Terrorism expert Harvey Kushner believes threats of Islamic State terror cells operating in the United States ought to be taken seriously, and he says American law enforcement has “no game plan” for stopping the sort of lone wolf or small group attack like we saw in Texas last weekend.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, claimed responsibility for the terrorism aimed at the American Freedom Defense Initiative event featuring a Muhammad cartoon contest. Nadir Soofi and Elton Simpson were killed by security as they tried to attack. An ISIS statement referred to the men as “two soldiers of the caliphate,” but also indicated many more attacks are on the way.
“The attack by the Islamic State in America is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a [province] in the heart of our enemy,” the ISIS statement read. It also claimed there are 71 radicals in 15 states ready to attack. Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, Michigan and California were specifically listed. The other ten states remain a mystery.
Should this ISIS threat be taken seriously?
“Yes and no,” said Kushner, a highly respected speaker, author and consultant on terrorism-related issues. He is also director of the Homeland Security and Terrorism Institute of Long Island University.
“We’re plagued with these freelancers, these lone wolves, these self-radicalized individuals who use the internet and other modern types of communication and social media to communicate with each other and would step up to the plate in the name of ISIS or even Al Qaeda or any other jihadi group. That’s the reality of 2015 and the future to come,” said Kushner.
However, he is quick to add that doesn’t mean ISIS has a highly trained strategy ready to go in the U.S.
“Are these trained individuals who visited with ISIS, who were on their short list of people to do damage here? That we don’t know,” he said.
Kushner says discovering whether Simpson and Soofi were sympathizers or following orders would help authorities get a handle on the larger threat.
“What would be chilling about this is if in fact this was a direct communication from an ISIS group in the the Middle East. As of this point in time, there’s not necessarily an indication that was the case,” said Kushner, who says it is distinctly possible ISIS is just using the Texas story for its own propaganda purposes.
“ISIS has used media to pile on. This was an event that fits into their MO. Naturally, you’re going to take advantage. The good news is it might show a sign of weakness that they had to wait for these two freelancers to act and then they would say this is something they have in the pipeline,” said Kushner.
The big advantage for ISIS is that it’s recruits can remain in the shadows for a long time.
“We’re not facing this structure of Al Qaeda that we had 15 years ago or so. We pretty much dismantled that,” said Kushner. “[ISIS] means to radicalize individuals by their incendiary rhetoric and by their extreme view of Islam and have these people strike out against western targets,” said Kushner.
Law enforcement and intelligence officials are facing multiple challenges in identifying these groups and individuals. First of all, Kushner says finding just one or two radicals is very difficult.
“When you have something that goes out in social media or on the internet or just by word of mouth, how are you going to enter the mindset of 300 million people. Any one of us is a potential adherent to one of the jihadi groups,” he said.
“The threat is caricatured as ISIS but it comes from individuals who people would just mistake as being some neighbor who has some pointed views about the United States and what we stand for,” said Kushner.
Second, the U.S. is struggling mightily against the new nature of this threat.
“We haven’t really adjusted. We don’t really have a game plan,” he said. “How do you infiltrate the mindset of this one or two or three radical individuals who are plotting something from the comforts of their living room couch.”
Whether the latest ISIS threat is legitimate, the clock is ticking.
“We’re being infiltrated on a daily basis. If it’s not by individuals, it’s certainly by incendiary rhetoric,” said Kushner. “We live in a new world and a very dangerous neighborhood. The neighborhood is not separated by two oceans. Unfortunately, the neighborhood has moved here.”
The good news, says Kushner, is that there are some proven ways to infiltrate radical plots.
“Education and networking. We are a country of separate law enforcement agencies, 50,000-plus. We need to get real-time information to those law enforcement agencies through training and profiling and just being up on what the threat is,” said Kushner.
As for the five states specifically mentioned as on the ISIS target list, Kushner says he is surprised New York was not at the top of the list. However, he says Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois and California do have something important in common.
“At the risk of sounding like a profiler, those states have large populations that might support that type of behavior. But I think almost all of the states over the past decade has been infiltrated by radical groups,” said Kushner
