Terrorism in the United States

Abstract

Many European officials have predicted that the United States will be hit by the kind of terrorism Western Europe experienced during the last decade and is still experiencing. Their reasoning derives not from any particular piece of intelligence that the United States is about to become a new theater of terrorist warfare, but from less specific indicators. Some of these European observers believe that the prominent American role in the Middle East will make the United States a target for terrorism if Palestinian aims are not satisfied. Some believe that Europe's terrorist groups will inspire American imitators. If there were an imminent domestic terrorist threat, these Europeans fear we would not know about it. They are dismayed by what they perceive as the deliberate destruction of the American intelligence apparatus abroad and in the United States. They believe that a nation of 200 million has more potentially dangerous subversive groups than the few now being monitored under the new stringent rules governing domestic security investigations.