Conference Warns of US Terror

By COLlive reporter

The United States faces an increasing number of homegrown violent extremists radicalized online and inspired by jihadists in Syria to carry out acts of violence, the FBI warned at a recent conference in New York.

Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey was the keynote speaker at the counter terrorism conference titled “Today’s Terrorism: Today’s Counterterrorism” at Fordham Law School in New York.

The day-long conference, which brought together terrorism experts, members of law enforcement at the local, state and federal level, lawyers, journalists and academics focused on the growing threat of extremists and terrorism in the world today.

Other speakers who addressed the crowd of about 500 included Prosecutor and former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Glen Olsen, NYPD’s director of intelligence analysis Rebecca Weiner, and CNN journalists Peter Bergen and Deborah Feyerick.

The conference was hosted by the Ari Halberstam Memorial Fund together with the Center for National Security at Fordham Law School and was held in memory of Ari Halberstam.

Participants at the cutting edge event discussed cyber-terrorism, the growing level of sophistication being observed in social-media based radicalization, foreign fighters, the threat of ISIS and homegrown terrorists. Leading experts in these areas from across the spectrum were presenters on the panels. They also enjoyed a Kosher lunch graciously sponsored by Joey Allaham of Prime Grill of Manhattan.

One of the day’s features was a panel on the murder of Ari Halberstam on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, titled “Brooklyn Bridge Shooting – Anatomy of a Terrorism Case,” where the Chief Prosecutor of 9/11 David Raskin discussed the missed signals in the Halberstam case, including the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the intended target, and that the case was ultimately labeled a terror attack.

Devorah Halberstam, Ari’s mother and the director of the Ari Halberstam Memorial Fund, addressed the conference about her son’s murder and her fight to educate law enforcement and the public about the threat of terrorism.

At the time of Ari’s shooting, police initially heard reports that it was spurred by “road rage” after the van carrying Halberstam and his friends cut off livery cab driver Rashid Baz. But more investigation revealed it was likely retaliation for a fatal rampage by a Jewish settler in the West Bank killing 29 Arabs, several days before.

Halberstam spent years investigating her son’s murder and lobbying for the horrific act to be named as a terror attack. “If I didn’t expose my son’s case for what it was, I would be just the first of many, many mothers facing a similar horror in their lives,” she said in her speech.

“Shockingly, the attack occurred almost a year to the day after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and nobody blinked an eye. And this was six years before 9/11. Had America’s anti-terrorist machinery gone into action right then and there, it could well be that 9/11 would never have happened,” she said.