Home Grown Terrorists?

August 18th, 2007

By Rowan Wolf

The New York Police Department released a report today “Radicalization in the West: the homegrown threat” (UTJ link). The report focuses on “Islamic” terrorism with an extended series of case studies. I am not at all surprised that it has raised the ire of a variety of social justice groups.

Perhaps more interesting than the report itself is that the NYPD met with “private security executives” to present report. Also frightening are the unscripted comments by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. In the interests of education and informed discussion, I have included the original article by Tim Hays of the Associated Press as this is what many other news sources were drawing on at the end of this article.

Campbell’s remarks seemed much broader and more loosely interpreted than the actual report would predict. The internet is pointed to as a “radicalizing” agent. However, so are student associations, bookstores, non-governmental organizations, and cafes. In other words, places where people might gather and converse with each other, or organize to address social issues, are potential hotbeds of radicalization.

As an activist (non-governmental organizations), a researcher (use the internet and even sponsor a political site), teacher and sponsor of student groups, who eats out from time to time, I find the breadth of NYPD’s list stunning and alarming. It is particularly alarming within the context of the loss of Constitutional protections; the extension of the “terrorist” label; and the “liberalization” of data gathering and surveillance. Not surprisingly, the report was seen by Homeland Security (AP article) contributing to understanding radicalization.

But back to the fact that the report was specifically released to “private security executives.” Why would the police brief this “clientel” on this type of report? Why would they be interested in the so-called “process of radicalization?” Exactly who were these private security executives? Who do they contract out to, and for what services? Do they perhaps contract with the NYPD for infiltrating suspected terrorist recruiting centers (like cafes or student groups)? Or perhaps they provide private data to the NYPD - or even the U.S. government. Am I missing something, or does it seem strange that apparently the first group briefed on a report researched and written on the public’s dime, is to a group of corporate executives? None of the articles I have found thus far detail who was at the briefing.

This whole thing is disturbing in so many ways. Look at it yourself. Perhaps I am just getting jaded and paranoid.

Other Related Articles
Above article also available at

MSNBC, 8/15/07 NYPD warns of homegrown terrorism threat. This article lists a few different comments than the AP article.

Sewell Chan of the NY Times offers a more detailed article with an extended statement from the from The Council on Arab-American Relations. Police Issue Report on ‘Homegrown’ Terror Threat

NYPD Warns of Homegrown Terror Threat Tim Hays, Associated Press 8/15/07
NEW YORK (AP) — They preferred bookstores or hookah bars to mosques. They stopped listening to pop music and instead surfed Web sites promoting radical Islam. They threw away their baseball caps and grew beards.

New York Police Department intelligence analysts have concluded those were some of the telltale signs of homegrown terrorists in the making - a mounting threat as grave as that from established terrorist groups like al-Qaida.

An NYPD report released Wednesday warns of a “radicalization” process in which young men - otherwise unremarkable legal immigrants from the Middle East - grow disillusioned with life in America and adopt a philosophy that puts them on the path to jihad.

“Hopefully, the better we’re informed about this process, the more likely we’ll be to detect and disrupt it,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said while presenting the findings at a briefing of private security executives at police headquarters.

The findings drew swift criticism from Arab-American civil rights groups, which accused the NYPD of stereotyping and of contradicting recent federal warnings that the chief terrorism threat remains foreign.

In a statement, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said federal authorities “appreciate efforts to better understand the phenomenon of radicalization.”

“We are fortunate that radicalization seems to have less appeal in the U.S. than in other parts of the world,” he said, “but we do not believe that America is immune to homegrown terrorism.”

The FBI declined to comment.

Police officials said the study is based on an analysis of a series of domestic plots thwarted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including those in Lackawanna; Portland, Ore.; and Virginia. It was prepared by senior analysts with the NYPD Intelligence Division who traveled to Hamburg, Germany; Madrid; and other overseas spots to confer with authorities about similar cases.

The report found that homegrown terrorists often were indoctrinated in local “radicalization incubators” that are “rife with extremist rhetoric.”

Instead of mosques, those places were more likely to be “cafes, cab driver hangouts, flop houses, prisons, student associations, non-governmental organizations, hookah bars, butcher shops and bookstores,” the report says.

The Internet also provides “the wandering mind of the conflicted young Muslim or potential convert with direct access to unfiltered radical and extremist ideology.”

The report warns that potential terrorists are difficult for law enforcers to detect because they blend in well with society. It also argues that more intelligence gathering is needed to thwart potential terror plots at their earliest stages.

Potential homegrown terrorists “are not on the law enforcement radar,” the study says. “Most have never been arrested or involved in any kind of legal trouble.”

They “look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them,” the study adds. “In the early stages of their radicalization, these individuals rarely travel, are not participating in any kind of militant activity, yet they are slowly building the mind-set, intention and commitment to conduct jihad.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations accused the NYPD analysts of distorting the innocent behavior of observant Muslims.

“Is Islamic attire or giving up bad habits … now to be regarded as suspicious behavior?” asked the group’s chairman, Parvez Ahmed.

Kareem Shora, legal adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the findings faulty and inflammatory.

“The report is at odds with federal law enforcement findings, including those of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, and uses unfortunate stereotyping of entire communities,” Shora said in a statement. “The use of such language by the NYPD is un-American and goes against everything for which we stand.”

The National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Osama bin Laden’s network had regrouped and remains the most serious threat to the United States.

Kelly insisted the NYPD report made no effort to provide a “cookie-cutter” profile for terrorists. He also argued that the NYPD report “doesn’t contradict the National Intelligence Estimate - it augments it.”

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