous peoples of Europe.”⁴⁴ As one observer noted: “For at least nine years he carried anger towards the changes occurring in Norwegian society. He did not accept the multicultural country that was emerging. It threatened his identity and he felt alienated from it.”⁴⁵ Rather than channel that anger and alienation into nonviolent actions, Breivik chose to lash back in one of the worst lone wolf attacks in history. Nobody saw it coming, which is what many lone wolf terrorists count on.

RELIGIOUS LONE WOLVES: NIDAL MALIK HASAN AND JAMES VON BRUNN

Anger and alienation can also be found among some of the religious lone wolves. Two cases illustrate the lengths to which an individual will go when he or she is convinced that the policies and actions of governments and societies are contrary to his or her religious beliefs. In both cases, the lone wolf intended to kill as many people as possible in a mass shooting. That one of the cases involved an Islamic extremist while the other involved a white supremacist illustrates the diversity that is to be found in the belief systems of religious lone wolf terrorists.

Nidal Malik Hasan

The threat of religious extremist violence has been at the forefront since the 9/11 attacks. While the concern has primarily been with al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups, religious lone wolf terrorists have also made their presence known. There was enough concern about potential religious lone wolf attacks in the aftermath of the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued threat advisories to law-enforcement agencies throughout the United States to be on the alert for retaliatory lone wolf attacks.46 There was good reason for that concern. Less than two years earlier (as noted in chapter 1), a US Army major, who was partly influenced via the Internet by an Islamic extremist cleric living overseas, opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas, killing thirteen people and injuring thirty-two others in the worst terrorist attack ever to take place at a US domestic military installation. The case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is revealing for how life experiences, technology, and government policies can converge to create a religious lone wolf terrorist.

Early in the afternoon on November 5, 2009, Hasan entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, where soldiers obtain medical checkups before being deployed or after returning from overseas. After shouting “God is great” in Arabic, Hasan began shooting at random before he was wounded by return fire and taken into custody. Hasan did not expect to survive the attack, as he had given away all of his possessions to a neighbor before he embarked upon his mission. Hasan, who was scheduled to be court-martialed in 2012, faced the death penalty if convicted.

Hasan's path to becoming a terrorist was an unusual one. The son of Palestinian immigrants from a small town near Jerusalem, Hasan was born and grew up in Virginia. His parents became American citizens and ran businesses in Virginia, including restaurants and a store. Hasan was patriotic and joined the army after graduating college. His parents objected, but he told them, “I was born and raised here. I'm going to do my duty to the country.”47 In that sense, he didn't fit the profile of some of the Islamic extremists in Britain and other European countries, who were the children of immigrants but found discrimination and unhappy lives as they grew up in their parents’ new country. For Hasan, the discrimination would come later, after 9/11, when he claimed that he faced hostility within the military because he was a Muslim.⁴⁸

While in the army, Hasan attended medical school at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Upon graduation in 2003, he did his internship and residency in psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. Hasan raised eyebrows at Walter Reed when, instead of delivering a presentation on a medical topic as part of the final requirement of his residency, he spoke on the topic, “The Koranic World View as It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” Among his comments were: “It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.”⁴⁹ He continued making controversial statements after he arrived at Fort Hood, where he told his supervisor that, as an infidel, she would be “ripped to shreds” and “burn in hell.”⁵⁰

Both at Fort Hood and at Walter Reed, Hasan treated soldiers who were returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological problems. Hasan was reportedly anxious himself about possibly being deployed to a war zone. He expressed his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to colleagues and others and made no secret of his support for Islamic extremists. A US Senate investigation report on the Fort Hood shooting stated the following:

Evidence of Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism was on full display to his superiors and colleagues during his military medical training. An instructor and a colleague each referred to Hasan as a “ticking time bomb.” Not only was no action taken to discipline or discharge him, but also his Officer Evaluation Reports sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism.51

Hasan's journey toward radicalization was aided by numerous e-mails he exchanged with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Islamic cleric who was living in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was a leading figure of a Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda (al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) and had been linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to blow up a plane over Detroit, Michigan, in December 2009. He had also been connected to Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010. (Al-Awlaki was killed in a US drone attack in Yemen in 2011). In one of the e-mails Hasan exchanged with al-Awlaki, Hasan asked al-Awlaki when jihad is appropriate and whether it is permissible if there are innocents killed in a suicide attack. Al-Awlaki had also been Hasan's spiritual leader at a mosque in the United States before al-Awlaki fled to Yemen. After the Fort Hood massacre, al-Awlaki stated that he may have influenced Hasan's radicalization and praised Hasan, referring to him as a “hero” who “did the right thing” in killing the soldiers.⁵²

While some lone wolves cannot be stopped before they act because they fly under the radar and their intentions are not known to others, this was clearly not the case with Hasan. There were enough prior indications that he was committed to Islamic extremist ideology. As the US Senate investigation report noted, one of the lessons of the Fort Hood shootings was the need for the military “to identify radicalization [among soldiers] to violent Islamist extremism and to distinguish this ideology from the peaceful practice of Islam.”⁵³

James von Brunn

Another religious lone wolf for whom there were plenty of signs of potential violent behavior was James von Brunn. He holds the dubious record for being one of the oldest terrorists in history. At the age of eighty-eight, he walked into the lobby of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, on June 10, 2009, with a rifle by his side, intending to kill as many people as possible. However, after fatally shooting the security guard who opened the door for him, Von Brunn was wounded in return fire from other guards. Von Brunn had planned to die in his assault, having finalized his funeral plans and put his finances in order for relatives. He survived, though, and was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of first-degree murder, committing a hate crime, and gun violations. Before he could stand trial, however, he died in January 2010 at a hospital near the federal prison in North Carolina where he was being held.54

Von Brunn can be considered a religious lone wolf because his terrorism was directed at a target associated with the Jewish religion and he had long espoused neo-Nazi and white-supremacist views. He symbolized the ideology of the Christian Identity movement, which is “a racist and anti-Semitic religious sect whose adherents believe that white people of European descent are the descendants of the ‘Lost Tribes’ of ancient Israel…. Despite its small size, Christian Identity influences virtually all white supremacist and extreme anti-government movements.”⁵⁵ Von Brunn self-published a book titled Kill the Best Gentiles! Its main thesis is that Jews are on a mission of “destruction of all Gentile nations through miscegenation and wars.” He viewed his book as “the racialist guide for the preservation and nature of the white gene pool.”⁵⁶

Two themes that Von Brunn continually discussed in his book, as well as in other essays and writings posted on his website, were that Jewish bankers controlled the Federal Reserve Board and that the Holocaust never occurred.⁵⁷ In addition to his terrorist attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Von Brunn also attacked the Federal Reserve Board headquarters years earlier in Washington, DC. In December 1981, Von Brunn walked into the building with a bag slung over his shoulders, telling the security guards he was a photographer who wanted to take pictures of the boardroom. When he was told to wait, he ran up the stairs to where the board was meeting. He was captured and found to be carrying a pistol, a shotgun, a knife, and a mock bomb. He told police that he wanted to take board members hostage to garner media attention regarding the board's responsibility for high interest rates and the country's economic problems. He was convicted in 1983 and served six and a half years in prison on attempted kidnapping, second-degree burglary, assault, and weapons charges.58

