Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The military ties of the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day highlight the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks, especially those seeking mass casualties.
In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a veteran of the American army, was killed by police after a deadly rampage in a pickup truck that left 14 others dead and dozens more injured.
It is being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.
In Las Vegas officials say Matthew Livelsbergeran active duty member of the US Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck filled with firecracker mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the entrance to the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven people.
On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wake-up call” and that the country was “terminally ill and on the verge of collapse.”
Radicalization is increasing among veterans, active military members
Service members and veterans who are radicalized make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point out of the millions upon millions who have served their country honorably.
Mar an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among both veterans and active-duty service members was on the rise and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds have been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. The AP found that extremist plots they were involved in during that period nearly killed or injured 100 people.
The AP also found multiple problems with the Pentagon’s efforts to tackle extremism in its ranks, including that there is still no robust system to track it, and that a cornerstone report on the issue contained old data, misleading analyzes and ignored evidence of the problem.
Since 2017, both veterans and active-duty service members have been radicalized faster than people without military backgrounds, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.
Less than one percent of the adult population currently serves in the U.S. military, but active military members make up a disproportionate 3.2 percent of the extremist cases START researchers found between 2017 and 2022.
While the number of people with a military background involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.
More than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 to 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with on January 6, 2021, uprising – 18 percent of those arrested for the attack at the end of last year, according to START.
Get breaking national news
For news that affects Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you as they happen.
The data followed individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or harm for political, social, economic or religious purposes.
Analysis of AP found that plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training, or firearms than plots that did not include anyone with a military background.
This held true whether or not the plots were executed.
The jihadist ideology of the Islamic State group apparently linked to the New Orleans attack would make it an outlier in the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military backgrounds.
Only about nine percent of such extremists with military backgrounds subscribed to jihadist ideologies, START researchers found. More than 80 percent identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest divided among far-left or other motivations.
However, there have been a number of significant ones attacks motivated by the Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had an American military background.
In 2017, a US Army National Guard veteran who had served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after radicalizing via jihadist message boards and pledging support for the Islamic State.
In 2009, an army psychiatrist and officer opened fire at Fort Hood, Texasand killed 13 people, injuring dozens more. The shooter had been in contact with a known al-Qaeda operative prior to the shooting.
In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — led in part by veterans — law enforcement officials said the threat from domestically violent extremists was one of the most persistent and pressing terror threats to the United States.
The Pentagon has said it is “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring that such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities.”
Kristofer Goldsmith, an Army veteran and CEO of Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans to investigate and counter extremism, said the problem of violent extremism in the military cuts across ideological lines. Yet, he said, while the Biden administration tried to mount efforts to address it, Republicans in Congress resisted for political reasons.
“They threw up, you know, every roadblock they could by saying all veterans are called extremists by the Biden administration,” Goldsmith said.
“And now we’re in a situation where we’re four years behind where we could be.”
During their long military careers, both Jabbar and Livelsberger served time at the US Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of the nation’s largest military bases. One of the officials who spoke to the AP said there is no overlap in their assignments at the base, now called Fort Liberty.
Goldsmith said he is concerned that the incoming Trump administration will focus on the New Orleans attack and ISIS and ignore that most of the deadly attacks in the United States in recent history have come from the far right, especially when Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is confirmed.
Hegseth has justified the medieval crusades who pitted Christians against Muslims, criticized the Pentagon’s efforts to tackle extremism in its ranks and ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration in the weeks after the January 6 attack was himself flagged by a fellow National Guard member as a possible “insider threat.”
With files from AP reporter Tara Copp in Washington, DC
Contact AP’s global research team at investigative@ap.org
