VARIED NATURE OF THREAT
A series of criminal cases filed in the past month highlight the varied nature of the threat facing the U.S., and ISIL’s aggressive pursuit of U.S.-based and other converts.
In the most recent Minnesota case involving six young suspects, all intercepted by authorities before their planned travel to Syria, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said ISIL demonstrated a powerful recruiting tool that it is difficult to counter.
Luger described a “peer-topeer” or “brother-to-brother” campaign in which the close group of suspects engaged in the radicalization of each other, providing encouragement during each phase of a nearly year-long mission to reach Syria.
At the same time, the group also was getting support directly from the battlefield. Abdi Nur, a former associate of the Minnesota suspects, slipped past authorities last May and is believed to be in Syria with the terrorist group.
Since Nur reached Syria, Luger asserted that the suspected terrorist operative has been serving as the chief “foreign fighter recruiter” for his former associates in Minneapolis.
Michael Leiter, former director of the U.S. Counterterrorism Center, said ISIL’s recruiting strategy — its personal outreach efforts, application of slick YouTube productions and other social media — represents an unmatched level of sophistication demonstrated by terrorist organizations in the aftermath of 9/11.
“Al-Qaeda in Pakistan represented Version 1.0, with its static video of (Osama) bin-Laden’s face. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula became Version 2.0, with (American cleric) Anwar al- Awlaki using graphics and the online magazine Inspire to reach potential English-speaking converts. Think of ISIL as Version 3.0.”
While officials believe that the U.S. will never produce the volume of recruits being drawn from Western Europe, where a disaffected Muslim population and a lack of integration has helped contribute thousands of foreign fighters to ISIL’s cause, Leiter and others said the U.S. nevertheless remains an important focus.
“The image that there is a pipeline of soldiers for ISIL running out of the U.S. is a powerful one,” said Bruce Hoffman, a longtime terrorism analyst and director of Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies program. “That’s why you are seeing such a full-court press (from ISIL).”
Hoffman said the FBI and government’s intelligence apparatus has devoted immense resources to counter the recruiting effort. But he said ISIL’s multifaceted outreach and leveraging of social media is threatening to “outpace the government’s capabilities across the intelligence community.”
“It’s like the Dutch boy sticking his fingers in the dike,” Hoffman said.
SYMPATHIZER BACK IN U.S.
Among the most striking of the recent foreign fighter cases brought by federal prosecutors involves Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud.
The 23-year-old Columbus, Ohio, man, charged last week, returned from Syria last year. While there, he allegedly joined his brother, Abdifatah Aden, and received some training in a camp operated by the Al-Nusrah Front, an affiliate of al-Qaeda and rival of ISIL. Following Aden’s death last June, Mohamud returned to the U.S. and began discussing an unspecified attack against the homeland.
Although the outlines of the plot remain under investigation, Mohamud’s alleged interest in such an attack strikes at the heart of a long-held fear by U.S. authorities: a terrorism sympathiz- er back in the U.S., searching for a target.
According to court documents, Mohamud “talked about doing something big” in the U.S.
In conversations with one government informant who believed the suspect was attempting to recruit him for a U.S.-based attack, Mohamud “wanted to go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution-style.”
The senior law enforcement official, who is familiar with Mohamud’s case, said that such suspects who have demonstrated a greater commitment by traveling to the region and returning are generally “graded higher” as possible threats. The official cautioned that investigators are still gathering information on the extent of Mohamud’s activities.
“We have very little patience for letting subjects plan, mature and develop,” the official said, adding that the suspects’ planning and known travel activities are dictating the timing of recent arrests across the country.
Mohamud has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Sam Shamansky, declined comment.
Hoffman said Mohamud’s alleged designs on a potential U.S. target, as described in court documents, were “too opaque” to assess as a credible threat.
“I want to know a lot more. ... The good news is that we’re catching them, but that may be just the tip of larger problem.”