Despite the fact that he had a criminal record and was posting anti-Semitic and racist writings for years on the Internet, Von Brunn was still able to double-park his car outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum on the day of the shooting and walk up undetected to the entrance while carrying a rifle. Perhaps it was because he was an aging white supremacist that the authorities did not regard him as a high risk to commit a violent act. There were plenty of signs, though, that Von Brunn would one day strike again. In 2004, he wrote to an Australian Holocaust denial website that it was “time to FLUSH all ‘Holocaust’ Memorials.”⁵⁹ He also foreshadowed his attack on the museum in e-mails he sent to John de Nugent, another white supremacist. After the shootings, de Nugent stated that, in the weeks before the attack, Von Brunn “had been sending a lot of e-mails with violent content.”⁶⁰ According to de Nugent, Von Brunn was depressed over having his monthly Social Security check cut in half and blamed it on somebody in the federal government reading his website and punishing him for his views.⁶¹

That Von Brunn went many years between attacks demonstrates the patience some lone wolves possess in plotting their operations. A terrorist group would have had to continue to attack or risk losing support among its members and those in the community who sympathize with the cause. Failure to launch continual attacks would also portray an image of the terrorist group as losing in its battle against its perceived enemies. Lone wolves do not have those concerns. Time is on their side, as the Von Brunn case illustrates. It is likely that, during the long period between his attacks, Von Brunn took comfort with the thought that he was contributing to the cause with his white supremacist postings on the Internet. But, in the end, even for a man in his eighties, that was not enough. The lure of going out in a blaze of glory with a major terrorist attack in the nation's capital was too much for Von Brunn to resist.

SINGLE-ISSUE LONE WOLVES: ERIC RUDOLPH AND VOLKERT VAN DER GRAAF

Abortion, animal rights, and the environment have long been specific issues motivating both groups and individuals to violence. These types of extremists are consumed with their particular issue and are not trying to bring about widespread political change or revolution. Still, they can have a significant impact on government and society with their actions. In one case, a lone wolf opposed to abortion set off a bomb during the 1996 Olympics Games in the United States and raised fears concerning a new wave of domestic terrorism. That he was also able to elude capture for many years made him a folk hero to some people. In the other case, a lone wolf committed a political assassination in the Netherlands in the name of animal rights and touched a nerve in a country not used to such events.

Eric Rudolph

Every two years, when the Summer or Winter Olympic Games approach, the media and government officials raise the specter of an increased terrorist threat. This is understandable, since terrorists like to strike high-profile targets and garner maximum media exposure. The fear of terrorism during the Olympics is also fueled by the fact that, during the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage, resulting in what became known as the “Munich Massacre.” The terrorists killed the hostages as German police launched a failed hostage rescue mission.

The irony, however, is that the Olympics are usually the safest place to be in terms of being protected against a terrorist attack. When authorities can put in place a tremendous amount of security around a specific area (i.e., the Olympic venues) for a limited amount of time, such as the approximately two weeks it takes to stage the Olympics, it deters most terrorists from attempting an attack. The reason that terrorists were able to perpetrate one during the 1972 Games was because it caught everybody by surprise. It was the first time there had been a terrorist incident at the Olympics. There was very little security at the 1972 Games, with the terrorists only having to climb over a fence to get into the Olympic Village. Since then, with one exception, all subsequent Olympics have been devoid of terrorist attacks.

That one exception occurred at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Eric Rudolph, an antiabortion militant, decided that the Olympics would be the perfect place to violently protest his opposition to abortion. He set off a bomb during a rock concert in Centennial Olympic Park, which didn't have as much security as the Olympic sports events. The bomb killed one person and injured more than a hundred others. A Turkish cameraman also died from a heart attack as he ran to cover the incident. Rudolph would eventually explain his motivation for the bombing in a statement he made after pleading guilty to that attack as well as to three other attacks in subsequent years. The goal was “to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.”62

Rudolph had originally intended to sabotage the power grid in Atlanta and thus force the cancellation of the Games or “at least create a state of insecurity to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested.”⁶³ He abandoned that plan when he could not acquire the necessary high explosives to do the job. Instead, he set off a pipe bomb hidden in a knapsack he placed near the concert stage. An alert security guard, Richard Jewel, noticed the unattended knapsack and began clearing people away. He was later falsely accused of placing the bomb himself at the concert in order to be a hero. The July 27, 1996, terrorist attack at the Olympics, coming just a little more than one year after the Oklahoma City bombing, raised new fears about domestic terrorism in the United States.

Rudolph continued his violent campaign over the next two years, with bombings at an abortion clinic in an Atlanta suburb in January 1997 that injured six people; a bombing at a gay nightclub in Atlanta one month later, in which five people were wounded; and a third bombing, at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, in January 1998, which killed one person and injured another. Rudolph planted second bombs at both the gay nightclub and the Atlanta suburb abortion clinic, set to go off after police and emergency-services personnel had arrived at the scene in response to the first explosions. Police discovered the second bomb at the gay nightclub and defused it, but the second bomb at the suburban Atlanta abortion clinic went off, injuring several people, including police officers. Rudolph later explained his motives for targeting law enforcement and emergency-services personnel:

Because this government is committed to the policy of maintaining the policy of abortion and protecting it, the agents of this government are the agents of mass murder, whether knowingly or unknowingly. And whether these agents of the government are armed or otherwise they are legitimate targets in the war to end this holocaust, especially those agents who carry arms in defense of this regime and the enforcement of its laws. This is the reason and the only reason for the targeting of so-called law enforcement personnel.64

It was after the Birmingham bombing that Rudolph took to the woods of North Carolina to hide from the authorities, having learned that his truck had been seen near the explosion site and that it had been traced to him. Despite a massive manhunt by the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, Rudolph was able to avoid capture for more than five years. He most likely learned survivalist skills while serving with the US Army's 101st Airborne Division in the late 1980s. His ability to survive in the woods and thumb his nose at the authorities for so long gained him a folk-hero status among some people in Murphy, North Carolina, his last residence before he went on the run. T-shirts appeared that exclaimed, “Run, Rudolph, Run,” and “Eric Rudolph—Hide and Seek Champion of the World.”65 Rudolph was finally arrested in May 2003 after a rookie policeman on routine patrol spotted him behind a grocery store around four o'clock in the morning. Thinking that a burglary was in progress, the policeman arrested Rudolph, who gave the officer a false name. Another officer, however, later recognized him to be Rudolph.⁶⁶

