Federal authorities have launched an effort to detect lone attackers who may be contemplating politically charged assaults similar to the recent murders of a Kansas abortion doctor and a Holocaust museum security guard. The effort, known as the "Lone Wolf Initiative," was started shortly after President Obama's inauguration, in part because of a rising level of hate speech and surging gun sales.
"Finding those who might plan and act alone, the so-called lone offenders ... will only be prevented by good intelligence, the seamless exchange of information among law enforcement at every level, and vigilant citizens reporting suspicious activity," said Michael Heimbach, the FBI's assistant director for counterterrorism.
Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said the FBI is sharing information with his agency.
Agents from all of the FBI's 56 field offices have been dispatched on a range of assignments, said two U.S. law enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about details of the program. Among the duties:
• Reviewing records in domestic terrorism investigations that may point to more suspects.
• Analyzing records for suspicious purchases at fertilizer or chemical suppliers whose materials could be used in bombmaking.
• Checking rolls of prisoners scheduled for release or who have been recently released for past links to extremist groups.
One of the goals, FBI officials said, is to develop more comprehensive information on possible lone attackers to disrupt plots before they are launched.
ACLU policy spokesman Michael German, a former FBI agent, said the government effort resembles a form of "predictive policing" that can sometimes result in the improper profiling of people based on race, ethnicity or political leanings.
Yet former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff said the lone attacker has been a "persistent problem," primarily because information about those plots is very closely held.
Federal investigators spent years chasing Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph before capturing them.
Hate groups have multiplied across the USA, from 602 in 2000 to 926 in 2008, reports the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups and works to limit their activities. Mark Potok, director of the center's Intelligence Project, said the lone attacker is an extension of the "leaderless resistance" concept of activism advocated by white supremacist Louis Beam.
Potok cites the attack by James von Brunn, an elderly white supremacist charged with fatally shooting black security guard Stephen Johns at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in June. That attack came 10 days after abortion provider George Tiller was shot to death at his church. "No one in the world would have expected an 88-year-old man would do that," Potok said of von Brunn.