Freelance Terrorism

Freelance terrorism describes the actions of individuals or small groups who take it upon themselves to act against a target without the direct support of a terrorist organization. Their actions are largely the outcome of their own rage, although they have usually been encouraged, subliminally or otherwise, by others harboring similar hatred. Such is the case when extremist animal rights and environmental groups invite individuals visiting their Web sites or reading their literature to join the cause and launch an attack on the objects of their incendiary rhetoric.

Almost by definition, freelance terrorists, or “lone wolves” as they are sometimes called, are not tied to any traditional terrorist group—or any other group, for that matter. This is not to say that at one time they might have been a card-carrying member of some type of terrorist organization; they might even have obtained some financial support or training. In large measure, however, they take solitary action with only their conscience to guide them. The advice and counsel of others, even those sympathetic to the cause, is for the most part absent during their freelance actions.

However, a concerned, tentative, or even frightened comrade can often stop freelance terrorism from taking place. This was most certainly the case in the summer of 1997 when someone approached an officer of the 88th Precinct in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York, and said, “My friend is going to kill people in the subway.” On July 31, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar and Lafi Khalil were arrested in an explosive-laden Brooklyn apartment before they could carry out a suicide attack on the subway. Abu Maizar and Khalil were later convicted and sentenced to long prison terms.

A lesson learned from this abortive suicide attempt is that more than one freelancer makes a group of freelancers more vulnerable, because the actions of one, impulsive or not, might compromise the mission of the group. An old saying attributed to organized crime members applies here: “Two can keep a secret if one is dead.” Two, three, or more freelancers acting in concert are, in theory, less dangerous than the solitary freelancer acting alone, such as Mir Aimal Kasi. On the morning of January 25, 1993, freelancer Kasi, a 29-year-old Pakistani, using an AK-47 automatic rifle, shot five individuals as they sat in rush-hour [Page 145]traffic outside the gates of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Other acts of international freelance terrorism took place in the United States in 1994 and 1997. In 1994, a Lebanese immigrant cab driver, Rashid Baz, spray-fired a Cobray M-11/9 assault pistol at a van carrying Hasidic students across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York killing one and wounding three others. And in 1997, Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a 69-year-old Palestinian visiting the Empire State Building, took a semiautomatic handgun from under his coat and began shooting. After the rampage was over, two were dead—including Abu Kamal, who shot himself—and six others were injured. The solitary nature of these acts can lead to confusion in the media as to the motivation—was Kamal a mere deranged gunman or freelance terrorist? Investigators subsequently discovered letters written by Kamal, in which he rails against Americans and Zionists, that leave little doubt as to the political nature of his assault.

In the United States, domestic terrorist leaders of various stripes have encouraged the formation of small, phantom-like cells of individuals. These cells, usually fewer than six in number, try to stay small and are wont to split apart into other cells when membership becomes too large. This technique, known as “leaderless resistance,” encourages small groups with fewer members. The leaderless group can act spontaneously to commit an act of terrorism, and their small size makes the groups difficult to infiltrate.

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