A report released today by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group says that in the nine years since September 11, the biggest terrorist threat to the United States now comes from homegrown terrorists within the country. “A key shift in the past couple of years is the increasingly prominent role in planning and operations that U.S. citizens and residents have played in the leadership of al-Qaida and aligned groups, and the higher numbers of Americans attaching themselves to these groups.” The report also found that with Al-Qaeda’s leadership under siege, fears of another mass-casualty attack are misplaced. Of the fourteen Americans killed by jihadist terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, all were killed by Americans (Major Nidal Hasan and Carlos Bledsoe). The problem with catching homegrown terrorists, says NPR, is that “the suspect is no longer a poor kid from Pakistan who has come to the U.S. to attack. Now he (or even she) could be an MBA from Connecticut or a college student from Minneapolis.”