In April 2005, Rudolph pled guilty to the Olympic bombing and the three other bombings in order to avoid the death penalty. He was eventually sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. As part of his plea agreement, Rudolph provided authorities with the location of more than 250 pounds of dynamite that he had buried in the North Carolina woods. FBI and other federal agents recovered the explosives at three different sites and destroyed them. In the statement released at his plea-bargain hearing, Rudolph explained his motivation for the bombing of the gay nightclub in Atlanta:

Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American society is the concerted effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality…. Practiced by consenting adults within the confines of their own private lives, homosexuality is not a threat to society…. But when the attempt is made to drag this practice out of the closet and into the public square…every effort should be made, including force if necessary, to halt this effort.⁶⁷

Yet it was the abortion issue more than anything else that drove Rudolph to violence. He made it clear that his terrorism against the government was not part of any sweeping ideological motivation. “I am not an anarchist,” he said. “I have nothing against government or law enforcement in general. It is solely for the reason that this government has legalized the murder of children that I have no allegiance to nor do I recognize the legitimacy of this particular government in Washington.”68 At his sentencing hearing in August 2005, Rudolph expressed remorse only for the bombing at the Olympics. “I cannot begin to truly understand the pain that I have inflicted upon these innocent people,” Rudolph said. “I would do anything to take back that night.”⁶⁹ He did not apologize for the bombings of the abortion clinics and gay nightclub.

Rudolph also denied that he was part of the Christian Identity movement. He issued a postscript to his plea-bargain statement in protest of the book Hunting Eric Rudolph, which claims that he was indeed a Christian Identity supporter.⁷⁰ In the postscript, Rudolph wrote, “I would like to clear up some misconceptions about me which are based upon the false information, innuendos and lies disseminated by some unscrupulous individuals.” Rudolph claimed that “I am not now nor have I ever been an Identity believing Christian. I was born a Catholic, and with forgiveness I hope to die one.” He admitted to attending an Identity church for approximately six months in the early 1980s but claimed that was because the father of a woman he was dating went there. “While attending this church,” Rudolph wrote, “I never bought into the convoluted Identity argument of racial determinism.”⁷¹

Eric Rudolph therefore felt the need to once again convince everyone that he was a true lone wolf extremist, devoted to a single issue and not part of any other movement or ideology. He expressed some ambivalence, however, about resorting to violence in his fight against abortion in a letter that he sent to his mother while in prison. After telling her that perhaps he “should have found a peaceful outlet” for what he wanted to accomplish, he still voiced a rationale expressed by those terrorists who later in life may have doubts about what they did. “However wrongheaded my tactical decision to resort to violence may have been,” he wrote, “morally speaking my actions were justified.”72

Volkert van der Graaf

On May 6, 2002, animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf walked past Pim Fortuyn, a controversial politician and potential prime ministerial candidate, and shot him five times from behind in the parking lot of the Dutch National Broadcasting Center as Fortuyn was leaving a radio interview. The assassination represented the first political murder in the Netherlands since it became a kingdom in 1813.⁷³ For a country that felt immune to the terrorist assassinations common in many parts of the world, the Fortuyn killing sent shockwaves throughout the nation. “Things like this don't happen in Holland,” said one resident of an Amsterdam suburb. “It's like the 11th of September for us. Everybody thought this couldn't be, but we see that it is possible. I feel very insecure.”⁷⁴ Dutch prime minister Wim Kok said that the political assassination was “deeply tragic for our democracy”⁷⁵ and that “a dark shadow has fallen over the Netherlands that has given way to deep emotions.”⁷⁶ Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt said he believed something like this was “impossible in this day and age, in the European Union, in the 21st Century.”⁷⁷

The shooting came just nine days before national elections in which Fortuyn's party, List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), was expected to do well. Despite the assassination, the elections were still held as scheduled, with LPF winning 17 percent of the vote and thereby becoming the second-largest party in parliament. A coalition government of LPF, Liberals, and Christian Democrats was formed, but it collapsed just six months later. By the next elections, the LPF had lost most of its support and was no longer a force in Dutch politics. Fortuyn had been a lightning rod for controversy with his anti-environmental, anti-immigrant, and anti-Islamic views. He had stated that he was in favor of legalizing mink farming, complained about “the problems of multicultural society,” and called Islam a “backward religion.”78 Fortuyn also told an environmental group, “The whole environmental policy in the Netherlands has no substance any more. And I'm sick to death of your environmental movement.”⁷⁹

Comments like those did not sit well with Van der Graaf. A lifelong advocate for animal rights, he had fought most of his battles in the courtroom. In 1992, he cofounded the Association Environmental Offensive (VMO) with a friend. The organization, through the court system, systematically challenged permits that had been awarded to fur and cattle farmers. Their goal was to force those businesses to shut down.⁸⁰ Also, Van der Graaf believed it was his duty to stand up for animal rights. “People think it normal that you eat animals and that you let fish suffocate in nets when you catch them,” he once wrote. “But inside me arose a sense of justice—such things shouldn't be happening in a civilized country, I thought, but there is no one to stand up for them.”⁸¹

Prior to the event, Van der Graaf did not let anyone know about his intention to kill Fortuyn. The assassination, however, did not surprise people who knew him. “In my opinion, Volkert devoted all his time in doing stuff for VMO and animals,” one of his friends said. “His life was all about that. Whenever a person like Fortuyn comes along and says fur animals can be bred again, I can imagine Volkert losing his temper. Volkert is a rational person, who thinks always carefully over the purpose of his actions and consequences.”⁸²

As his friend suggested, Van der Graaf meticulously planned his attack on Fortuyn. On May 5, 2002, he searched the Internet for information on Fortuyn's daily schedule. When he learned that the politician would be having a radio interview the next day at the 3FM building at the Media Park in Hilversum, a town thirty kilometers southeast of Amsterdam, he decided that would be a good opportunity to implement his plan. He went there with a map of Media Park and the 3FM building that he obtained from the Internet and waited until Fortuyn exited the building. He claimed he did want to injure anybody else, so that is why he decided to shoot Fortuyn from behind:

I had figured out that if I would approach Fortuyn from the front, he might be able to see the attack coming. Shooting Fortuyn from behind would be least problematic. In that case he would not be able to duck away, which could cause danger for the others present at the scene. Next to that, I did not wanted [sic] Fortuyn to suffer more than necessary. Shooting from behind would make it possible to deadly wound him immediately.83

After the shooting, Van der Graaf ran from the scene but was captured a short time later. He did not talk about his motives for several months. He then claimed in a confession that he killed Fortuyn in order to stand up for the “weaker and vulnerable members” of Dutch society. He compared Fortuyn's rise in politics to that of Adolph Hitler and stated that he killed him as a favor to the Muslim minority in the Netherlands as well as other vulnerable segments of society.⁸⁴ He described Fortuyn as a dangerous man “who abused democracy by picking on vulnerable groups” and who had terrible ideas “about immigrants, asylum seekers, Muslims, animals, and the environment.”⁸⁵

