Aside from 9/11, all terrorist activity in the United States for the past 40 years came from domestic sources, he says.
By Associated Press
Published May 6, 2004
TAMPA - Law enforcement officials should be concentrating on domestic terrorism sources instead of international ones, an expert said Wednesday.
Apart from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, all terrorist activity in the United States over the past 40 years was conducted by domestic terrorists, said Mark Pitcavage, national director of fact finding for the Anti-Defamation League.
Right-wing extremists "pose the majority of terrorist threats we face today," Pitcavage told about 300 officers from eight Southern states attending a domestic terrorism conference keying on detection and response measures.
Domestic terrorists range from white supremacists to antiabortion extremists to ecoterrorists. Pitcavage cited the sentencing Tuesday in Texas of William Krar, who was charged with stockpiling 800 grams of cyanide, machine guns and bombs.
"In every part of the country, this stuff is going on," Pitcavage said.
Unlike international terrorists, who opt for suicide bombings or attacks on symbolic targets, domestic terrorists typically go on shooting sprees or use pipe bombs. They also tend to use scams or armed robberies to fund their cause.
"It shows that you have to be on your toes all the time," said Capt. Louis Sassa of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, a conference attendee. "You don't discount any information."
International terrorism expert Sabi Shabtai, who served in the intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Forces, urged law enforcement officers to learn to "think like a terrorist" and create teams of officers who are willing to take unorthodox approaches, not just follow a textbook.
The war on terror is "the most complex, challenging war that the U.S. has ever had to face," Shabtai said. "The enemy continually mutates and reinvents itself."
