Washington, D.C.

Homegrown terrorism that has helped al-Qaeda launch attacks against the U.S. military is prompting two congressional committees to take a closer look at the threats.

The House and Senate homeland security committees plan a joint hearing Wednesday to examine how the internal threat can be stopped.

The Senate began inquiries into domestic threats from radical Muslims in 2006 after more than a dozen plots were uncovered by law enforcement agencies.

Until the 2006 Senate hearings, the only successful al-Qaeda plot had been the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

"In the five years subsequently, these type of plots nearly doubled, and 14 innocent Americans have been killed, 13 at the Fort Hood Army base and one at a military recruiting station," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. "Clearly, the threat of homegrown terrorism has increased dramatically, and clearly, members of the Armed services are a high-value target."

The Fort Hood attack referred to a mass shooting on Nov. 5, 2009 outside Killeen, Texas at the world's biggest military base.

The suspect, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, is accused of killing 13 people and injuring another 29 after pulling out guns and shooting at random into a group of military personnel.

He was stopped by a police officer who shot and seriously injured him, leaving him paralyzed. He is awaiting trial on 13 counts of murder and 32 attempted murder charges that could end with his execution.

Hasan, who was working as an Army psychiatrist, is an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent. Internal Army reports indicate officers noticed his tendencies toward radical Islam beginning in 2005. Subsequent investigations uncovered e-mail communications between Hasan and Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who declared Hasan a hero.

Al-Awlaki referred to the Fort Hood shooting when he announced that "fighting against the U.S. Army is an Islamic duty."

Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. predator drone missile in September 2011.

Another homegrown attack against the U.S. military occurred on June 1, 2009 when Muslim convert Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad fired in a drive-by shooting at soldiers in front of a U.S. Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. He killed one soldier and wounded another in the rifle attack.

Muhammad, who changed his name from Carlos Leon Bledsoe, reportedly told police "the attack was justified according to Islamic laws and the Islamic religion."

The most recent homegrown Islamic plot is being investigated in New York after the arrest on Nov. 20 of 27-year-old Jose Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yusuf.

The New York City Police Department accuses him of plotting a bomb attack against targets that included U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

When Congress began investigating homegrown terrorism, the political advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the hearings as being Islamophobic.

Congressional committee leaders such as Rep. Peter King of the Homeland Security Committee responded by citing popular support for the hearings in recent polls by the conservative advocacy group Secure America Now. They showed 63 percent of Americans support the hearings while only 20 percent oppose them.

Other House hearings have inquired into radicalization within the Muslim-American community, converts to Islam in U.S. prisons and recruitment efforts by al-Qaeda.

The nonprofit James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy says 60 percent of Muslim radicals who have been arrested were American citizens. About 55 percent of the radicals converted to Islam in prison, according to the Houston-based Baker Institute.

 

 

 

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