51 Terrorism in the United States

In the United States a common definition of terrorism is the systematic or threatened use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious, or ideological change. This article serves as a list and compilation of acts of terrorism, attempts of terrorism, and other such items pertaining to terrorist activities within the domestic borders of the United States by non-state actors or spies acting in the interests of or persons acting without approval of state actors.

Family Research Council (FRC) is an American fundamentalist Protestant activist group, with an affiliated lobbying organization. Its stated mission is "to advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview". FRC promotes what it considers to be family values by advocating and lobbying for policies in government.

Alpha 66 is an anti-Castro paramilitary organization that operates in the Southern United States. The group was originally formed by Cuban exiles in the early 1960s and was most active in the late 1970s and 1980s. Although its base of support has greatly eroded due to the end of the Cold War and the thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba, Alpha 66 is still active today and is recognized as a terrorist organization by state governments and research groups alike.

Aryan Nations is an American anti-semitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist terrorist organization that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about 2 ¾ miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded the group in the 1970s.

The Aryan Republican Army (ARA), also dubbed "The Midwest Bank bandits" by the FBI and law-enforcement, were a white nationalist terrorist organization who robbed a series of 22 banks in the Midwest from 1994 to 1996 spearheaded by frontman Peter Kevin Langan. The gang who had links to Neo-Nazism and white supremacism, were alleged to have conspired with convicted terrorist Timothy McVeigh in the months before the Oklahoma City bombing terrorist attack.

The Atomwaffen Division, also known as the National Socialist Order is a neo-Nazi terrorist network. Formed in 2015 and based in the Southern United States, it has since expanded across the United States and into the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Baltic states and other European countries. The group is part of the alt-right, although the group rejects the label and is considered extreme even within that movement. It is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The Barack Obama assassination plot in Tennessee was a plot by Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart to assassinate Barack Obama, who was then the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee. The two men, both Neo-Nazis white power skinheads, spoke of killing Obama during a planned murder spree of 88 African Americans in Tennessee, 14 of whom were to be beheaded, many of whom were young students at an unidentified, predominantly black school.

Better This World is a 2011 documentary film that was directed by Kelly Duane and Katie Galloway. It had its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 23, 2011, where it won two Golden Gate Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Bay Area Documentary Feature.

The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Black Power revolutionary organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed entirely of Black Panthers (BPP) who served as members of both groups, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.

The Ejército Popular Boricua, also known as Los Macheteros, is a clandestine organization based in Puerto Rico, with cells in the states and other nations. It campaigns for, and supports, the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States.

During the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, two homemade pressure cooker bombs detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the race, killing 3 people and injuring hundreds of others, including 17 who lost limbs.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a mass shooting that took place on October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The congregation, along with New Light Congregation and Congregation Dor Hadash, which also worshipped in the building, was attacked during Shabbat morning services. The shooter killed eleven people and wounded six. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States.

The Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge is a bridge in Greater Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., connecting Brecksville in Cuyahoga County with Sagamore Hills Township in Summit County. It is located in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

On March 20, 2017, Timothy Caughman, a black 66-year-old man, was collecting cans for recycling in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City when James Harris Jackson, a white 28-year-old man, approached him and stabbed him multiple times with a sword. Caughman later died of his injuries. Jackson subsequently turned himself in to police custody and confirmed that he traveled from Maryland to New York with the intention of killing black men in order to prevent white women from having interracial relationships with them.

The Charlottesville car attack was a terror attack perpetrated on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people who had been peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and injuring 19. The 20-year-old Fields had driven from Ohio to attend the rally. Fields previously espoused neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs. He was convicted in a state court of hit and run, the first-degree murder of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, and eight counts of malicious wounding, and sentenced to life in prison with an additional 419 years in July 2019. He also pled guilty to 29 of 30 federal hate crime charges to avoid the death penalty, which also resulted in another life sentence handed down in June 2019.

On November 1, 2013, a shooting occurred at around 9:20 a.m. PDT in Terminal 3 of the Los Angeles International Airport. Paul Anthony Ciancia, aged 23, opened fire with a rifle, killing a U.S. government Transportation Security Administration officer and injuring several other people.

On June 14, 2017, during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity in Alexandria, Virginia, James Hodgkinson shot U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika. A ten-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers fatally shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at the George Washington University Hospital. Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby hospitals where they underwent surgery.