With the exception of animal rights, and to some extent the environment, Van der Graaf's friends and relatives were shocked at his claiming his actions were done in the name of all the other causes that he mentioned above. They did not remember him as being politically engaged in those issues.⁸⁶ Under Dutch law, even though Van der Graaf confessed to the murder, prosecutors still had to prove their case in court. In April 2003, Van der Graaf was convicted and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. He told the court that he regretted the killing and that he still “wrestled” with the question of whether he was right in murdering Fortuyn. “Every day I see it before me. I see myself shoot and Fortuyn fall,” he said in court.⁸⁷

The Fortuyn assassination was a watershed in the Dutch experience with terrorism. As noted above, it sent shockwaves throughout the country. Several spontaneous shrines were created in the days after the shooting, with thousands of people leaving messages and thousands more paying their respects.⁸⁸ It was not only the fact that a political assassination had taken place that shocked the Netherlands, a country with a nonviolent and pacifist heritage, but that a powerful new voice in Dutch politics had been silenced. Although he was controversial, Fortuyn and his party had challenged the establishment and won many supporters. He “represented a political voice in which a substantial, but regularly ignored, part of the lower and middle classes of the nation heard their views and feelings reflected.”89

The assassination also led to an investigation concerning whether the government was negligent in not protecting Fortuyn, since he was a controversial figure who had received many death threats in the past. An independent commission concluded that, while the assassination of Fortuyn was “a serious attack on the democratic constitutional state,”⁹⁰ the government could not be blamed for his murder. The commission emphasized that, even with protection, the complete safety of a politician cannot be guaranteed. As one government official noted, with the lone wolf assassination of Fortuyn, “the Netherlands had lost its innocence.”⁹¹

CRIMINAL LONE WOLVES: JOHN GILBERT GRAHAM AND PANOS KOUPPARIS

A unique category of lone wolves consists of those who perpetrate their violence for purely personal or financial gain. I discuss in the appendix why I believe these types of individuals should be considered terrorists; even though their motives are different from those extremists with political, religious, or ethnic-nationalist objectives, the impact of their actions upon society and government can be just as profound as that of more-traditional terrorists. Two cases illustrate this point. One involves an individual who carried out the first major midair plane bombing in US history in order to collect an insurance policy. The other deals with an individual working with a few family members in order to extort millions of dollars from the government of Cyprus.

John Gilbert Graham

Acting the role of a loving, devoted son, twenty-three-year-old John Gilbert Graham drove his mother to Stapleton Airport in Denver on November 1, 1955, carried her luggage inside the terminal, and kissed her good-bye before she departed on her United Airlines flight to Portland. From there she planned to continue on to Anchorage to visit her daughter. Daisie King must have thought that all was well with her son, who had previously been in trouble with the law. What she didn't know was that hidden in one of her suitcases were twenty-five sticks of dynamite, a timer, two dynamite caps, and a dry-cell battery.

Graham waited at an airport coffee shop until he heard word that the plane had crashed shortly after takeoff. He later telephoned the airline's office to find out if his mother was killed in the crash. When a sympathetic airline official informed him that it was very likely she was among the forty-four dead, Graham simply replied, “Well, that's the way it goes.” His motive for the bombing was greed: a $37,500 insurance policy on his mother's life that he bought from an airport vending machine shortly before she boarded the plane. He was also in line to share in his mother's $150,000 estate. What he collected, however, was execution in the gas chamber at the Colorado State Penitentiary a little more than two years later.92

Since this was the first major midair plane bombing in the United States, the FBI had no prior experience in investigating such acts of terrorism. It was, therefore, a pathbreaking effort on their part in reconstructing the aircraft to determine that explosives were the cause of the crash. Their investigation set standards for future scientific analyses of airplane bombings. The investigation of the Denver crash marked the first time that residues from parts of a plane were examined in a scientific manner to determine the exact cause of an explosion. Parts of the wreckage were sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington, DC, for analysis, where it was discovered that sodium carbonate was on some of the parts of the aircraft. That led the FBI to conclude that the plane was brought down by a dynamite explosion.⁹³

Meanwhile, in Denver, FBI agents studied the passenger list to see if there was anybody on board the doomed plane who might have been the target of a murder plot by someone who knew how to use explosives. Extensive background checks on all the passengers and their relatives led the FBI to Graham, who had a prior arrest record for forgery and knew how to use explosives, having worked for construction and logging companies that used dynamite. The insurance policy was another piece of the puzzle that led the authorities to Graham, who confessed but later recanted his confession. Ironically, even if Graham had never been caught, he might not have been able to cash the insurance policy because his mother never countersigned it.

Graham was arrested in November 1955, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death in May 1956. He was executed in January 1957. His execution occurred under Colorado law, since there was no federal law to cover his offense at that time. The bombing led Congress to pass a bill in 1956 that established the death penalty for anyone convicted of causing loss of life by damaging an airplane, bus, or commercial vehicle. An existing statute covered the sabotage of trains.94

The Graham bombing shocked the nation, including President Dwight Eisenhower, who was outraged by this new form of violence, along with most Americans. The bombing also led the FBI and the Civil Aviation Administration to conduct studies on measures that might be taken to detect explosives in luggage. However, sophisticated technology was not yet available to aid in designing effective and speedy airport security systems. As one observer noted shortly after the bombing, “The rigmarole involved in merely running the detector over every suitcase and hat box going aboard a plane would make present baggage routine, a frequent annoyance, seem like the essence of convenience. So, if the airlines continue current policy, the suitcase with the bomb inside is unlikely to be detected.”⁹⁵

The United States had never before experienced an incident like the Graham bombing—a midair plane bombing over Chesterton, Indiana, in 1933 (see note 4 from the introduction) did not receive the media exposure or reaction across the country that the Graham bombing did. People were perplexed not only by the fact that individuals were capable of blowing up planes in midair, but also by the fact that the person responsible was motivated by the desire to kill his mother for money. An editorial in a local newspaper best captured the bewilderment of people over Graham's crime:

In Denver County Jail sits the greatest criminal enigma in Denver history and possibly the greatest in the reprehensible annals of American crime…. What kind of mind could grind out in minute and exacting detail the steps that John Gilbert Graham's mind did in piecing together his horrendous jigsaw of death…. What kind of heart could block out those compelling and instinctive bonds that exist between mother and son?…[And] what kind of a being could block out entirely 43 other lives in plotting for greed or hatred or convenience the death of one other person?…There seems to be no logical explanation.96

There was, however, a logical explanation. It was rooted in a troubled young man's personality and behavior, which gave plenty of warning signs that he was capable of this horrendous deed. Graham, who showed no remorse throughout his trial, had fought many times with his mother, despite her continual efforts to help him out of bad situations. He was convicted in November 1951 on forgery charges, having stolen several blank checks from a manufacturing firm he worked for as a payroll clerk the previous March. He signed the name of the company's owner on the checks and cashed them for $4,200. He bought a late-model convertible with the money and left Denver.

