[September 08, 2011] FEATURE: US faces new threats: homegrown terror and cyber attacks Tweet WASHINGTON, Sep 08, 2011 (dpa - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Michael Leiter leads an institution born of the attacks of September 11, 2001. And yet when the director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) describes current threats, he does not immediately look to faraway al-Qaeda terrorist strongholds like Yemen or Pakistan. The centre's absolute "number one priority," Leiter told Congress in February, is the identification of US citizens intent on hurting their own homeland. "Homegrown terror" has long made the US security forces nervous and worried. The number of potential attackers is actually small, according to US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But it's easier for them than for foreigners to gain access to strategically important US facilities, and they remain nearly invisible. For Clapper, this is a good enough reason to remain "especially focused on al-Qaeda's resolve to target Americans for recruitment." For Gary LaFree, head of the National Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) of the US Department of Homeland Security, the greatest threat of a major attack comes not only from fundamentalist Muslims but also from right-wing extremists. According to a study by the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Centre, such groups are growing rapidly -- by 60 per cent in 2010 alone, with particularly significant growth among groups of vigilantes. And yet Islamic fundamentalist groups continue to be the focus of investigations, and with apparently good reason. Muslim Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hassan made headlines when he killed 13 people in November 2009 at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was apparently in contact with hate preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen who is believed to be hiding in Yemen after working at a mosque in northern Virginia. Now this spiritual leader has a "wanted dead or alive" target on his back by the US government and has been connected to a range of terrorist attacks, including the attempt by the so-called "Underwear Bomber" to blow up an airliner over Christmas 2009 in Detroit. Suspected cases of home-grown terrorism involving international groups come up every two or three weeks. One only needs to look at the court calendars of most major US cities to find them. In mid-July, for example, a 22-year-old from the US state of Pennsylvania was charged with having called for "holy war" over the internet, encouraging attacks within the United States. "There have been many plots that have been interfered with over time," US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said, without mentioning numbers. The internet works as a central tool for communication and recruitment. "US legal residents and citizens are lucrative assets for global terrorist organizations," noted terrorism experts Rick Nelson and Ben Bodurian of the private think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. On Facebook and in thousands of radical Islamic forums, there are plenty of recruiters. And yet Nelson and Bodurian say that official efforts by the US to clamp down on the proliferation of radical material on the internet fall far short of what is needed. If the United States wants to be successful in this struggle, it needs "unique personnel, training, and technologies," the two said in an essay late last year. A few weeks ago, the US Defence Department angrily admitted that hackers working for a foreign government had stolen 24,000 sensitive Pentagon files in an attack on a subcontractor. "We are still somewhat new at it," Napolitano conceded. "It's so rapidly developing and changing so rapidly that almost by the time we talk about a particular virus or piece of malware, it's already ... out of date." US officials know full well that the consequences of cyber terrorism could be devastating. FBI chief Robert Mueller noted that such attacks can bring down entire "pieces of infrastructure if not adequately protected," including power networks or airlines. The US military has in fact declared cyberspace an "operational domain" and set up a Cyber Command, whose function is not only to defend military cyber networks but also to carry out cyber warfare. The department of defence wants to "take full advantage of cyberspace's potential," it declares on its website. In an update on the concept of the old fashioned Foreign Legion, there is even a new brand of freelance warrior called "cyber mercenaries" -- especially skilled individuals who sell their services to the highest bidder, be it a government or a terrorist organization, says Kristen Lord, at the Centre for a New American Security, a US security policy think-tank. ___ (c)2011 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]