GUEST COLUMNIST: What To Fear From ‘Homegrown Terrorists’ By Richard J. Chrystie

By Richard J. Chrystie, retired Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, Oct. 23, 2014

It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with six simple things terrorists can do that can kill many people and badly damage our economy:

1. Simply drive down a crowded sidewalk or through an occupied crosswalk or any other place where many people are congregated -- and then drive on. Do this repeatedly. One terrorist can do this alone -- or several can conduct simultaneous attacks in many cities. Many people will be killed, and people will be afraid to be on the streets. Commerce will stop. If the terrorist is fast and lucky, he can drive away, ditch the car and not be caught. Then he can do it again and again.

2. Simply shoot people at random and in many different locations. Recall that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo paralyzed the Washington, D.C., area a few years ago using an old Chevy and a single rifle. Trained snipers could pick off drivers on freeways or other roadways. Terrorists with concealed handguns could shoot people at random inside lobbies of buildings, inside elevators, and wherever people normally go. Then everyone would be afraid to even leave their homes.

3. Set up a concealed shooting position near an airport and shoot at airplanes as they take off and/or land. The engines are big targets and it would only take one or two hits to disable them so the plane would crash. A crash in a populated area would result in many casualties on the ground along with the crew and passengers on the plane.

4. Plant IEDs alongside the freeway and other roadways -- and in other places where people congregate. A couple of IEDs blowing up on a high-traffic highway will terrorize people sufficiently so that motorists will be afraid to drive on them.

5. Hijack a gasoline tanker truck. Attach an incendiary bomb to the tank. Crash it into the lobby of a hotel or office building and then detonate the bomb. Gas flowing from the ruptured tank will ignite and a huge inferno will ensue. The entire building will be engulfed in flame and everyone inside will be incinerated. This is a horrible scenario, but it would not be hard to pull off. The terrorists might not even have to hijack a gasoline tanker. They might simply get a job as the driver of one.

6. Shoot up power transmission facilities. There is one near my home. It is unguarded. From a few hundred yards away, a sniper with a rifle could easily shoot and put out of service those big transformers and other large pieces of equipment that are right out in the open. Do this at several facilities simultaneously and wide swaths of major metropolitan areas would be without electrical power for weeks or months while new equipment is manufactured and installed. Our civilization runs on electricity. Without it, we will be paralyzed. No lights, no refrigeration, no manufacturing, no radio or TV, etc.

Any and all of these six scenarios can be carried out in both big cities and in small towns so that none of us will feel safe anywhere.

Hopefully, people in the government are already thinking about this and are preparing ways to prevent these attacks -- rather than waiting for something to happen and then reacting, as with 9/11. Ultimately, we may have to become much more like Israel with public buildings and public areas hardened against attacks and many citizens armed to stop random terrorist shooters before they can kill too many victims.

Of course I hope none of these scenarios come to pass here. But the first two have already taken place in Canada. I see nothing to prevent similar attacks from happening here.

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