SAN ANTONIO – It has been four years since the last presidential inauguration. In that time, the threat of lone-wolf terrorism has skyrocketed and a terrorism professor said the opportunity for an attack is wide.
Attacks like September 11, 2001, are being replaced with attacks seen in Orlando, Nice, France and Fort Hood.
“I think with all precautions that are being made, I think we are going to see a very safe inauguration,” Dr. Jefferey Addicott, head of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University, said. “I mean, they’ve got snipers on rooftops. There is going to be so much security there in and around Washington, D.C.”
There remains the ever present threat of a lone-wolf, Addicott said. “We might have one individual that attempts to do something but the casualties are going to be small and they won’t get anywhere near President Trump,” he said.
Addicott said ISIS has a September 11 style attack planned, but he also said unsophisticated attacks are easier to carry out. He also said terrorists are not the most original planners and tend to copy a previous attack.
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“You might see someone use a vehicle perhaps,” he said, in reference to the attacks in France, Berlin and Israel.
The professor did not mince words when discussing the “what-ifs” and the impact an attack would have given all the media that has descended on the nation’s capital.
“Therefore, if I was going to be a terrorist trying to conduct an attack, I would launch my attack before the inauguration to try to disrupt that process,” he said. “It’s such a tempting target because the goal of terrorists is to kill one and frighten 10,000.”