A pair of suspected terrorist attacks on New Year’s Day are both believed to have been carried out by former US service members, raising questions about how those with access to sensitive intelligence and the country’s most advanced weapons become embroiled in radical beliefs.
Early Wednesday morning, reportedly a Texas resident, Shamsud-Din Jabbar plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing fourteen people. He was a former Army Staff Sergeant with a deployment to Afghanistan under his belt.
Hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded in flames outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas – a suspected terror plot linked to active duty Army Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, who allegedly carried out the attack that led to his own death while on approved leave. He was a member of the elite Green Beret unit.
From 1990 to 2022, 170 individuals with a U.S. military background plotted 144 unique mass casualty terrorist attacks in the United States – 25% of all individuals who plotted extremist mass casualty crimes during this period, according to a study by the National Consortium for the Study of terrorism and responses to terrorism.
Early Wednesday morning, Texas resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar allegedly drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing fourteen people. (FBI)
NEW ORLEANS ATTACK: INVESTIGATION CONTINUES AS FBI SAYS NO OTHER SUSPECTS INVOLVED
Questions posed to the Defense Department by Fox News Digital about its plans to identify and root out radicals went unanswered.
Here’s a look back at another one military radical extremists who have carried out attacks on US soil in the 21st century:
2009: Army psychiatrist Nidal Hassan kills thirteen people
In 2009, former Army Major Nidal Hassan killed thirteen people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas. The Islamic extremist and former army psychiatrist had spoken out about the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Retired Col. Terry Lee, who worked with Hassan, told Fox News that the Army major would make “bizarre” statements such as “the Muslims must stand up and fight the aggressor,” referring to U.S. troops.
Hassan reportedly shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” when he opened fire, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others in the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. military base.
Hassan admitted to the murders in court is now on death row.
2021: Army soldier Cole James Bridges attempts to provide information to ISIS
In 2021, Army soldier Bridges, 24, was arrested for conspiracy to blow up the 9/11 memorial in New York and efforts to assist ISIS in killing American soldiers.
Now serving fourteen years in prison, Bridges was caught when he began communicating online with an undercover FBI agent he believed to be an ISIS supporter in contact with ISIS fighters in the Middle East.
2020: Army soldier Ethan Melzer provides information to a neo-Nazi group
Melzer, 24 at the time of his conviction, is serving 45 years in prison for sending sensitive US military information to the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), an occult-based neo-Nazi and white supremacist group, in an attempt to facilitate a mass casualty attack on Melzer’s army unit.
He was arrested in 2020 after joining the military in 2018 to infiltrate its ranks and gain insight for his work for O9A. After being deployed to guard a remote, sensitive foreign US military base, he shared details of the location with O9A members and began calling for a deadly attack on his colleagues.
2014: Frazier Glenn Miller kills three outside Jewish centers
Miller, a lifelong white supremacist, shot and killed three people in Kansas in 2014, two outside a Jewish community center and one outside a Jewish retirement home.
Miller had spoken out about his intention to kill Jews, even though all his victims were Christians.
He served in the Army for twenty years, served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War and was a member of the elite Green Berets for thirteen years. After leading a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, Miller had a history of run-ins with the law. He served three years in prison after being convicted in 1987 of conspiracy to acquire stolen military weapons and of planning robberies and an assassination attempt.
Miller has since died in prison.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT VICTIMS OF THE NEW ORLEANS TERRORIST ATTACK
2014: Knife-wielding Navy vet Zale Thompson injures police officers
Thompson, a Navy veteran, committed a Salafist-jihadist inspired attack with an axe in Queens, New York in 2014, injuring four police officers. The attack was considered an act of terror as Thompson was a recent Muslim convert. In the months leading up to the attack, he visited hundreds of websites linked to terrorist organizations. Thompson was involuntarily discharged from the Navy in 2003 after being arrested six times in domestic disputes between 2002 and 2003.
He was shot dead by police at the scene of the attack in 2014.
2016: Veterinarian Micah Xavier Johnson, war veteran in Afghanistan, kills five police officers
In 2016, Johnson ambushed police officers in Dallas, Texaswhich killed five people and injured nine others. The 25-year-old veteran of the war in Afghanistan was angry about the police shootings of black men. He committed the attack at the end of a protest against recent police killings Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
Dallas mourns the murder of five police officers
2020: Three veterans attempt to bomb a Forest Service building
Las Vegas authorities on May 30, 2020 arrested Andrew Lynam, an Army reservist, along with Navy veteran Stephen T. Parshall and Air Force veteran William L. Loomis – all self-described Boogaloo Bois – for conspiring to set fire to a U.S. Forest Service building bombing and an electrical substation to sow chaos during a police protest following the killing of George Floyd.
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A total of 480 people with military backgrounds were charged with ideologically driven extremist crimes between 2017 and 2023, approximately 230 of whom were arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
