{"id":284239,"date":"2025-01-06T12:01:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T12:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=284239"},"modified":"2025-01-04T10:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-04T10:26:10","slug":"u-s-veterans-major-source-of-domestic-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/01\/u-s-veterans-major-source-of-domestic-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Veterans: Major Source of Domestic Terrorists"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Fire vehicles surround the valet area of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas where active-duty Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger detonated a Cybertruck on 1 Jan 2025.
Photo: David Becker\/The Washington Post\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The mass murder in New Orleans and Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas fit a troubling pattern among U.S. vets.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2 Jan 2025 <\/em>– The two men<\/span> who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year\u2019s Day \u2014\u00a0killing 15 people by\u00a0plowing a pickup truck into a crowd<\/a>\u00a0of New Year\u2019s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas \u2014 both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

\n

From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n

Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a \u201cmass casualty offender,\u201d far outpacing mental health issues, according to a\u00a0separate study<\/a>\u00a0of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers.<\/p>\n

From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals, according to data from the new START report. From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries \u2014 a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n

In the latest attacks, the FBI identified 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar as the man who rammed a pickup into New Year\u2019s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, early on Wednesday morning. At least 15 people were killed and 35 more were injured.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Army said Jabbar served as a human resource specialist and an information technology specialist between 2007 and 2020. His service included a deployment to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010. A staff sergeant at the end of his service, Jabbar was \u201cinspired by\u201d the Islamic State terrorist organization, according to a short address by President Joe Biden on Wednesday night, who added that, in videos posted to social media shortly before the attack, Jabbar indicated that he had a \u201cdesire to kill.\u201d The FBI said it did not believe he was solely responsible for the attack and said the investigation was \u201clive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities are also investigating whether the terrorist attack in New Orleans is linked to the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas which killed the attacker, Matthew Livelsberger, and wounded seven bystanders. The U.S. Army told The Intercept that Master Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger served in the active-duty Army from January 2006 to March 2011, then served in the National Guard from March 2011 to July 2012, followed by a stint in the Army Reserve from July 2012 to December 2012.\u00a0That same month, he rejoined the Army, serving as a U.S. Army Special Operations Soldier.<\/p>\n

Livelsberger was assigned to U.S. Army Special Operations Command and still serving in the military, though on approved leave, at the time of his death.<\/p>\n

In the years<\/span> 1990 to 2022, 170 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds plotted 144 individual mass casualty terrorist attacks in the United States, according to START research using the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States, or PIRUS, database, which includes information on more than 3,000 subjects who committed extremist crimes in America. These troops and veterans represent approximately one-quarter of all individuals who plotted mass casualty extremist attacks during this span, outstripping their representation in the U.S. population.<\/p>\n

Jensen and his colleagues found that while military personnel and veterans are not more likely to radicalize to the point of violence than members of the general public, when service members and veterans do become radicalized, \u201cthey may be more likely to plan for, or commit, mass casualty crimes, thus having an outsized impact on public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers also determined that subjects \u201cin PIRUS with U.S. military backgrounds are 2.41 times more likely to be classified as mass casualty offenders than individuals who did not serve in the armed forces.\u201d\u00a0This means that U.S. military service is a more reliable predictor for becoming a mass casualty offender than mental health issues, being a lone offender, or having a pre-radicalization criminal history.<\/p>\n

Most mass casualty offenders with U.S. military backgrounds in PIRUS (73.5 percent) were associated with far-right domestic extremist groups and movements. Approximately 15 percent (24 offenders) were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups, such as Al Qaeda and its affiliates (9 subjects) or the Islamic State or ISIS (13 subjects).<\/p>\n

Law enforcement sources<\/span> confirmed to local news outlets that Livelsberger\u2019s weaponized Tesla Cybertruck was rented from Turo, the vehicle-sharing service that was also used in the New Orleans attack. Jabbar reportedly used the Turo app as well to rent the electric Ford pickup truck used in that attack.<\/p>\n

Both Livelsberger and Jabbar spent time at the military base formerly known as Fort Bragg and now called Fort Liberty<\/a>, a massive Army garrison in North Carolina that is home to multiple Army Special Operations units. It does not, however, appear that their assignments to the base overlapped.<\/p>\n

Fort Liberty is, however, an exceptionally troubled Army base.\u00a0Investigations <\/a>found, for example, that\u00a0109 soldiers<\/a>\u00a0assigned there died in 2020 and 2021. Ninety-six percent of those deaths took place stateside. Fewer than 20 were from natural causes. The remaining soldier fatalities, including\u00a0macabre or unexplained deaths<\/a>, homicides, and\u00a0dozens of drug overdoses<\/a>, were preventable.<\/p>\n

Seventy-six of the 170 mass casualty offenders (44.7 percent) in PIRUS with military backgrounds served in the Army. These soldiers and veterans represent more than half (52.4 percent) of all Army-affiliated individuals represented in the data, which is the highest ratio of mass casualty to non-mass casualty offenders for any one military service branch. By comparison, 32 percent of the individuals represented in the data who served in the Marine Corps were mass casualty offenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Army is a vast organization with all kinds of different people and all kinds of different training and experiences,\u201d said Joel A. Dvoskin, a clinical and forensic psychologist and an expert on violence, who cautioned against drawing any early conclusions about the relationship between the attacks and the attackers\u2019 military service records. He said data on the relationship between military service and mass casualty attacks should only be used for beneficial purposes, like smoothing the transition from military to civilian life.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nick Turse<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Jan 2025 – The two men who carried out terror attacks on New Year\u2019s Day \u2014\u00a0killing 15 people by\u00a0plowing a pickup truck into a crowd\u00a0in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas \u2014 both had been trained by the U.S. military, according to the Pentagon.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":284242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[101,100,2435,112,99,70],"class_list":["post-284239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-domestic-terrorism","tag-pentagon","tag-structural-violence","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284239"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284254,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284239\/revisions\/284254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}