9 11 and the Oklahoma City Bombing Effects on Counterterrorism in America

Terror and Counterterrorism

9/11 is one instance of international terrorism because its planning and preparation transcended the national boundaries of the United States, and thus its perpetrators could have been prosecuted as international terrorists (Definitions of Terrorism in the U.S. Code, 2015). Indeed, the counterterrorism activities before and after 9/11 indicate that there was a substantial and major shift in efforts to better comprehend and fight international terrorism post-9/11. A form of domestic terrorism, on the other hand, would be the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The methodology involved in this plot was to use homemade items to construct a bomb that would blow up a federal building.

The Oklahoma City bombing occurred in 1995, six years prior to 9/11. Yet counterterrorism had not sufficiently developed in those intervening years to be able to prevent 9/11. Perhaps the reason for this was that McVeigh and his accomplices were domestic terrorists -- or extremists, who were anti-government and were venting frustrations over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians by the ATF at Waco. Counterterrorism prior to the Oklahoma City bombing was best exemplified by the ATF at Waco, which focused on the Branch Davidian compound as a group of extremists/terrorists who were hoarding weapons. The ATF then proceeded to "terrorize" the Davidians into submission by blasting loud music at them day and night with loud speakers and assaulting the compound on various raids that ultimately ended in the compound being burned to the ground (Gazecki, 1997). Counterterrorism prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, which was described as revenge for Waco against the federal government, consisted of monitoring arms sales, as the ATF was doing (Collins, 1997). It encompassed gathering data within certain legal parameters while also upholding individual liberties such as a right to privacy. Prior to and even after the Oklahoma City bombing, one could take an airplane without having to be searched or strip searched. Today, in a post-9/11 world, that is no longer possible, as body scanners are everywhere and everyone is a suspect in the eyes of the various counterterrorism departments of the FBI, TSA, NSA, CIA, etc.

The vulnerabilities that were exploited in Oklahoma City was the sense that no American would be so inhuman as to blow up hundreds of innocent persons out of revenge for something the government did. Yet the bombing showed that America was no longer an innocent place: this act of terror exploited American naivete. Society responded by growing cynical, even doubting the truth of the story of McVeigh, with many suspecting that a government agency was really behind the bombing so as to be able to pass more legislation and take away more liberties.

Indeed, after Oklahoma City, counterterrorism began to become more stringent, in that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was passed and various pieces of legislation were developed in order to keep better tabs on the tracking of particular items that could potentially be used as a weapon. However, the nation was still unprepared for a large scale attack, as was seen on 9/11.

Immediately prior to 9/11, the country had somewhat moved past the Oklahoma City bombing, which had receded into the past. 9/11 took terrorism to an international level for the United States and revolutionized counterterrorism activities. The attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda -- though more cynics and skeptics emerged, who gathered evidence indicating that the Israeli Mossad as well as neo-conservatives in the Pentagon were involved in the attack (Dawson, 2013). While Dawson (2013) claims that the purpose of the attack was to draw the U.S. into a war for Greater Israel in the Middle East, others claim that the attack was directed by Bin Laden, who disliked America for its freedoms. In any event, America was quick to give up many of those freedoms via the Patriot Act, in a move that should make some wonder whether Bin Laden did not actually get what he wanted, if it was he who was behind the attack. Dawson (2013) asserts that the Mossad was the main group behind the attack and that their methodology was to blame the attack on Arabs and Palestinians, as the Israeli Mossad agents who were arrested in NYC on 9/11 did, after being discovered celebrating the attack on a rooftop and then being stopped in a van full of explosives.