Graham was arrested the following September in Lubbock, Texas, on a different charge—bootlegging—after he tried to run a roadblock and was shot at by the police, who found a gun in Graham's car. He served a sixty-day sentence in the county jail and was then released to Denver authorities. He received a suspended sentence for the check-forgery charges and was placed on probation for a period of five years. His mother paid $2,500 toward restitution on the $4,200 in forged checks, with Graham paying the rest in monthly installments of $40 per month. He regularly made those payments and had only $105 left to pay at the time of the plane bombing.97

Graham's mother also helped her son by hiring him to be the manager of a drive-in restaurant she owned in Denver. She was reported to be “downright proud” of him and how he had gotten his life together since his forgery conviction.⁹⁸ However, Graham's probation report described her as someone who “appears to be a type that has over-protected her son.”⁹⁹ She either turned a blind eye to his transgressions or just simply wouldn't believe her son meant to do anything wrong. This despite the fact that, when Graham confessed to the FBI regarding the plane bombing, he also admitted both to causing an explosion at the drive-in restaurant and to leaving his car on a railroad track and allowing it to be hit by an oncoming train in order to collect insurance on the car. His half sister reported that Graham had a violent temper and that, on one occasion, he knocked her down and kneed her in the chest. On another occasion, he hit her with a hammer. She also told the FBI that she and her mother had once witnessed him strike his wife for no apparent reason, scaring his mother, who was afraid her son might also hit her.¹⁰⁰

Graham didn't seem too concerned about tipping his plans concerning the bombing of the plane his mother would be on. A credit manger testified at his trial that Graham once told him he had observed the way luggage was handled at Denver's Stapleton Airport and that it would be easy for someone to place a bomb on a plane.¹⁰¹ After his arrest, psychiatrists who met with him were curious as to his feelings about being responsible for the deaths of forty-four people, including his mother. He stated that he “realized that there were about 50 or 60 people carried on a DCB [DC-6B plane].” But, he continued, “the number of people to be killed made no difference to me; it could have been a thousand. When their time comes, there is nothing they can do about it.”¹⁰²

With the Graham bombing, America was introduced to a form of terrorism that unfortunately would become all too familiar in subsequent decades. Increased security measures would gradually be introduced at airports as the public came to understand the need for metal detectors, x-rays, and other measures designed to ensure its safety. No longer would the public only fear the possibility of an accidental plane crash. Now they had to also fear midair plane bombings. A wayward youth with a troubled past had ushered America into a new age of terrorism.

Panos Koupparis

One of the more unusual terrorist threats in recent history took place in Cyprus in March 1987, when a thirteen-page letter was sent to the president, Spiros Kiprianou. The letter was signed by a man calling himself “Commander Nemo of Force Majerus.”103 Commander Nemo was actually Panos Koupparis, a thirty-six-year-old British citizen of Cypriot origin. He threatened to disperse dioxin, a toxic chemical, over the Troodos Mountains south of Nicosia unless he was paid $15 million.

Koupparis claimed that the dioxin would be released by radio-controlled devices already in place and would be carried by wind over populated areas. He argued that Cyprus would not have the medical facilities and resources to deal with the human casualties of a dioxin attack. He further pointed out that the economy of Cyprus was dependent on agriculture and therefore could not afford the damage that would be caused by the release of the dioxin. He even suggested that the government try an experiment. He told them to burn a large number of tires and watch as the black smoke drifted across populated areas. He warned them that a dioxin attack would be a thousand times worse.

In his letter, Koupparis also cited the disaster at Seveso, Italy, to emphasize the danger of a dioxin attack. An explosion at a chemical factory in Seveso in 1976 caused dioxin to escape. Several people near the plant suffered burns and sores on their skin, and large numbers of people complained of nervousness, fatigue, and loss of appetite. Many animals were killed, and Italian authorities were forced to slaughter more than eighty thousand domestic animals as a protective measure. He also mentioned the explosion at a chemical factory in Bhopal, India, in 1984 and the nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986. Koupparis warned that his attack would be much worse, since Cyprus is a small island.

Because the letter was written in fluent English, Cypriot officials suspected it originated in London. (Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960.) The blackmail letter was extremely detailed, including data on the ingredients Koupparis claimed he used to make the dioxin. The threat was taken seriously by the Cypriot government, which consulted with British scientists. The British scientists analyzed the blackmail letter and concluded that Koupparis could not make dioxin from the ingredients he listed. However, the letter was couched in enough scientific jargon that the scientists had to spend some time analyzing its contents before dismissing the threat.

Koupparis continued to contact the government of Cyprus after his initial letter and was finally apprehended by Scotland Yard detectives when he went to the Cyprus High Commission office in London, posing as the “scientific advisor” to Commander Nemo, to collect a passport and some money. Also arrested in London were his wife and two brothers, one of whom was a chemistry student at London's Polytechnic Institute. (Koupparis's sister-in-law was arrested in Cyprus but ordered released by a judge for lack of evidence.) According to police, weapons were found in Koupparis's Cyprus apartment (he had been staying in Cyprus after setting up an offshore company there) along with documents showing that he had planned a series of bombings on the island to convince the government that his dioxin threat was real.

Due to the potential for panic among the Cypriot public, the entire matter was kept secret until after the arrests in London. The incident led to a political crisis for the Cypriot government. The public reaction to the dioxin hoax was one of fear and concern about weapons of mass destruction. The government was criticized by some people for keeping the whole affair secret when lives were potentially at stake, while others criticized it for taking the hoax too seriously. The government defended its actions, stating through a spokesman that “the content of the threat and the nature of the blackmail were such that it would be an act of lack of responsibility for the Government and the police to underestimate the affair, the more so that first assessments by British experts spoke of a realizable threat if the blackmailers had the necessary means.”104 The government and police also stated that steps had been taken to protect lives in case the threat was real but did not disclose what those steps were.

Koupparis was found guilty in July 1989 and sentenced to five years in prison. The dioxin hoax was a very clever scheme by an individual criminal who, working with just a few family members, was able to hatch a plan that caused two governments to consult in secrecy and bring in top-level scientists to assess the threat. It also led to a crisis for the Cypriot government in explaining its handling of the affair. Had the scientific data been more credible and Koupparis's intentions more believable, the crisis could have been much worse for the government. Public revelations by Koupparis before he was caught, through communications to newspapers or radio and television stations, might well have caused great alarm and panic in Cyprus. Even though his motive was purely financial gain, the effect of his actions was the same as if he had threatened to release dioxin in order to protest a government policy or further a religious or political cause. The Koupparis case, along with the Graham case, clearly demonstrates why we can't ignore the terrorist threat of criminal lone wolves simply because they don't fit the traditional definitions of who a terrorist is.

