Two suspected New Year's Day terrorist attacks were allegedly carried out by former US service members, raising questions about how those with access to sensitive intelligence and the country's most advanced weapons could be drawn to extremist beliefs.
Early Wednesday morning, Texas resident Shamsuddin Jabbar was allegedly killed She ran into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street In New Orleans, killing 14 people. He was a former Army sergeant, with a tour of duty in Afghanistan under his belt.
Hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded and burst into flames outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, a suspected terrorist plot linked to active duty. Army Master Sergeant. Matthew Livelsperger, who allegedly carried out the attack that led to his death while on approved leave. He was a member of an elite Green Beret unit.
From 1990 to 2022, 170 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds planned 144 unique mass-casualty terrorist attacks in the United States — 25% of all individuals who planned mass-casualty extremist crimes during this period, according to a study by the National Consortium for the Study Terrorism and responses to terrorism.
Early Wednesday morning, Texas resident Shamsuddin Jabbar plowed into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people. (FBI)
Questions posed to the Department of Defense about its plans to identify and root out extremists by Fox News Digital went unanswered.
Here's a look back at some others Military extremists Who carried out attacks on American soil in the twenty-first century:
2009: Army psychiatrist Nidal Hassan kills 13 people
In 2009, former Army Major Nidal Hassan killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. The Islamic extremist and former army psychiatrist spoke about the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Retired Colonel Terry Lee, who worked with Hassan, told Fox News that the Army major would make “strange” statements such as “Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor,” referring to American forces.
Hassan reportedly shouted: “God is great!” when he opened fire, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others in the deadliest mass shooting on a US military base.
Hassan confessed to committing the murders in court He now sits on death row.
2021: Army soldier Cole James Bridges attempts to provide intelligence to ISIS
In 2021, Army Private Bridges, 24, was arrested on conspiracy charges To bomb the September 11 Memorial in New York And trying to help ISIS kill American soldiers.
Now serving 14 years in prison, Bridges was arrested when he began communicating online with an undercover FBI agent who he believed was an ISIS supporter in contact with ISIS fighters in the Middle East.
2020: Army soldier Ethan Melzer provides intelligence to a neo-Nazi group
Melzer was 24 years old at the time of his sentencing. He spends 45 years in prison To send sensitive US military information to the Organization of the Nine Angles (O9A), a shadowy group of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, in an attempt to facilitate a mass casualty attack on Melzer's Army unit.
He was arrested in 2020 after joining the army in 2018 to infiltrate its ranks and gain insight into his work at O9A. After being deployed to guard a remote and sensitive foreign US military base, he shared details about the location with O9A members and began calling for a deadly attack on his colleagues.
2014: Fraser Glenn Miller kills three outside Jewish centers
Miller, a lifelong white supremacist, shot and killed three people, two outside a Jewish community center and one outside a Jewish nursing home in Kansas in 2014.
Miller was open about his intention to kill Jews, even though all his victims were Christians.
He served in the Army for 20 years, serving two tours of duty in the Vietnam War and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Beret. Having led a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, Miller had a history of run-ins with the law. He spent three years in prison after being convicted in 1987 of conspiring to obtain stolen military weapons and planning robberies and assassinations.
Miller has since died in prison.
What we know about the victims of the terrorist attack in New Orleans
2014: Navy vet Zell Thompson wounds police officers with a knife
Thompson, a Navy veteran. He committed an attack inspired by Salafi-jihadist ideology In Queens, New York in 2014, wounding four police officers. The attack was considered an act of terrorism because Thompson had recently converted to Islam. In the months leading up to the attack, he visited hundreds of websites linked to terrorist organizations. Thompson was forcibly discharged from the Navy in 2003, after being arrested six times between 2002 and 2003 in internal disputes.
He was shot and killed by police at the scene of the 2014 attack.
2016: Afghanistan war vet Micah Xavier Johnson kills five police officers
In 2016, Johnson ambushed police officers in Dallas, TexasAs a result, five were killed and nine others were injured. The 25-year-old Afghanistan Army Reserve veteran was angry about police shootings of black men. The attack was carried out at the end of a protest against recent killings by police Alton Sterling In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile (Falcon Heights, Minnesota).
Dallas mourns the killing of five police officers
2020: Three veterans attempt to blow up a Forest Service building
Las Vegas authorities arrested Andrew Lynam, an Army reservist, along with Navy veteran Steven T. Parshall and Air Force veteran William L. The Loomis — all known as the Boogaloo Bois — were charged on May 30, 2020, on charges of conspiring to firebomb a U.S. Forest Service building and an electrical substation to sow chaos during a police protest following the killing of George Floyd.
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In total, 480 people with military backgrounds were charged with ideologically motivated extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, and about 230 of them were arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
