Background here on the post for today that follows below: According to our historical record what is the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the country by anyone (even before 9/11) is this one is hands down.
Was carried out by Timothy McVeigh, an American terrorist, along with two others, who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
That attack is
commonly referred to as the “Oklahoma City bombing.” That attack
killed 168 people and injured over 600, including many children.
Outcome:
1. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11,
2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, IN.
2. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were also convicted as
conspirators in the plot.
3. Nichols was sentenced to 161 life terms without parole.
4. Fortier was sentenced to 12 years and has since been
released.
McVeigh, was an Army Persian Gulf War veteran. He claimed he sought
revenge against the federal government and that the bombing was for the sieges
at Waco,
Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
The Waco Siege ended in the deaths of 76 people exactly
two years before the bombing, as well as for the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992.
McVeigh hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government.
He was convicted of eleven federal
offenses and sentenced to death. His execution was carried out in a
considerably shorter amount of time than average after his trial, as most
convicts on death row in the United States spend many years there before being
executed.
This update on the above background from The
AP with this headline for this post today:
“FBI Dir Wray warns
violent ‘domestic terrorism’ growing
in US”
FBI Director Christopher Wray bluntly labeled the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism.”
He then warned of a rapidly growing threat of homegrown
violent extremism that law enforcement is scrambling to confront through
thousands of investigations.
Two key parts of his testimony:
(1) He defended the agency’s handling of an intelligence
report that warned of the prospect for violence on January 6.
(2) He also firmly rejected false claims advanced by some
Republicans that anti-Trump groups had organized the deadly riot that began
when a violent mob stormed the building as Congress was gathering to certify
results of the presidential election.
Wray’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was
his first before Congress since that insurrection. It was one in a series of
hearings centered on the law enforcement response to the Capitol insurrection.
Lawmakers pressed him not only about possible intelligence
and communication failures ahead of the riot but also about the threat of
violence from white supremacists, militias, and other extremists that the FBI
says it is prioritizing with the same urgency as the menace of international
terrorism organizations that they have in the past.
He to the committee: “January 6 was not an isolated event.
The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for
a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon. At the FBI, we’ve been
sounding the alarm on it for a number of years now.”
He made said the violence at the Capitol had made it clear
that the agency had remade itself after the 9/11 attacks in dealing with international
terrorism and that now it is laboring to address homegrown violence by white
Americans.
President Biden’s administration also tasked the DNI to work
with the FBI and DHS to assess this growing threat.
In applying the domestic terrorism label to conduct inside
the Capitol, Director Wray sought to make it clear to senators that he was clear-eyed
about the scope and urgency of the problem by quantifying the scale of the
FBI’s work. He further said the number of domestic terrorism investigations has
increased from around 1,000 when he became director in 2017 to roughly 1,400 at
the end of last year to about 2,000 presently.
The number of arrests of white supremacists and other
racially motivated extremists had also almost tripled, he further said.
Many of the senators questions centered on the FBI’s handling
of a January 5 report from its Norfolk field office that warned of online posts
foreshadowing a “war in Washington the following day.”
Capitol Police leaders have said they were unaware of the
report at the time. Also, the former Capitol Police chief said he
received no intelligence from the FBI that would have led him to anticipate the
sort of violence that besieged them on the 6th.
This
from the NY TIMES (October 24, 2020 report and updated January 20, 2021)
with this headline:
“Far-Right Groups Behind Most U.S. Terrorist
Attacks”
White supremacists and other like-minded groups have committed a majority of the terrorist attacks in the United States this year, according to a report by a security think tank that echoed warnings made by the DHS.
The report was published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and it found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 “terrorist plots and attacks in the first eight months of this year, or 67%.”
The finding also comes about two weeks after an annual assessment by the DHS warned that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland and white supremacists were the most deadly among domestic terrorists in recent years.”
My 2 cents: I believe that the information posted above pretty much speaks for itself about the past, the present, and probably the future. The future is the scariest, although I hope it does not come to pass. But, still listening to Trump claim that the 2020 election was rigged and a fraud and that thousands and thousands of votes were illegal (which they were not as over 60 court cases said - including the USSC at least 3-4 times).
Trump lost by over 7 millions votes and he still can't accept that fact. Sadly, many of his gun-toting loyalists still believe his con and outright lie again and again. That too is very scary, and that makes the future very uncertain. So, hang on tight.
Thanks for stopping by.
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