The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was a far-right terrorist organization dedicated to Christian Identity and survivalism active in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s. The CSA developed from a Baptist congregation, the Zarephath-Horeb Community Church, founded in 1971 in Pontiac, Missouri. Over time, Zarephath-Horeb evolved into an extremist paramilitary organization and was rechristened CSA. The group operated a large compound in northern Arkansas called "the Farm". In April 1985, law enforcement officers investigating the group for weapons violations and terrorist acts carried out a siege of the compound. After a peaceful resolution, officers arrested and later convicted CSA's top leaders, and the organization dissolved.

Donald David DeFreeze, also known as Cinque Mtume and using the nom de guerre "Field Marshal Cinque," was the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American far-left group.

On May 30, 2009, 29-year-old Raul Flores Jr. and his daughter, nine-year-old Brisenia Ylianna Flores, were murdered during a home invasion in Arivaca, Arizona. The perpetrators were Shawna Forde, Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Gaxiola, all members of Forde's vigilante nativist group, Minutemen American Defense (MAD). Gina Gonzalez, the victims' wife and mother, was wounded but survived the attack after exchanging gunfire with the intruders, wounding Bush.

The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional was a Puerto Rican clandestine paramilitary organization that, through direct action, advocated complete independence for Puerto Rico. It carried out more than 130 bomb attacks in the United States between 1974 and 1983, including a 1975 bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in New York City that killed four people.

The George Jackson Brigade was a revolutionary group based in Seattle, Washington, which was named after George Jackson, a dissident prisoner and Black Panther member shot and killed during an alleged escape attempt at San Quentin Prison in 1971. The group combined veterans of the women's liberation, homosexuals and Black prisoners; the organization was ideologically diverse, consisting of both communists and anarchists.

The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) is a U.S. three-agency intelligence-gathering entity that brings together intelligence professionals from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the United States Department of Defense (DoD). The HIG was created by President Barack Obama in August 2009 with its charter written in April 2010. It was established to question terrorism suspects soon after their arrests, to quickly obtain information about accomplices and terrorism threats.

Bruce Edwards Ivins was an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the suspected perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Ivins died on July 29, 2008, of an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) in an apparent suicide after learning that criminal charges were likely to be filed against him by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for an alleged criminal connection to the attacks.

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a Jewish religious-political organization in the United States, whose stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary". It is classified as "a right wing terrorist group" by the FBI since 2001, and has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States. Most terrorism watch groups classify the group as inactive.

The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) is a law passed by the United States Congress that narrows the scope of the legal doctrine of foreign sovereign immunity. It amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in regards to civil claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages from an act of international terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan, commonly called the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, as well as Jews, immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, and, until recently, Catholics. The Klan has existed in three distinct eras at different points in time during the history of the United States. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and – especially in later iterations – Nordicism, antisemitism, prohibition, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-atheism, and anti-Catholicism. Historically, the first Klan used terrorism – both physical assault and murder – against politically active blacks and their allies in the South in the late 1860s, until it was suppressed around 1872. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered "right-wing extremist" organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.

David Eden Lane was an American white separatist and convicted felon. A member of the domestic terror group The Order, he was convicted and sentenced to 190 years in prison for racketeering; conspiracy; and being an accomplice to the murder of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host, who was murdered by another member of the group on June 18, 1984. He died while incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Oscar López Rivera is a Puerto Rican activist and militant who was a member and suspected leader of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a clandestine paramilitary organization devoted to Puerto Rican independence that carried out more than 130 bomb attacks in the United States between 1974 and 1983. López Rivera was tried by the United States government for seditious conspiracy, use of force to commit robbery, interstate transportation of firearms, and conspiracy to transport explosives with intent to destroy government property.

Omar Mir Seddique, also known as Omar Mateen, was an American mass murderer and domestic terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, before he was killed in a shootout with the local police. It was the deadliest shooting by a single shooter in United States history until the Las Vegas Strip shooting on October 1, 2017.

Robert Jay Mathews was an American neo-Nazi activist and the leader of The Order, an American white supremacist militant group. He was killed during a shootout with approximately seventy-five federal law enforcement agents who surrounded his house on Whidbey Island, near Freeland, Washington.

Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Angeles area. Over time, the gang grew into a more traditional criminal organization. MS-13 is defined by its cruelty, and its rivalry with the 18th Street gang.

Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes to be shot down or given the appearance of being shot down, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.

