U.S. Officials Continue to Shift Focus From Al Qaeda to ‘Home-Grown Extremists’

Published on May 1, 2012 by admin   ·   No Comments

By Madison Ruppert/End the Lie

Last year I broke down a report from the Homeland Security Policy Institute which not only lent support for increasingly harsh and widespread police state measures, but also served to shift attention away from the supposed threat posed by foreign terrorist groups towards the alleged threat of domestic terrorists.

One of the prime targets for demonization by both the establishment media and law enforcement has been the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement, something which I have written about previously here at End the Lie.

This is all part of a concerted effort to turn almost everything into a sign of potential terrorist activity while breeding a culture of delusional paranoia, citizen spying and ubiquitous surveillance.

Now U.S. government officials have said that al Qaeda’s core organization cannot carry out another attack like the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and the likelihood of a chemical, biological, atomic or radiological attack over the next year are minimal.

Interestingly, this view expressed by the deputy director of U.S. National Intelligence Robert Cardillo conflicts with the ludicrous claims made recently about al Qaeda potentially planning another 9/11 in an attempt to justify an extended American military presence in Afghanistan.

Cardillo and other anonymous U.S. officials described their assessments on a conference call with journalists during which they claimed that the Arab Spring is also helping weaken the “core” al Qaeda organization.

However, al Qaeda has been quite vocal in showing support for Western-backed uprisings in Syria and Libya, which is hardly surprising when one is aware of what al Qaeda actually is and what purpose they serve, especially in the current events in the Middle East.

Mark Hosenball reports for the Associated Press that, “More worrying to U.S. counterterrorism officials and their allies abroad is the possibility of home-grown extremists, or “lone wolves,” who are radicalized over the Internet or in small cells, but who also now are being given encouragement by media outlets connected to al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

The officials would not go as far as to say that al Qaeda is on the brink of “strategic defeat,” since this would completely eradicate the primary justification for the American police state along with the Department of Homeland Security’s massive operations, the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, etc.

While discounting the planning power and resources available to the “core” al Qaeda organization, these officials did identify four loosely affiliated groups which they say still pose “threats of greater or lesser degree to U.S. interests”