“Bombing Alone: Tracing the Motivations and Antecedent Behaviors of Lone-Actor Terrorists”
By Paul Gill, John Horgan, and Paige Deckert.
Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 59 No. 2 (March 2014)
Review by Michael Welner, M.D. Chairman, The Forensic Panel
Islamic State, the terrorist entity known to many as ISIS and ISIL, has heavily recruited from around the world and unapologetically promotes its brutal rejection of non-Islamic ways of life. Many who are participating in atrocities in Iraq, Syria, and Kurdistan aim to return to their countries of origin, veterans not only of war but emboldened with entitlement to kill, rape, enslave, mutilate and desecrate.
ISIS has exhorted its sympathizers to carry out terrorist attacks, and several recent terrorist incidents in the United States and Canada, in which single perpetrators were arrested and identified, inspire interest in the apparent lone actor. There is an academic literature on terrorism, some of it heavily influenced by political correctness that confuses more than it informs, some by cyclopean theorists invested in proving the ideas that enable their relevance. Studies that draw from hard data engaged with a scientific methodology are therefore most welcome informants to an emerging strain of criminal deviance. The Journal of Forensic Sciences recently published an article by Gill, Horgan, and Deckert, “Bombing Alone: Tracing the Motivations and Antecedent Behaviors of Lone-Actor Terrorists” that held out such promise.
By searching various crime and terrorism related databases, the authors compiled a list of 119 individuals identified as having engaged in or having planned to engage in lone-actor terrorism within the United States and Europe, and that were convicted for the actions or died while committing their offense.
A codebook was then created to record variables such as socio-demographic information, antecedent event behaviors, event-specific behaviors, and post-event behaviors and experiences. Data were collected by researching open-source news reports, sworn affidavits and, when possible, openly available firsthand accounts, with the majority of sources resulting from LexisNexis searches. Three independent coders recorded each observation, with each coded response reconciled with the other responses.
In addition to the above, the researchers compared data on the age of first terrorist activity, relationship status and family characteristics, occupation, and compared their findings to samples of Al Qaeda, IRA, Basque Separatists, and other groups.
The researchers advanced seven main conclusions from the data analysis:
- There was no uniform profile of lone-actor terrorists. Other than the findings that the sample was heavily male-oriented, the variables that characterized those identified in the sample lacked obvious uniformity. Age ranged from 15 to 69 years, with half of the offenders identified as single, 24% as married, and 22% identified as separated or divorced. Only 27% were reported to have had children. Educational achievement varied substantially, with approximately a quarter either having attended or finished high school; approximately a third having attended, but not graduated from some form of university; 22% completed an undergraduate degree; 21% attended or finished some sort of graduate school; 8% had obtained a PhD. Forty per cent were reported to have been unemployed at the time of their terrorist attack or arrest, 50% held jobs, and 10% were students. Additionally, 41% had had previous criminal convictions, 31% had a history of mental health problems, and 22% had a history of substance abuse.
- In the time leading up to most lone-actor terrorist events, evidence suggests that other people generally knew about the offender’s grievance, extremist ideology, views and/or intent to engage in violence. In just over 80% of cases, others were aware of the perpetrators’ grievances that linked to their terrorist plots or actions, and 79% had others that were aware of the individual’s commitment to a specific extremist ideology. In more than half of the cases (58%), others were aware of specific information about the actor’s research, planning, and/or preparation prior to the event itself.
- A wide range of activities and experiences preceded lone actors’ plots or events. Of the 40% that were unemployed, 27% had lost their jobs within six months. One third of the offenders were characterized as being under an elevated level of stress for a variety of reasons unspecified, with 74% experiencing the elevation in stress within a year of the terrorist plot or event. Yet only 25% experienced financial problems.
- Many but not all lone-actor terrorists were socially isolated. Thirty-seven percent lived alone at the time of their event planning and/or execution. Additionally, 53% had been characterized as socially isolated. Of those that were identified as socially isolated, such isolation was often derived from more recent personal conflict. Lone-actor terrorists were found to be more likely to be socially embedded within wider networks, than socially isolated.
