WASHINGTON
— Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism
officials have increased security at national landmarks and large public
events ahead of major holidays or significant anniversaries, and issued
bulletins calling for increased vigilance by the public.
But
this Fourth of July weekend has spawned particularly strong warnings
about a potential attack as the federal authorities and national
security experts say the United States is more susceptible now because
of tactics chosen for recent terrorist strikes by the Islamic State.
Officials cite an increased effort by the Islamic State to galvanize its sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere since Memorial Day
and during this Ramadan season to carry out acts of violence on their
own — so-called lone-wolf attacks. Those potential plots by individuals
are harder for the authorities to detect and disrupt, senior American
officials say, and have led the F.B.I. to put more Americans under
investigation for suspected ties to terrorist groups than at any point
since Sept. 11.
At
the same time, senior American officials acknowledge that, as with many
past holidays and anniversaries, they know of no specific terror plot
against targets in the United States. And while militants have said in
previous years that they would like to pull off an attack on a major
national holiday, there has not been a successful terrorist strike on
American soil on a previous July 4 or similarly high-profile day.
“We’ve been through other periods of high threat, but this time is different because of the proven reach of ISIS
into Europe and the U.S.,” said Matthew G. Olsen, a former director of
the National Counterterrorism Center. “Even in the absence of a specific
plot, there’s reason for alarm given the number of people who seem to
have been motivated by ISIS’ rhetoric and direction to carry out attacks
against innocent people.”
On
Thursday morning, the concerns of senior American officials were
heightened after gunshots were reported at the Washington Navy Yard,
where 12 people were killed in a shooting in 2013.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers descended on the navy yard on
Thursday, but they found no evidence that there had been any shooting.
The
Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has shown success at
inspiring rather than actually directing well-planned attacks — and
officials blamed the militant organization for inspiring last week’s bloody strikes
in France and Tunisia, and possibly in Kuwait. That approach has shaken
the confidence of American officials in their intelligence, as those
roused by the Islamic State have proved more likely to act quicker than
Al Qaeda militants, who communicated for several months with leaders in
Afghanistan and Pakistan as they planned attacks.
“This
isn’t like Al Qaeda, where there were networks and large-scale plots
and well-trained guys,” said one senior federal law enforcement
official. “ISIS is telling these guys: ‘Do anything you can. Go to an
Army-Navy store and buy a knife and stab someone. Just do something.’”
The official noted, however, that “the pool is much bigger than it’s
ever been but it’s not nearly as deep.”
“We
have a lot of guys who don’t have connections to others in the U.S. who
have shown some interest online in ISIS, but it’s unclear how serious
they are so we’ve had to keep on them,” the official said.
Intelligence
officials have seen at least one Twitter message of an Islamic State
supporter citing the United States government’s warnings for this
holiday weekend — apparently in boastful terms. While officials say they
do not know of any specific threat, they also know they will be the
first ones criticized by the public and members of Congress if there is
an outbreak of violence.
“We’re always concerned going into holidays like the Fourth of July or Memorial Day
that deal with patriotism,” said a senior United States intelligence
official who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss
confidential assessments. “But there’s more concern than there was last
year.”
In
particular, American officials say, the Islamic State has told its
followers to attack law enforcement and uniformed military personnel,
many of whom are prominent in public settings on July 4.
The
attention the Islamic State has received in the past year has led
politicians and the news media to use the holiday as a way to reinforce
their views that the group is one of the greatest threats to the United
States, and to criticize the Obama administration.
In a lengthy news release
that included charts and graphs, the chairman of the House Homeland
Security Committee, Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas,
said the time had come for President Obama “to listen to these wake-up
calls and to lay out a credible offensive strategy to defeat what is a
global — not regional — menace.”
“I
commend our law enforcement and intelligence professionals for
disrupting so many plots recently, but we cannot rely on our defenses
alone,” Mr. McCaul said. “Extremists are radicalizing and recruiting new
foot soldiers around the world at broadband speeds, yet the
administration is responding at bureaucratic pace.”
A
chart in the release showed that there had been 28 ISIS-linked plots
against Western targets in 2015 compared with 19 in 2014. Another chart
said that the arrests of 55 people with ties to the group in the United
States this year was a fivefold increase from last year.
Speaking
to reporters on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter discussed
the terrorism risk, saying that lone-wolf attackers inspired by the
Islamic State posed possible threats to security over the coming
holiday.
“In
the era of social media, a phenomenon like ISIL, unlike Al Qaeda of the
old days, there doesn’t have to be and won’t necessarily be a
command-and-control relationship between somebody who instigates an
incident and ISIL as an organization,” Mr. Carter said at a Pentagon
briefing.
“They
are self-radicalized, self-organized people on social media,” Mr.
Carter said. “Are we concerned about that? Absolutely, we’re concerned
about it. And that has been seen in Europe, so that’s a sign that in the
United States, as in Europe and other places in the world, we have to
be concerned about it, and we obviously are.”
Independent
analysts who follow jihadist statements on the Internet said they have
not detected any significant increase in online comments — what the
authorities called “chatter” — but acknowledged that lone attackers
inspired by ISIS leaders and propaganda could go undetected.
“There
isn’t much chatter on jihadi online platforms regarding specific
threats to the homeland over the holiday weekend, nor am I seeing any
response so far to the U.S. government’s warning,” said Laith Alkhouri, a
senior analyst at Flashpoint Global Partners, a security consulting
firm that tracks militant websites.
“However,
ISIS fighters on the ground have increasingly preached attacks in the
U.S. and England, releasing bomb-making instructions and multiple
threats,” Mr. Alkhouri said, adding that they advocated for attacking
parades and other events.
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