How Can We Combat Domestic Terrorism When Vehicles Are The Weapons?

Police say the suspect in Tuesday's terror attack in New York followed a recent trend: A new, low-tech, sole actor model, similar to vehicle attacks in Europe.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Let's turn now to where things stand when it comes to combating domestic terrorism. And to do that, we'll turn to national security correspondent Greg Myre. Greg, welcome back.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Thank you, Mary Louise.

KELLY: These kind of attacks - a vehicle, a truck, driving into a crowd - are new to New York. They are sadly not new in other parts of the world. Remind us when we first started seeing this happen.

MYRE: Right. These specific kind of attacks that seem driven by ISIS really started in the middle of last year in Europe. And ISIS made a big splash last November. They put out a big online article with very - a very detailed checklist. Get a big, heavy truck. Scout out a crowded place. Keep driving. Don't stop pushing the vehicle forward. But if you do get stuck and can't go, have a secondary weapon - a gun or a knife. Leave a note behind that pledges your allegiance to ISIS so people know this. So we have seen this checklist. And Joel just laid it out. Many of these things were done in precisely in that manner.

Also important to remember where ISIS was a year ago - they were losing ground. And just in recent weeks, they've completely lost almost all the important territory they held in the Middle East. So this seems to be part of their effort to carry on as a terrorist group that still has relevance and potency even though they no longer can claim to have a state.

KELLY: Yeah, well, I was going to ask what an attack like we saw in New York yesterday might tell us about the state of ISIS. On the one hand, they are able to inspire people to carry out things like this. On the other hand, they're apparently not able to pull off a spectacular attack in this - in the form of 9/11.

MYRE: Yeah. On one level, it does sort of suggest a level of desperation as ISIS wants to remain relevant on a global stage, but it's really seemingly having to ask others to do that for it. These European attacks in several cases we've seen have been carried out by individuals who had little or no contact with the group.

Now, ISIS seems perfectly willing to claim responsibility even if it had no apparent role. It almost seems beside the point for ISIS as long as they're getting publicity and credit for it. We should note ISIS has not claimed responsibility for this New York attack. Usually it does, and its track record is pretty good and pretty accurate. But there have been instances in the past where if the attacker survived, they don't claim responsibility.

KELLY: Because maybe the attacker hasn't murdered themselves and fully completed the mission. Who knows?

MYRE: Perhaps.

KELLY: President Trump in reacting to this has linked the attack yesterday in New York to the immigration debate and changes that he would like to make in the immigration system. What's he saying?

MYRE: Well, first of all, he says he wants to get rid of this diversity visa program that Saipov came in on seven years ago. And he's talked about, more broadly, changes he would like to make - this sort of chain migration - immigration system where one family member comes in and then others could follow. So he's talking about some pretty significant changes.

But it's important to note that Saipov is somewhat of an exception here. I mean, most of the attacks we've seen the past 16 years have been homegrown, not foreigners coming into the country. And Uzbekistan was not a country that was listed on any of President Trump's other restrictive measures.

KELLY: President Trump has also said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay.

MYRE: He has said that. That would be extremely rare. I'm not even sure there's been a president take somebody who's been arrested on U.S. soil and shipped them out of the U.S. - outside the U.S. justice system. So that would be extremely rare.

KELLY: All right. And very quickly, can you summarize big picture where we are in terms of domestic terrorism right now?

MYRE: Well, important to remember we have not suffered a major foreign attack since 9/11 from an outside group. We've seen individual attacks. And that, in some sense, has been a relative success.

KELLY: NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre, thank you.

MYRE: Thank you.

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