- Lone-actor terrorists regularly engaged in a detectable and observable range of activities with a wider pressure group, social movement, or terrorist organization. Approximately a third of the sample had recently joined a wider group, organization, or movement that engaged in contentious politics, with 48% having interacted face-to-face with members of a wider network of political activists, and 35% having done so virtually. 68% of the cases contained evidence to suggest that the offender read or consumed literature or propaganda associated with a wider movement.
- Lone-actor terrorist events were rarely sudden and impulsive. One in five perpetrators received some form of hands-on trainings, while 46% learned through virtual sources. In half of the cases, evidence of bomb-making manuals had been found in the home or on his or her property. Additionally, 29% of offenders engaged in dry runs of their intended activities.
- Despite the diversity of lone-actor terrorists, there were distinguishable differences between subgroups. “Al-Qaeda” inspired Islamist terrorists were generally younger, more likely to be students, and to have sought legitimizations from authority figures when compared to “right-wing” offenders and single-issue offenders. The al-Qaeda inspired offenders were also more likely to have learned through virtual sources and have displayed some form of command and control links. Additionally, right-wing offenders were more likely to be unemployed and less likely to have any university experience. Right-wing offenders were also less likely to have made verbal statements to others about their intent or beliefs and were less likely to have engaged in dry runs or obtain help in procuring weaponry. Single-issue offenders (e.g.; environmentalists, anti-abortion) were more likely to be in a relationship, have criminal convictions, have a history of mental illness, provide specific pre-event warnings, and engage in dry runs. Additionally, single issue offenders were less likely to learn through virtual sources or have others aware of their planning.
Dr. Welner comments: This research required a tremendous effort and incorporated data from other studies in an interesting way that contributes to its value as a reference. The most useful contributions of these findings were distinctions of differences across subgroups of terrorists. Specifically, the study’s comparison of those inspired by Islamist goals vs. those moved by “right wing (for which no further definition is provided)” ideology vs. single issue (animal rights, anti-abortion, and environmentalism) agendas.
Caution would have to accompany the interpretation of the “single issue” data, because it was a smaller group in which disparate agendas were lumped together. There would be no way of knowing from this study, for example, whether anti-abortion terrorists were more similar to animal right terrorists than they were to those in the right wing group. This is significant, as many would inherently consider anti-abortion extremism to be inherently right wing. However, data from the 52 Islamist terrorist cases referenced here made for an adequate comparison group opposite those classified as right wing terrorists.
Ongoing risk assessment of those who call attention to themselves knowingly or inadvertently is well informed by this study. The rise of ISIS coincides with 1) Overwhelmed border infiltration along the Southwestern United States and restraint for repatriating even illegal aliens involved in violent crime; 2) Increasing numbers of conversions to Islam in North American prisons and religious influence behind bars by the criminal deviants with highly alienated attitudes toward North American society; 3) The connectivity with which those with like-minded ideologies can establish linkages as easily across borders as across town. 4) Accessible wherewithal for bypassing strategies for state surveillance. Public safety needs to know when to be concerned, and the difference between a red flag and a red herring.
Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals, and the FBI have difficult challenges gauging the seriousness of each potential threat, and this data helps focus prospective risk assessment. Beyond merely assisting profiling in unsolved crimes, this data informs investigations after the fact in which the dimensions and extent of plotting and logistical support needs to be fully rolled up.
The authors were impressed with how their data demonstrated the actors to have been connected with related organizations. Yet when one considers the enormity of terror as a choice that is homicidal and may also be suicidal, these percentages are small. To suggest that one-third had joined an ideologically affiliated group is more impressive, given the circumstances, than two-thirds did not. That 35% interacted with other activists on line denotes that 65% did not. That 68% consumed literature or propaganda likewise means that 32 % did not. These figures give added credence to evidence that lone actor terrorists are often destructively minded men who at times only nominally latch onto ideologies that feed the self-righteousness to destroy for the sake of destroying. They believe they are acting to further a cause but are furthering their own transcendence in cultures that equate spectacle with achievement.
