Experts: Plot underscores threat from independents
WASHINGTON — The arrest of four men accused of plotting to attack two Bronx synagogues underscores the threat to Jewish targets by individuals or small groups, several experts said.
From the shooting at a Los Angeles Jewish community center 10 years ago through the attack on the Seattle Jewish Federation building in 2006, to the individual targeting Jews at Wesleyan University in Connecticut earlier this month, an individual or small group not formally connected with al-Qaida or any major international terrorist group was at the center of the threat.
Steve Pomerantz, former assistant director and director of counterterrorism at the FBI, compared the lessons from Tuesday’s arrests to the popular book “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
“All you need to know about terrorism you can learn from this case,” he said, asserting that Jews will always be at the top of the list of targets for terrorists and that groups unaffiliated with a large international terrorist group are “at least as dangerous” as well-known groups such as al-Qaida because they can “more easily slip through the intelligence net.”
Paul Goldenberg, the executive director of the Jewish-organized Secure Community Network, stressed “one common denominator” present in all those past plots: hostile surveillance by the attackers.
“They were methodical enough and premeditated enough to plan and study the target,” said Goldenberg, whose organization was established 3 1/2 years ago by the United Jewish Communities and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to coordinate and advise on security procedures within the Jewish community.
For example, the criminal complaint for the New York plot states that last month, one of the defendants “photographed several synagogues and Jewish community centers in the Bronx and elsewhere for consideration as possible targets in a planned terrorist bombing campaign” and said bombing one of the JCCs would be a “piece of cake.”
That’s why employees and others at Jewish institutions need to be “extremely cognizant” of what’s going on around the facility, Goldenberg said, because individuals could be watching the building, studying the patterns in which people enter and the times security guards patrol the surroundings.
“If people are acting nervous in a location where they shouldn’t be, say something,” Goldenberg said, adding that while most institutions have video camera surveillance, personnel must be trained to spot potential dangers.
comments