New profile of the home-grown terrorist emerges

Armed with few means but plenty of ideological fervor, an emerging corps of wannabe terrorists is scoping out skyscrapers, conducting terror-training camps, and, in one case, even attacking Americans by using a Jeep.

The June 22 arrests of six men in Miami and one in Atlanta for plotting to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and public buildings elsewhere provide the latest case in point. The band of alleged terrorists – which the government says pledged fealty to Al Qaeda but had no actual contact with it – has been characterized as "homegrown" because five of the suspects are US citizens.

From the Ku Klux Klan to the Weather Underground, American society has reaped its share of violent dissident groups. The government alleges that this latest group embraced jihad against the US, though it appears to have blended radical Islam with other religious beliefs. Even so, the arrests since 9/11 of some 50 Muslim-Americans – most of them born and raised in the US – is of growing concern to law enforcement and terrorism experts.

Most are amateurs, but law officers say several factors set this new threat apart: their means of recruitment, the source of their anger, their lack of direct tie to international terror groups, and their connection via the Internet to an apparent transnational web of sympathizers.

"These homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda, if not more so," FBI Director Robert Mueller told the City Club of Cleveland in a speech Friday. "[They] are self-recruited, self-trained, and self-executing. They may not have any connection to Al Qaeda or to other terrorist groups. They share ideas and information in the shadows of the Internet. They gain inspiration from radical websites that call for violence."

On Thursday, the group in Miami, mostly of Haitian descent, joined the ranks of those linked to foiled terror plots since 9/11. Though lacking resources, the men had told an undercover agent that they were planning an attack more spectacular than those of 9/11, according to the government indictment.

Other recent arrests include:

•Two Georgia men arrested in March, both Muslims, are accused of being involved in international terrorism activities, making greater Atlanta the site of three recent antiterror arrests. Authorities have linked them to those arrested in Canada in an alleged plot to attack targets in Toronto.

•In Torrance, Calif., a group of gas- station burglars were arrested last summer and charged with plotting to finance the destruction of military-recruitment offices. Three of the four are US citizens.

•Though not classified by the FBI as a terrorist act, a Muslim student's March rampage across the University of North Carolina quad in his Jeep Cherokee injured nine people. He is reported to have told investigators he was "avenging the death of Muslims all over the world."

Experts cite cultural alienation, the influence of radical clerics, and even youthful rebellion run amok as motivations for these plots and misadventures. But what ties many of them together is the idea of defending a religion under attack.

"One fundamental common denominator of these cases is the belief that there's a war against Islam and therefore you have to avenge it," says Steven Emerson, author of "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us."

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