Even with the apparent lack of uniformity to the data, closer scrutiny may account for what seem to be outliers. For example, if 76% are separated or unmarried, they are not intimately attached to a human relationship that makes extreme choices unacceptable. Of those 24% married, how deeply invested are they in their relationship? Does that person lack such capability, notwithstanding that he is nominally married? Or, is he miserable in marriage but too emotionally dependent to engage life in solitude? These same considerations confront the study of serial killers who, demographically, are listed as “married” yet undertake crimes that bespeak dehumanized relatedness to others.
This helps one to appreciate the seeming contradiction that lone actor terrorists are often socially isolated yet embedded within wider social networks. A person who is incapable of intimacy often makes do with online relationship surrogates that he may never meet.
Likewise the seeming disparate educational and occupational data, and social ailments, may be misleading. If a person perceives himself to be underemployed, his self-esteem may be no different than if he is unemployed. If he is educated but under-accomplished, or undereducated, the emotional substrate may be exactly the same. In my professional experience with spectacle crime that includes terrorism, the “under” relates to the “un” in its impact on perpetrators who have a high self-esteem and achievement that sorely lags.
If 41% were convicted, how many more were actually arrested? A criminal record forecloses many avenues of advancement. A substance abuse or psychiatric history scales ambition downward, particularly as stress and inhibition come to be seen as triggers to collapse. There is no terrorist who does not view the act as a source of masculine achievement. Were achievement to be adequate elsewhere, the irreversible life decisions that terrorism demands could not be sufficiently alluring.
That unemployment and stress preceded the terrorism is not surprising. Contentment is a strong motivator against making far more innocuous decisions, let alone opting for a terrorist path. Yet the percentage of those with financial problems being as low as it is underscores that money alone and economics alone are not sufficient instigators to terrorism. The reason why terrorists can recruit among the incarcerated and not the poor is that they are drawing from an alienated population rather than a merely disadvantaged one.
There are a number of shortcomings that limit the utility of this study. The greatest challenge is in qualifying 119 cases as “lone actor.” Governments have reasons for advancing ideas that terrorists act alone and unaffiliated with logistical support, let alone influence. The United States has gone so far as to continue to refuse to classify the Ft. Hood shooting as an Islamist terror incident. Apart from the transparent falsity of that position, one recognizes that in the interest of national security, what gets reported in the news does not have the validity of case material developed from what one can verify.
A useful illustration of this is the case of Suleiman Talovic, who carried out a mass killing in a Salt Lake City mall in 2007, when he was 18 years old. Talovic was a Bosnian-born Muslim who had immigrated to the United States with his family ten years earlier. Although he was shouting Allahu Akhbar as he shot, even to this day, his motive is asserted to be undetermined. He was a lone shooter – was he without external influence? Consider that he was buried not in America, where his parents and siblings lived, but back in Bosnia, Where 300 people attended his funeral. What lone actor mass killer of eighteen years of age has 300 people at his funeral in a place he departed ten years earlier as a child?
If misdirection is what we have come to expect from American data, imagine the adulteration of public disclosure of cases from other countries.
The authors included the Oklahoma City Bombing; apart from the level of mystery that continues to surround Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators, any study looking to identify the qualities of lone actors that mingles in McVeigh (and his co-conspirators) dilutes the sample. The authors acknowledged that they included “isolated dyads” of terrorists operating outside a group and its command structure. The problem with this is that the qualities of truly lone actors that attract them to terrorism may draw substantially from their personal ineptitude. Those with the capacity to collaborate, even in a plot as small as a pair, may have significantly different potentials, behavioral qualities, antecedents, triggers, and mental health issues. Future study of truly lone actors should isolate this solitude in order to derive greater uniformity of qualities predicting higher risk among those who are disconnected and off the grid.
Again, the authors are to be applauded for introducing data to the academic deliberation of terrorism. Future studies will be more useful if they involve smaller samples that can be more readily verified to be a valid part of the cohort group. This was a study funded by the Division of Homeland Security and the British Home Office. If the government cares to fund such worthwhile research, it would do well to learn to get proper security clearance to the researchers willing to pore through data to overcome the natural barriers of credibility and contamination that accompany reliance upon media depictions of national security-related incidents and the actors behind them. Perhaps this article will inspire that very thinking to the merits of access to those who do dedicate themselves to teaching the rest of us and contributing to public safety.
