Federal agencies issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning of the threat from anti-government radicals and white supremacists ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
With the 25th anniversary of the attack that killed 168 people approaching on Sunday, the FBI, the Homeland Security Department, and the National Counterterrorism Center said the threat from home-grown extremists is “persistent and evolving.”
“The prevalence of lethal [domestic terrorist] attacks in the 25 years following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City highlights the continued threat they pose,” the nationwide bulletin read, according to ABC News.
1995, the year anti-government terrorist Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, was the deadliest year for domestic terrorist attacks in the United States. The bulletin noted that last year was the second-deadliest. Thirty-one people were killed in 2019. Of those, 23 were killed by white supremacists.
The FBI made some prominent arrests in the fight against home-grown extremism in the past few months. In February, five people allegedly tied to the violent neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division were arrested, including accused Atomwaffen leaders John Denton and Kaleb Cole, for conspiring to threaten activists and journalists. Just months earlier, authorities in Seattle used “red flag” gun laws to seize a cache of guns from Cole.
Another man in Las Vegas, Conor Climo, was arrested in August and is awaiting sentencing. Investigators said he plotted to carry out mass shootings in the city. Climo was reportedly linked to both the Atomwaffen Division and the European-based Feuerkrieg Division.
“While threats from [domestic terrorists] have continued to evolve since the Oklahoma City bombing, many of their significant drivers have remained constant,” the bulletin said. Federal authorities explained that some of the drivers are immigration policies, thoughts of federal “overreach,” and white supremacist views.
The bulletin urged law enforcement officials across the country to be aware of and continue to monitor the domestic terrorism threat but clarified that there is “no information indicating there is current attack plotting related to the Oklahoma City bombing anniversary.”