IDIOSYNCRATIC LONE WOLVES: THEODORE KACZYNSKI AND MUHAREM KURBEGOVIC

Another type of lone wolf for whom political or religious objectives are not the driving force for their violence is the idiosyncratic lone wolf. As noted earlier, while these individuals may adopt some cause as the raison d’être for their terrorist attacks, it is really their severe personality and psychological issues that explain their actions. The causes they adopt are also far-fetched and usually irrational. One of the more infamous cases of an idiosyncratic lone wolf involved an individual who became known as the “Unabomber.” This man avoided identification and capture for over seventeen years as he sent package bombs to various individuals throughout the United States. Another case involves an individual who became known as the “Alphabet Bomber.” This man terrorized a community with an airport bombing and threats to unleash nerve gas over populated areas.

Theodore Kaczynski

For a long period of time, Americans lived in fear of packages they received in the mail. They were warned by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the FBI to be on the lookout for packages sent to them from people or businesses they were not familiar with and packages that had excessive postage, handwritten addresses, and/or oily stains on the outside. New regulations were issued requiring people to bring packages weighing more than thirteen ounces and bearing only postage stamps to a post office employee rather than dropping them off in a mailbox. All this was due to a terror campaign waged by a brilliant yet eccentric and mentally ill individual who just never quite fit into society.

Theodore Kaczynski had a promising career as a mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1960s, when he abruptly resigned from his position for no apparent reason. He eventually moved to Montana, where he lived the life of a recluse. He began his campaign of violence in May 1978, when he left a package in a parking lot at the University of Illinois in Chicago with a return address from Northwestern University in Evanston. The package was taken to Northwestern, where it exploded when it was opened, injuring a security guard. Over the course of the next seventeen years, Kaczynski perpetrated several more bombings. He was responsible for a total of sixteen bombings, which together resulted in the deaths of three people and injuries to twenty-three others. Kaczynski either sent his victims a package bomb through the USPS or left the package bomb at the scene of the attack.

The violence occurred in all regions of the country. In one incident in 1979, a bomb exploded in a 727 jetliner's cargo hold during an American Airlines flight, forcing an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC. Nobody was killed in that attack, although several people suffered smoke inhalation. In another incident, Kaczynski sent a package bomb to an advertising executive in 1994, killing the man as he opened the package. And in a letter he sent to a newspaper one week before the Fourth of July holiday in 1995, Kaczynski threatened to place a bomb on an airliner flying out of Los Angeles International Airport. Although the airline bomb turned out to be a hoax, it nevertheless increased public anxiety over terrorism; disrupted the USPS, as a temporary ban was placed on all airmail packages sent from California weighing more than twelve ounces; forced authorities to increase security measures at California airports, which in turn led to major delays for travelers; and even caused the Secretary of Transportation, Frederico Pena, to fly to Los Angeles to explain how the government intended to handle the crisis.105

Kaczynski was the target of one of the largest and most frustrating FBI manhunts in history. The FBI gave the code name “Unabomb” to its investigation (which eventually became popularly known in the media as “Unabomber”), since Kaczynski's early targets were primarily people associated with universities and airlines (“UN” for universities, “A” for airlines). Over the course of seventeen years, the FBI task force assigned to the Unabomber case acquired 3,600 volumes of information, 175 computer databases, 82 million records, 12,000 event documents, and 9,000 evidence photographs.¹⁰⁶ Yet no matter how hard FBI investigators tried, they could not capture the Unabomber or even discover his true identity for nearly two decades.

Kaczynski demonstrated the advantage that lone wolves have in eluding the authorities. As noted earlier, since these individuals work alone and do not communicate with others regarding plans and operations, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have little to go on when trying to capture this type of terrorist. In the case of the Unabomber, all the authorities had in terms of a physical description of Kaczynski was a composite sketch made in 1987 by a forensic artist, which was based on a witness's description of a man she saw place a bomb behind a computer store in Salt Lake City. Kaczynski was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses. He looked like many other people, and despite publicly distributing the sketch, the FBI did not receive any worthwhile leads.

But in the end, it was Kaczynski's need to communicate and be heard that led to his capture. He threatened to continue to send package bombs to people unless the New York Times or the Washington Post published a thirty-five-thousand-word manifesto that he sent to them (as well as to Penthouse magazine) in June 1995. The manifesto called for a revolution against the industrial-technological society. This was not the first time a terrorist had demanded a manifesto be published in a newspaper. Croatian extremists made similar demands during a 1976 hijacking, and their manifesto was indeed published in several newspapers.107 The Washington Post—with the New York Times sharing the printing costs—published the Unabomber's manifesto in September 1995. Kaczynski's brother, David, later discovered writings by Kaczynski that resembled the published manifesto, and he contacted the FBI, leading to Kaczynski's arrest at his remote Montana cabin in April 1996.¹⁰⁸ Kaczynski pled guilty in January 1998 and received a sentence a few months later of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kaczynski's manifesto revealed a political viewpoint that had elements of anarchism and Luddism. He wrote that the “Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race” and that “in order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we had to kill people.” He claimed that the industrial-technological society “cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom.” He also criticized “leftism” as “anti-individualistic” and “pro-collectivist” and praised anarchy, which he argued would allow people “to control the circumstances of their own lives.”109

It is in the psychiatric evaluation of Kaczynski to determine if he was competent to stand trial that we get insight into how he became a lone wolf terrorist. Based on interviews with Kaczynski and a review of his journals, an unpublished autobiography, and other writings and letters, the court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Sally Johnson, diagnosed him as a provisional paranoid schizophrenic. She qualified her diagnosis due to the limited number of sessions she had with Kaczynski. Nevertheless, she found that he was preoccupied with two delusional beliefs. One was that he was controlled by modern technology. The other was that his inability to establish a relationship with a female was the result of extreme psychological verbal abuse by his parents. Johnson wrote in her report that Kaczynski “is resentful and angry, and fantasizes and actually does resort to violence against those individuals and organizations that he believes are hurting him.”¹¹⁰ Kaczynski was mistrustful of other children when he was growing up, and in high school, he was an outsider. “By the time I left high school,” he stated, “I was definitely regarded as a freak by a large segment of the student body.” He also told Johnson that he built a small pipe bomb in chemistry class that gained him some notoriety and attention.¹¹¹ Despite the diagnosis that Kaczynski was mentally ill, he was still deemed competent to stand trial, since he was able to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him.

Kaczynski's terror campaign left emotional scars in addition to the physical pain he caused his victims and their families. Charles Epstein was a geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco when, on June 22, 1993, he opened a package that was sent to his home. The package exploded, and he lost several fingers and suffered permanent hearing loss. He went to court and witnessed Kaczynski plead guilty to his crimes. He told reporters that Kaczynski is “the personification of evil” and that, while he is glad the case is over, he does not expect to heal emotionally anytime soon. “There's never closure,” he said. “I mean, every time I look at my hand [the effect of the bombing] is still there, every time I have to ask someone to speak up, it's still there.” Epstein also addressed the issue of Kaczynski's mental illness. “I distinguish between being mentally ill and being evil,” he said. “There are plenty of paranoid schizophrenics in the world who don't spend their time meticulously plotting to kill people, and then taking glee in the effects of what they have done.”112

Idiosyncratic lone wolves like Kaczynski are particularly dangerous when they combine a high degree of intelligence, which allows them to design clever plots and strategies, with a total lack of guilt or remorse for their actions. As Johnson, the court-appointed psychiatrist, noted, Kaczynski “has demonstrated a reckless regard for the safety of others. He demonstrates a lack of remorse as indicated in his writings by being indifferent to having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from others.”¹¹³

Muharem Kurbegovic

Another mentally ill yet highly functional lone wolf terrorist was Muharem Kurbegovic.¹¹⁴ Known as the “Alphabet Bomber,” Kurbegovic, who committed his criminal acts in the United States in the 1970s, can be considered a terrorist ahead of his time. He was one of the first to threaten to release nerve agents in populated areas, to acquire sodium cyanide, and to use the media in a systematic way to communicate his message and spread fear among the public. His actions received attention from the highest levels of government.

