Representatives of state and local governments in the United States report that a dramatic shift has occurred over the past six months in how they view the terrorist threat — and that international militant organizations such as al Qaeda no longer are considered their main enemy. Instead, agencies are concentrating on the threat posed by people living in the United States whose sympathies with international terrorist ideology might motivate them to stage acts of violence.
This information comes from John Cohen, a senior adviser to the Massachusetts homeland security team, who spoke at a Feb. 3 conference on security in Washington, D.C.
As STRATFOR said earlier, increasing pressure on international militant organizations has diminished their ability to plan, coordinate and conduct large-scale operations. Because of this, smaller, local groups or individuals without direct connections to or coordination from groups such as al Qaeda have acted on their own — the "lone wolf" phenomenon. For example, an Iraqi man was arrested in October 2004 while trying to acquire weapons to attack Jewish targets in Nashville, Tenn.
As a result of this changing threat, state and local governments are bypassing the federal government in some areas of command and control and are establishing direct links to one another to share information about events and possible threats. By cutting out a layer of bureaucracy and increasing cooperation, these agencies are more flexible and better able to react to existing and emerging tactical threats, becoming faster and more efficient than the feds in this regard.
Cohen said state and local agencies are aiming to find a better way to deal with the huge volume of often-overlapping information they receive from the federal security agencies — and are working with the federal government toward that goal. He noted that state and local agencies have spent only a small percentage of the $6 billion allocated to them from the federal government for security. In many ways, U.S. law enforcement is treating the acts of lone wolves or small militant groups as common crimes rather than as crimes against national security. This change reflects the shift in the primary threat away from international organizations and toward individuals or small fringe groups. The state and local law enforcement organizations, attempting to adapt to this emerging threat, have expressed the need for cooperation with and assistance from the federal government.
