Plea for relevance: Testimony to the Senate committee that must approve the FBI’s $8.3 billion budget.
Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the spectre of domestic terrorism has returned to haunt the Obama Administration, with a warning from the FBI that “home-grown and lone-wolf extremists” now represent as serious a threat as al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
The warning, from the FBI Director, Robert Mueller, came as the former President Clinton drew parallels between the Oklahoma City tragedy and a recent upsurge in anti-government rhetoric, while American television audiences heard Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, describe the “absolute rage” that drove him to plan an attack that killed 168 men, women and children.
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The White House was careful to emphasise that the threat of external terrorism remained acute but senior officials are privately confident that military operations in Afghanistan are going well and putting al-Qaeda on the back foot. Few people in Washington are as confident about the domestic threat.