The violence began on August 6, 1974, when a bomb exploded in a locker at the overseas passenger terminal lobby of Pan American World Airways at Los Angeles International Airport. The eleven-pound bomb created a ten-by-fifteen-foot hole in a wall and devastated a hundred-foot area in the lobby, sending bodies, metal, glass, and debris flying through the air. The blast killed three people—two died at the scene and one later in a hospital—and injured thirty-five others, including one man who had to have his leg amputated. It was one of the deadliest incidents of random violence in Los Angeles history. Late that night, a man telephoned the city editor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and claimed credit for the bombing. He correctly gave the publicly undisclosed locker number, T-225, where the bomb had exploded. He said that his name was Isaiak Rasim, “Chief Military Officer of Aliens of America,” and that the bombing had been committed by this new terrorist group.

Rasim was actually Kurbegovic, who acted alone in the bombing. He telephoned the CBS television station in Los Angeles three days later and told them that a tape cassette about the bombing could be found in a trash bin outside a local bank. When police recovered the tape, they found with it the key to the airport locker that had contained the bomb. “This first bomb was marked with the letter ‘A,’ which stands for Airport,” Kurbegovic said on the tape. “The second bomb will be associated with the letter ‘L,’ the third with the letter ‘I,’ etc., until our name has been written on the face of this nation in blood.”115 Kurbegovic had indeed stamped the words “Aliens of America” on the lip of the canister of the airport bomb.

Kurbegovic subsequently placed a bomb in a locker (letter “L”) at a downtown Los Angeles Greyhound bus station but decided to alert police to its location. The bomb was safely defused. He indicated that he was pleased with the media coverage his acts and threats of violence were receiving, and that is why he decided not to detonate the bus-station bomb. “The letter ‘L’ in our name stands for ‘locker,’ and it also stands for ‘life,’” Kurbegovic said on a tape he left with the Herald-Examiner. “We have decided because our cause is getting publicity that it is momentarily not necessary to continue to horrify the population of this land, and we can afford the luxury of revealing the location of such a bomb and let it stand for the word ‘life!’ Nothing could make us happier than if we could conclude that we can reveal the location of bomb ‘I,’ which is already planted.”¹¹⁶

There was no “I” bomb, but Kurbegovic threatened to unleash “two tons of sarin” nerve gas over Washington, DC. “Imagine what will happen if we are lucky and the wind blows from Supreme Court to Capitol Hill to White House to Pentagon,” Kurbegovic stated in one of his communiqués. He also claimed that he had acquired the plans for the air-conditioning systems of thirty skyscrapers in Los Angeles and was researching ways to release chemical agents in those buildings. The fear of terrorism gripped Los Angeles, as people were afraid to venture outside due to the possibility of another bombing. Among the newspaper headlines were “L.A. Bomber Pledges Gas Attack” and “Race against Time to Find Third Bomb.” A Watts Summer Festival concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum that was expected to attract seventy thousand people drew only thirty-five hundred.

Kurbegovic stated that he was committing his acts of violence to protest unfair treatment of immigrants and other various causes. Among his demands were that all immigration, naturalization, and sex laws be declared unconstitutional. Even before his bombing at Los Angeles International Airport, he had left a tape with the media, issuing an ultimatum to all governments of the world to surrender to “Aliens of America.” He stated that his objective was to bring about a society free of nationalism, religion, fascism, racism, and communism. He also claimed in that tape to have sent to all the US Supreme Court justices postcards that had toxic material placed in metal disks underneath the stamps. Postal authorities intercepted the cards when they became caught in the canceling machine in a Palm Springs post office, but no toxic material was found in the metal disks.

The effort to catch Kurbegovic involved the US Secret Service and other federal law-enforcement agencies. During his campaign of violence in 1974 and his subsequent years in prison, Kurbegovic threatened the life of every US president. A special office in the basement of the White House was set up to aid in his capture. The CIA provided sophisticated audio equipment to analyze the cassette tapes, and linguists worked to identify Kurbegovic's accent, which was Yugoslavian. That information, combined with Kurbegovic's having mentioned in his tapes the names of several individuals against whom he had personal grudges, eventually led investigators to identify him as the Alphabet Bomber. Kurbegovic was finally arrested on August 20, 1974.

Kurbegovic, who had been born in Yugoslavia, was an engineer who developed an extensive knowledge of chemicals by reading books and other documents. He had been denied a permit to open a dance hall in Los Angeles because of a prior arrest, and he felt that the justice system was persecuting him and other immigrants. When police searched his apartment after his arrest, they found pipe bombs, explosive materials, books and manuals on germ and chemical warfare, gas masks, catalogues for purchasing chemicals and laboratory equipment, and maps of Washington, DC, and London's Heathrow Airport. In subsequent searches of his apartment, police found twenty-five pounds of sodium cyanide, which is a precursor chemical for the manufacture of the nerve agent tabun. It can also be used to generate toxic hydrogen cyanide gas. Interestingly, Kurbegovic learned about chemical warfare agents by checking out books from a public library and obtaining declassified government documents. What took him a few months of research in the 1970s to learn would probably take a person today only a few hours of searching the Internet.

Kurbegovic's trial did not begin until February 1980. The delay of more than five-and-a-half years from the time of his arrest resulted from legal questions concerning his mental competency to stand trial. Even though he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was still ruled competent (like Theodore Kaczynski) to stand trial. He was found guilty eight months later of twenty-five counts of murder, arson, attempted murder, possession of explosive material, and exploding a bomb. He was sentenced to life in prison. Upon hearing the sentence, Kurbegovic complained to the judge that a life sentence was too vague. He asked her to change it to one thousand years in prison “so I can have something to look forward to.”117

The Kurbegovic case illustrates how a disturbed but highly intelligent lone wolf can think up a variety of terrorist tactics and act upon them, since he is accountable only to himself. In one of his tapes, Kurbegovic stated, “We do not ask American people to support us; in fact, we don't give a damn whether they like what we have to offer or not.”118 He also didn't mind shocking people with his statements, as was evident in court when, acting as his own attorney, he asked a pastor who had lost his leg in the airport bombing, “So where was your God when this bomb went off?”¹¹⁹ Kurbegovic also asked Judge Nancy Watson to declare him the Messiah. His behavior during the trial took its toll on Watson. “I really felt beaten down after a while,” she recalled. “I mean it was just unending with him.” She told Kurbegovic during the sentencing that she considered him to be “the most dangerous person in custody that I know of.” She said that Kurbegovic had an “enormous capacity for feelings of vengeance and anti-social acts” and that he had intended to “kill as many people as he could” with his bombs.¹²⁰ Kurbegovic, though, had the last word, as he held up a sign while being led from the courtroom. The sign read, “I shall return!”