The Order, also known as the Brüder Schweigen, Silent Brotherhood or less commonly as the "Aryan Resistance Movement" was a white supremacist terrorist organization active in the United States between September 1983 and December 1984. The group raised funds via armed robbery. Ten members were tried and convicted for racketeering, and two for their role in the 1984 murder of radio talk show host Alan Berg.

"Pizzagate" is a debunked conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.

Police brutality is the use of excessive or unnecessary force by personnel affiliated with law enforcement duties when dealing with suspects and civilians. The term is also applied to abuses by corrections personnel in municipal, state, and federal penal facilities, including military prisons.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory. Its complex fabrications allege that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against US President Donald Trump, who is battling against the cabal. The theory also commonly asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as "The Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested. No part of the theory is based on fact.

Racism in the United States has existed since the colonial era, and it involves laws, practices, and actions which discriminate against various groups or adversely impact them in other ways, based on their race or ethnicity. Whilst most white Americans enjoy legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights, these same privileges and rights can be denied to members of other races and minority groups. European Americans, particularly affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, are said to have enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure throughout American history.

Sami Al-Arian indictments and trial began on February 20, 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Al-Arian had been arrested as the alleged leader of the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the U.S., and Secretary of the PIJ's central worldwide governing group. It also charged three others living in the U.S., as well as four outside the U.S. These included Al-Arian's long-time top USF/WISE associate Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, who had been designated a Specially Designated Terrorist by the U.S. in 1995, and was accused of being Secretary General of the PIJ.

The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of American litigants, commentators, tax protesters, and financial-scheme promoters. Self-described "sovereign citizens" see themselves as answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and as not subject to any government statutes or proceedings. In the United States, they do not recognize U.S. currency and maintain that they are "free of any legal constraints". They especially reject most forms of taxation as illegitimate. Participants in the movement argue this concept in opposition to the idea of "federal citizens", who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law. The doctrines of the movement resemble those of the freemen on the land movement more commonly found in the Commonwealth, such as Australia and Canada.

The Spokane bombing attempt occurred on January 17, 2011, when a radio-controlled-shaped pipe bomb was found and defused in Spokane, Washington along the route of that year's Martin Luther King Jr. memorial march.

The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was an American organization active between 1973 and 1975 that committed bank robberies, two murders, and other acts of violence. The SLA became internationally notorious for the kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst, abducting the 19-year-old from Berkeley, California.

The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) is a United States federal law signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 26, 2002. The Act created a federal "backstop" for insurance claims related to acts of terrorism. The Act "provides for a transparent system of shared public and private compensation for insured losses resulting from acts of terrorism." The Act was originally set to expire December 31, 2005, was extended for two years in December 2005, and was extended again on December 26, 2007. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act expired on December 31, 2014.

The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Protesters were members of the far-right and included self-identified members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and various right-wing militias. The marchers chanted racist and antisemitic slogans and carried weapons, Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols, the Valknut, Confederate battle flags, Deus Vult crosses, flags, and other symbols of various past and present anti-Muslim and antisemitic groups. The organizers' stated goals included unifying the American white nationalist movement and opposing the proposed removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville's former Lee Park.

The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), commonly known as the Weather Underground, was a radical left militant organization active in the late 1960s and 1970s, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. It was originally called the Weathermen. The WUO organized in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) largely composed of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. Beginning in 1974, the organization's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow American imperialism.

Whitecapping was a violent lawless movement among farmers that occurred specifically in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was originally a ritualized form of extralegal actions to enforce community standards, appropriate behavior, and traditional rights. However, as it spread throughout the poorest areas of the rural South after the Civil War, white members operated from economically driven and anti-black biases. States passed laws against it, but whitecapping continued into the early 20th century.

On August 5, 2012, a mass shooting took place at the gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, United States where 40-year-old Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people and wounded four others. A seventh victim died of his wounds in 2020. Page committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after he was shot in the hip by a responding police officer.

The WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2013 is a bill that would "amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish weapons of mass destruction intelligence and information sharing functions of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security and to require dissemination of information analyzed by the Department to entities with responsibilities relating to homeland security." This intelligence gathering would include not only chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, but also the analysis of potential threats to public health or U.S. agriculture. The bill would expand The bill passed the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress and was referred to the United States Senate.

Juan Carlos Zarate was a Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism during the George W. Bush administration. He currently serves as the Chairman and Co-Founder of the Financial Integrity Network, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, and as Senior Adviser at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, Transnational Threats Project.