According to the Heritage Foundation, 64 plots have been launched against the U.S. since 9/11. Authors Peter Brookes and David Inserra of the Heritage Foundation have tracked the plots against the U.S. and categorizes 53 of the 64 plots as perpetrated by homegrown extremists. Fox News describes "The Washington think tank includes several instances not officially recognized by the U.S. government as terrorism."
“So long as terror groups are able to conduct notable attacks and control territory, they will continue to inspire additional radicals around the world,” David Inserra, research associate in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy, told Fox News. “While the U.S. and its allies must continue to try to stop terror attacks with all the tools at their disposal, the West must also defeat ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups to prevent the spread of their violent ideology.”
Some of the instances of terror attacks in the U.S. are:
- December, 2001: Failed "shoebomber" Richard Reid tried to blow up a Miami-bound flight from Paris.
- May, 2002: Radicalized former gang member Jose Padilla was arrested for allegedly plotting to detonate a “dirty bomb.”
- May, 2003: Lyman Faris of Columbus, Ohio, arrested for conspiring to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
- June 2006: The "Liberty City Seven," members of a Florida religious cult, were arrested in a plot to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and other government buildings.
- April 15, 2013: Ethnic Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carried out the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and wounded 260. Tamerlan was killed days after the attack; Dzhokhar's trial, in which he claimed his brother was the driving force in the attack, is concluding.
- Sept. 25, 2014: Alton Nolen, a "lone wolf" radical who had frightened co-workers at an Oklahoma meat packing company with his Islamic extremist rantings, decapitated a woman he worked with before a company executive could shoot him. He is awaiting trial.
- Jan. 14, 2015: Christopher Cornell aka Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, who the FBI said was a supporter of the Islamic State, was charged with planning to bomb the U.S. Capitol and shoot those who fled from the area.
Inserra and Brookes said, "Since the inspirational source of domestic radicalization and terrorism often originates from overseas, battling violent Islamist extremism abroad must be addressed in concert with the challenges presented by the terrorism at home."
