Home-grown terror threat not taken seriously, report says

The U.S. was slow to take seriously the threat posed by home-grown radicals, and the government has failed to put systems in place to deal with the growing phenomenon, according to a recent report compiled by the former heads of the Sept. 11 commission.


**FILE** Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan
 (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)


The report says U.S. authorities failed to realize that Somali-American youths traveling from Minnesota to Mogadishu in 2008 to join extremists was not an isolated issue. Instead, the movement was one among several instances of a broader, more diverse threat that has surfaced across the country.

"Our long-held belief that homegrown terrorism couldn't happen here has thus created a situation where we are today stumbling blindly through the legal, operational and organizational minefield of countering terrorist radicalization and recruitment occurring in the United States," said the report, which was obtained by the Associated Press.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/15/homegrown-terror-threat-not-taken-seriously/