Mother Jones
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p.mininav-header-text background-color: #000000 !importantMore MoJo coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings
How the FBI in Boston May Have Pursued the Wrong “Terrorist”
READ: Here Are the Federal Charges Against Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
The 11 Most Mystifying Things the Tsarnaev Brothers Did
What We Know About the Tsarnaev Brothers’ Guns
What These Tweets Tell Us About Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Stunned Reactions From Former Classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Did Boston Bombing Suspect Post Al Qaeda Prophecy on YouTube?
Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Charged With Using WMD
Perhaps the most unusual thing about the Boston Marathon bombing is that it happened at all. While we’ve seen all manner of terrorist bomb plots since September 11—the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber, even the guys who fantasized about destroying the Sears Tower—all have been thwarted by the FBI, the perpetrators’ own bumbling, or both. If one or both of the suspects in last week’s attack, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, were motivated by radical Islamic beliefs, then they will have the dubious distinction of being the first domestic jihadists to have set off a bomb on American soil since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
While America has been fixated on the threat of Islamic terrorism for more than a decade, all but a few domestic terror plots have failed. Between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2012, there were no successful bomb plots by jihadist terrorists in the United States. Jihadists killed 17 people in the United States in four separate incidents during this time, according to data collected by journalist Peter Bergen and the New America Foundation. All four of these incidents involved guns, including Nidal Hassan’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, which killed 13 people. In contrast, right-wing extremists killed 29 people during those 11 years.
The jihadists’ record as bomb makers would probably be even worse if not for the FBI, which has reeled in dozens of would-be terrorists with its controversial informant program. Of the 203 jihadist terrorists counted by the New America Foundation, just 23 got their hands on explosives or materials to make a bomb; more than half of those obtained the components (often nonfunctioning) from federal informants or agents as part of a sting. Of the 174 nonjihadists, 51 right-wing terrorists and 5 anarchist terrorists tried making bombs. Only five of the right-wing terrorists got their bomb-making supplies via sting operations.
Using a slightly different methodology than Bergen, Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation also found that “homegrown” jihadist terror plots have had little success. Most post-9/11 plots, he writes, most “never got beyond the discussion stage, and most of those that did were stings in which the FBI provided fake bombs.” A Mother Jones examination of the cases of more than 500 defendants charged in terrorism-related cases after 9/11 found that 31 percent were nabbed in a sting, while 10 percent were lured by an informant who controlled the conspiracy. Perhaps one reason the Tsarnaev brothers’ alleged plot went as far as it did was that they did not seek out collaborators, avoiding tipping off the FBI—which had already checked out Tamerlan but apparently decided not to investigate him.
More:
Charts: How Much Danger Do We Face From Homegrown Jihadist Terrorists?