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE CASES EXAMINED

This brief analysis of ten cases of lone wolf terrorism reveals some interesting observations regarding the different types of lone wolves. First, there was little difference among the lone wolves in terms of the tactics they chose to use. Bombings were committed by secular (Timothy McVeigh), single-issue (Eric Rudolph), criminal (John Gilbert Graham), and idiosyncratic (Theodore Kaczynski and Muharem Kurbegovic) lone wolves; while shootings were chosen as the means of attack by religious (Nidal Malik Hasan and James von Brunn) and single-issue (Volkert van der Graaf) lone wolves. A secular lone wolf (Anders Breivik) committed both a bombing and a mass shooting, while a criminal lone wolf (Panos Koupparis) attempted an elaborate hoax in order to extort money from the Cypriot government.

There was some difference in terms of the targets chosen, with secular lone wolves (McVeigh and Breivik) attacking government buildings (with Breivik also attacking civilians, although the civilians were youths who were political activists for the ruling Norwegian government party), a religious lone wolf (Hasan) attacking military personnel, and another religious lone wolf (Von Brunn) attacking civilians at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Civilian targets were also chosen by the criminal lone wolves (Graham and Koupparis; in the case of Koupparis, the threat was to harm the Cypriot population), the idiosyncratic lone wolves (Kaczynski and Kurbegovic), and a single-issue lone wolf (Rudolph), while the other single-issue lone wolf (Van der Graaf) chose a politician to attack.

All the lone wolves who were active in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when online activity was already pervasive throughout the world, used the Internet in various ways. This included Breivik (secular), Hasan and Von Brunn (religious), and Van der Graaf (single-issue). Criminal lone wolves Graham and Koupparis, as well as idiosyncratic lone wolf Kurbegovic, did not have the Internet available to them when they were committing their crimes. The Internet was in its early stages of development when McVeigh (secular), Rudolph (single-issue), and Kaczynski (idiosyncratic) were active.

The major differences, however, among the lone wolves discussed above can be seen in their motivations, level of creativity and innovation, and degree of guilt or remorse for their actions. Secular lone wolves McVeigh and Breivik were motivated in part by a hatred of government, and their violence was due to the desire to take revenge for a government raid at the Branch Davidian cult's compound in Waco, Texas, in the case of McVeigh, and for the Norwegian government allowing Muslim immigration into Norway, in the case of Breivik. (Related to that was Breivik's desire for an end to “multiculturalism” and the “Islamization” of Western Europe). Religious lone wolves Hasan and Von Brunn were motivated respectively by Islamic extremist views, in the case of Hasan, and neo-Nazi, white-supremacist ideology, in the case of Von Brunn. The single-issue lone wolves we examined perpetrated their violence in the name of specific issues, such as abortion, in the case of Rudolph, and animal rights, in the case of Van der Graaf. Criminal lone wolves Graham and Koupparis were motivated by financial gain, while idiosyncratic lone wolves Kaczynski and Kurbegovic had irrational objectives (an end to the industrial-technological society, in the case of Kaczynski, and an end to nationalism, religion, fascism, racism, and communism, in the case of Kurbegovic) that motivated their violence and were due to severe personality and psychological problems.

The lone wolves we examined also exhibited different levels of creativity and innovation in their terrorist attacks or threats. As noted earlier, lone wolves in general tend to be more creative than organized terrorist groups, since there is no group decision-making process that they have to go through in order to get approval for their plans. Therefore, they are free to think up any scenario they want and then implement it. However, in the cases examined above, it was the criminal and idiosyncratic lone wolves who proved to be the most innovative in their plans. Graham thought up and implemented the first major midair plane bombing in US history, while Koupparis designed an elaborate hoax involving a chemical agent. Kurbegovic was among the first terrorists to threaten to use nerve agents over populated areas and was also creative in using the media to gain publicity and reaction to his terror campaign, particularly in the use of the alphabet to spell out the name of his fictitious group. While Kaczynski's sending of package bombs was not unique (it had been done by terrorists in the past), he did demonstrate a level of creativity in handcrafting his bombs with wooden parts and in targeting a diverse array of individuals living in different parts of the United States. This prevented federal authorities from discerning a clear pattern that could lead to his arrest.

The lure of money in the cases of criminal lone wolves and the effect of severe psychological issues in the cases of idiosyncratic lone wolves apparently free these types of individuals to think up the most creative and innovative ways to meet their objectives, even more so than the other types of lone wolves. Two other cases of innovative terrorist attacks that were not discussed in detail above also involved idiosyncratic lone wolves. The first case of product tampering in the United States is suspected to be the work of a mentally ill individual who laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide in 1982, while the first case of successfully sending anthrax spores through the mail to kill people was the work of a mentally ill microbiologist.

There was also a difference among the lone wolves who did not die in their attacks regarding how they viewed their actions after they were arrested. Secular and single-issue lone wolves expressed some degree of guilt or “apology” for their violence, while the criminal and idiosyncratic lone wolves remained unapologetic. McVeigh claimed that he was not aware that there was a daycare center in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and that, had he known, he might have chosen a different target. While Breivik did not feel remorse for his twin terror attacks in Norway, he did acknowledge to his lawyer that what he did was indeed “atrocious.” Rudolph expressed remorse over the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and even some doubts about the bombings of abortion clinics and other targets in a letter he sent to his mother while he was in prison. In court, Van der Graaf stated that he still “wrestled” with the question of whether he was justified in killing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn.

There was no remorse, however, shown by Graham, the criminal lone wolf, after he was arrested for blowing up a plane carrying his mother and forty-three other people in order to cash an insurance policy. Likewise, Koupparis showed no remorse for his dioxin plot in Cyprus. Idiosyncratic lone wolves Kaczynski and Kurbegovic also never expressed any regrets for their violence. In terms of the religious lone wolf cases we examined, Hasan, as of November 2012, has yet to speak about the shootings at Fort Hood, while Von Brunn was killed in his attack at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is unlikely, however, that religious lone wolves would express any doubts or guilt over their actions, since that would make them question their religion or at least their interpretation of what their religion teaches them, which could be a very painful experience.

We have seen in this chapter how lone wolf terrorism is a diverse phenomenon that can have as much, and sometimes even more, impact on governments and societies than violence committed by larger and more organized terrorist groups. We now turn to a discussion of why lone wolves can be so dangerous and why they are prime candidates to use weapons of mass destruction.